Today, I’m guest posting over on The Writer’s Alley, with the post “Weather–It’s What Stories Are Really All About.” Here’s an excerpt:
Jane Eyre: The Writer’s Digest Annotated Classic (affiliate link)
When I think of weather in stories, I inevitably think of the Peanuts comic strip with Snoopy chugging along at his typewriter, wringing out his famous opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night.”
As you probably know, good ol’ Snoopers outright stole that line from Edward Bulwer-Lytton, after whom the infamous “worst opening lines ever” literary contest was named. And that, of course, leads authors everywhere to wonder if maybe, after all, we’d be better off just leaving the weather out of our stories.
But not so fast. Weather is a tremendously powerful and versatile tool. Want to know what a story is really about? Look no farther than the most obvious subtext of all: the weather. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (which I analyze in-depth in my book Jane Eyre: Writer’s Digest Annotated Classics) offers some excellent examples of how to use weather in a myriad of ways—without stooping to poor Snoopy’s level.
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