From: siegel@acm.org   
      
   On Monday, October 6, 2014 11:53:59 AM UTC-4, David E. Siegel (siegel@acm.org)   
   wrote:   
   > On Friday, October 3, 2014 7:07:32 PM UTC-4, 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, 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.   
   >    
   > > 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.   
   >    
   > The use of weather as metaphor or as an indicator of mood has a long   
   tradition, and many excellent stories use it. Like any other device, it can be   
   overdone   
   >  and cliched. While specific editors might have their particular foibles, I   
   doubt that most would reject for the use of such a device IF it were well done.   
   >    
   >  If it were banal, or seemed forced, it would no doubt be a point against a   
   submitted work, but if the book were oth4rewise good, that detail could   
   >  generally be dealt with by editing I would think. If it is merely one   
   symptom of overwriting or of reliance on cliche, that would be different.    
   >    
   > -DES   
      
   I just found, searching on a quite different topic, a very relevant quote:   
      
      "Remember to get the weather in your god dammned book -- weather is   
       very important" Ernest Hemingway, in a letter to John Dos Passos   
       (used as the epigraph to _Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale and how a    
       19th Century Admiral turned Science into poetry_ by Scott Huler   
      
   -DES   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)