What do with the Weather! by DL Larson

"It’s raining, it’s pouring,the old man’s snoring.
He got into bed and bumped his head
And couldn’t get up in the morning."

Do children recite this poem any more? I have no idea, but it clamored through my head as I woke to the pelting rain on my house. I'm sun-deprived, warm-weather deprived and as usual, my imagination wandered down a road I hadn't intended to go.

... What if the sun decided not to shine anymore? What if the clouds refused to go away? What if the cold refused to slink back to the north where it came from? What if this dreary day would be the brightest day from here out?

Now, as you might suppose, I started thinking of books where the weather took a front seat in the plot. 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' came to mind. C.S. Lewis very much had the weather bewitched in a frozen state. At least the sun still shined. But in 'The City of Embers,' the young characters knew no such element existed. They had no sun, no wind, no clouds. And no rain. The author, Jean DuPrau, created an entire world of living underground.

I'm sure other books of this nature come to your mind. Weather is unpredictable and we humans have no control over. It will behave, or not. That unreliability fascinates and intrigues us to use it in our story telling. Weather has played a big part in many books and movies. An old favorite, 'The Wizard of OZ,' begins with a tornado. 'The Titanic,' hits an iceberg, another element we have no control over.

Perhaps you have written a story using the weather tool from your writing kit. I recall using a storm in my latest book where two of my characters try out-running a heavy rain on horseback. In the following book, my guy character remembers back that the gal character is afraid of storms and thereby realizes a chink in her personality.

Manipulating the weather in our stories gives us a sense of power. We control the storms, the heat, the floods and snow storms. We make the sun shine!

How have you used and manipulated the weather in your writing? Share with us.


And a trivia rain song question for you:
Who sang, 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head?'

No fair googling - give it your best guess.


Til next time ~

DL Larson