From: djheydt@kithrup.com
In article <96a8a983-d5a8-4959-909b-8c5074ee0cb9@googlegroups.com>,
William Vetter wrote:
>
>In one of those books written by somebody who has claimed to have
>rejected 50,000 manuscripts or something, that's supposed to list
>everything we're doing wrong,
Oh, that kind of book. I had one once that claimed in no
uncertain terms that Every Novel must have A Purpose, which can
be stated in one sentence containing the words To Prove.
>I found one of them that was interesting
>to me. This person claimed that it is almost universal to use weather
>as a metaphor for the mood of the fiction, and authors describe the
>weather progressive scenes as an obligation, and this is sooooo cliched,
>and a grounds for rejection.
Like so many other things that have been done, you can get away
with it if you can get away with it.
>
>I don't know that this is so, but I do see this sort of thing a lot, as
>in detective fiction where the weather is always dismal. Or historical
>fiction where the city is always wet and stinking and beset by a miasma.
>
>How and when do you describe weather or what do you think about it.
Mostly I describe the weather when it's interfering with, or at
least influencing, the characters' actions. But I do remember
opening one story with a downpour "as if the skies themselves
mourned Zeno's passing," he having died since the end of the
previous story, and ending it with another downpour "as if the
heavens themselves mourned for Palamedes," who had died in the
course of the story.
Sometimes it's fun just to do a _sicut erat in principio,_ making
the ending mirror the beginning. I remember opening and closing
another story with a smoking corpse.
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.
Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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