How About that Weather?

I was reading a piece of writing advice the other day about five clichés that ruin openings. I agreed with four of them, but either I don’t understand the fifth cliché the author was describing, or it’s simple wrong advice. The gist was, “don’t begin with the weather because no one gives a crap about the weather.”

First, I’m not sure that weather can actually be a cliché in the way “it was all a dream” is. I mean, weather is only a cliché in the sense that it’s always there. It’s reality rather than cliché. Second, maybe it’s because I grew up on a farm but I do indeed give a crap about the weather. In fact, almost everyone does and that would explain why it’s one of the major topics of conversation. Third, unless your story takes place fully inside a place with complete environmental controls and no windows, such as a spaceship, weather will be a part of a realistic story. Fifth, quite a few of my favorite opening sequences in literature incorporate weather. Give a listen:

“In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.” Hemingway—A Farewell to Arms.

“October Country . . . that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain. . . .” Ray Bradbury—The October Country.

Or: “Heat beat down on my shoulders, my face cloth. My armor dragged at the riding sores underneath. Little sparkles danced behind my eyelids, and the strain in my joints were cramping to knots in my muscles. It had been a long ride. A grating call made my shoulders twitch. The carrion crows, who glided after us day after day, were waiting.” Heather Gladney—Teot’s War.

I stopped with these three in order to keep this post to a manageable length. There are many other examples I could give. Now, if the opening were ‘only’ a lengthy description of the weather, I would want the writer to move on. But, what I need from a story is to be immediately, or at least very quickly, “grounded.” I want to know “who” and “where.” If the story is taking place outside, a huge part of “where” is likely to involve weather.

As a reader, the surest way for a writer to lose me is to open with talking heads in a vacuum. Now there is truly something I don’t give a crap about. I’d rather it were all a dream.

STRUGGLE

 I believe there is an important principle for authors to remember when writing fiction. This is: the victory a character achieves is directly proportional to the struggle needed to acquire that victory. The greater the struggle, the greater the victory. And the greater the struggle, the more readers will pull for that character to win and take joy when he or she does.

This holds true no matter the ‘level’ of the struggle. It doesn’t have to be a fight to the death. It doesn’t have to be a “save humanity or it goes extinct” kind of conflict. A child struggling against prejudice, a woman struggling to escape an abusive relationship, a man striving to find meaning in a world where he feels like a spent coin are all examples of the kinds of struggles that could, and have, become engaging fiction.

I’m reading a book now where the writer didn’t know this simple fact, or at least hasn’t illustrated his knowledge of it so far. The book is Zanthar of the Many Worlds by Robert Moore Williams. A man is transported to another planet. Within a few moments he acquires some allies who decide he’s a god, and he defeats a horde of attackers. He kills something referred to as a “miniature dinosaur” with one blow from a “copper  hammer” he’d been carrying in his lab when the transportation occurred. He has no problem communicating with his new friends, one of whom proves capable of healing any wound merely by laying hands on it and concentrating.

First I’m yawning. Then I start to scan. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a day on this real world where everything has gone that easily. And I've never even had to kill a miniature dinosaur with a hammer. Is the author going to get a clue? I’ll give it another dozen pages or so and see. I’m not confident.

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In a Story…(Part Two)

In a story, things happen. And they don’t happen in a nice, predictable pattern. Telling a story isn’t like playing a game of chess. The writer doesn’t have to have the board all set up and the pieces all arranged just so before starting the story. In fact, messiness is desirable at the start. “In media res” is a piece of writing advice I like. It means, begin in the middle of the action. Another piece of advice I like about writing is, never tell the reader more than they need to know at that precise moment in time. In the perfect book, the reader always wants to know a little more than they do know. That’s why they turn the page.

Of course a book doesn’t have to start with a battle or an alien invasion. As long as something is happening, there’ll be readers who will follow you. What do you think of the following scenarios, for example.

1. “I’m pregnant, Don. And it’s not yours.”

2. I heard the car coming and looked up from weeding my flower garden. We didn’t get many visitors out here in the country. I never expected this one. The daughter I hadn’t seen in ten years got out of the car. She wasn’t alone.

3. I recognized the ring tone as I answered my cell.
“Hi, Granny,” I said, smiling.
“I’ve shot your grandfather,” she said. “I just thought you should know.”

I’m not saying these are beautifully written opening lines but at least something is going on in them. My thinking is that all three of these are essentially literary openings. The stories that developed from these would most likely be primarily about human relationships, either their development of their destruction. I might not actually want to read any of these stories, although #3 sounds the most interesting to me. I’m a genre junky. I don’t often read stories that are solely about relationships. For me, a writer needs something like:

1. She looked like she was about twelve years old until she pulled the gun on me.

2. The howling began around dark. I should have left the cabin then. But the sound was far away and I told myself it was only wolves. Besides, I was expecting friends to join me for a weekend in the woods.

By midnight my friends hadn’t arrived and the howling was closer. It was closer and all around the cabin. And it didn’t sound like wolves anymore.

3. The ship plunged through the atmosphere, burning as it went. Only a fragment hit the earth. But that fragment was alive.
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In a Story…(Part One)

In a story, things happen. They happen immediately, or at least PDQ. Things that have happened are frequently revealed in dialogue, or, often with less effectiveness, in summarized form in what is called an info dump. Talented writers, in certain types of stories, can have action happening in the dialogue itself, although it’s a rare story that can get along with dialogue alone.

The first line of this essay came in a fit of irritation as I was reading a book from a mainstream SF publisher. It came because this particular book did not illustrate the principle that ‘in a story, things happen.’ By thirty-five pages in, we’d had a dozen characters introduced and had “hints” that a major crisis was threatening earth. (I already knew from the back cover that we were looking at a first contact scenario.) We’d learned a few things about the characters, almost none of it very interesting. We’d also had a nine page conversation in a jeep with a flat tire in the rain, about nothing. Starting with page 35, we got a page and a half info dump about a specific character, including pretty much the character’s whole military service and the honors he’d received. That was it for me. I closed the book and uploaded it to bookmooch. I was irritated enough to vow never to read another of this author’s books again.

The worst thing, from my point of view, is that the first book I read by this author was absolutely wonderful. It was also an alien contact story, but the action began in the first paragraph as a research lab at a major university blew up and opened a gateway to another dimension. The action seldom slacked off after that, although a lot of characters were introduced as the book went on. I was so impressed that I immediately bought two more books by the author. The second one I read was written with a coauthor and was horribly slow with a lot of character description that ended up going nowhere. I blamed it on the co-writer so I still came to the current novel with high hopes. Dashed hopes, as it turned out. If this had been the first book I read by this author I would never have gotten to the one that was really good.

Things happen in a story. Or else it’s not a story. No matter how many characters a writer introduces, it’s not a story until things happen between those characters. No matter how much a writer hints at big things to come, it’s not a story until some of those things actually begin to occur. I think most writers have to learn this fact. I don’t believe it comes naturally for most of us. It didn’t for me, although I never took 35 pages to get to some big happening. Swords of Talera is my slowest starting book. There’s a five page introduction that reveals Ruenn Maclang’s character and sets up a mystery about Ruenn and where he’s been. Then comes Chapter 1, with three and half pages of rather mundane activity until the screams begin and the story is fully launched. Wings over Talera has a three page introduction with a battle happening by page 2 of the book itself. Witch of Talera has a two “paragraph” introduction and an assassination attempt on the first page.

Here’s my plea to writers. Make things happen. Make them happen quickly. I don’t want to put your book down any more than you want me to.
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