Serendipity and Destruction

Cricket McRae

Never start a book with the weather, Elmore Leonard tells us, and it's a dictum I adhere to religiously. I do, however, have two notebooks full of observations about nature that I mine in order to lend credence to the atmosphere of my novels. Things like what the air smells like at night in the middle of October, or after the first rain in August or all the damn time in January. How snow behaves, what's blooming when, how the air feels against your skin, how the birds sound at four a.m. in the spring versus the fall. Mostly tiny things, mere seasoning for the primary flavors of plot and character.

But my nature journals are all from the Pacific Northwest. My current work in progress is set in Colorado, where I live now. In the final climactic scene(s), one of the rocks I'm throwing at my long suffering protagonist is weather. Really bad weather. I've researched the air flow patterns, what happens inside the kinds of clouds common to the area, what circumstances create hail and tornadoes, but I lacked the little, unusual details that make a storm a specific storm.

Sunday morning I'm working in my office. The room darkens. The sky has turned to mercury. Huge, isolated drops of rain splat against the pavement outside. Then the deluge hits, accompanied by an almost conversational rumble of thunder. I abandon my computer, make a cup of tea, and go out to the covered front porch.

The lightening is constant. A yellow streak zigzags overhead, and the thunder roars like a jet engine moving from west to east for a long three seconds. Another flash sounds like a rifle shot, complete with the dopleresque zchwinggggg of an old-timey western. The rain turns to hail.

The ground squirms with quarter-inch ice pellets. I walk out from the overhang to see if they hurt. Not too bad. My neighbor, the mechanic, runs out with an umbrella to cover the rose bush his wife just planted. He sees me and stops. I wave. The hand he lifts in return is tentative. That's okay. They've wondered a little about me ever since I asked him how to cut a brake line without getting caught.

The hail increases to half an inch in diameter. At that size it officially stings like hell. I run inside to grab a notebook. When I return to the front porch a wave of crisp fragrance hits my nose. First I identify mint. The hail has pummeled the patch of spearmint into the ground, muddling it as if for the world's biggest mojito. A wisp of licorice joins in, from the sunset hyssop bushes by the driveway. Then the lavender scent of the smashed bee balm leaves. I run through the house and throw open the door by the garage to look out at the herb garden. Again, the smell of destruction is amazing: oregano, tarragon, sage, rosemary and thyme fill the air.

I inhale deeply until I realize I'm going to hyperventilate if I don't knock it off. It's wonderful. It's terrible. The sound of my pen scribbling is lost in the rattle of the ice pellets that continue to fall.

There will be a lot of work, cleaning up and replanting. The huge pink peonies are lost, their dowdy, blowzy blooms lying like dead fish in the bark mulch. And I won't have to worry about eating salad for a few days; those delicate leaves have been reduced to green mush.

For now. It's early in the season, and I cling to the hope that with a little help, nature will bounce back in her inimitable way. In the meantime, I've got some of those telling details that I wouldn't have otherwise. Will I use all of them? Of course not. It's not a scene about a storm -- it's a scene about someone trying to get away from a crazed murderer.

And when it comes to the tornado? I'll just wing that one, thankyouverymuch.

To Every Story...There is a Season

by Nina Wright

As we conclude the holiday season, let's contemplate seasons in another light. Think of a particular novel or movie and ask yourself what time of year it takes place. Or, if the story sprawls across seasons, which ones are most significant, and why? Is time of year a mood-setter, a point of contrast or a catalyst? How conscious of season does the writer want the reader to be? To what end does the writer manipulate time of year?

Season is an element of setting, equally linked to time and place. With a nod to latitude and longitude, time of year dictates rituals and holidays in addition to weather. It can affect all five senses as well as state of mind.

In fiction the role of season ranges from texture to plot point to theme. Doctor Zhivago is first and foremost a story of place and time (and character), but the wintry elements are what many of us remember best, especially from the film. Planes, Trains and Automobiles, for all its hilarity, is about Thanksgiving: Steve Martin’s character wants only to be with his family while John Candy’s character has no family and nowhere to go. The Wizard of Oz depends on tornado season to provide a key plot element as well as the revelation that there's no place like home.

Season can be an efficient means of revealing character. How does our protagonist respond to a pile of soggy autumn leaves? The lack of sunlight in winter? An April Fool’s joke? Neighborhood kids playing with firecrackers the week before the Fourth of July?

Season creates reader expectation. For instance, juvenile fiction set in summertime seems to promise a lack of structure and adult supervision. But exceptions abound, as I discovered while playing with notions for my teen novel Sensitive. There could be summer school or summer camp. Or a summer job. The point is that novelists can elect to follow or flout seasonal expectations. Oh, the possibilities inherent in, say, no teachers showing up for the first day of school...or a January that's warmer in Montana than in Tennessee...or a Thanksgiving when our protagonist has nothing to feel thankful for....

Season is on my mind, and not just because I’m stuck in Ohio for the winter when I would rather be at least three climate zones to the south. I’m writing Whiskey with a Twist, the fifth book in what some might call a season-based mystery series, emphasis on humor. Each installment takes place during the next tourist event in or around a Lake Michigan resort town. It starts with leaf-peeping in Whiskey on the Rocks, moves on to a winter jamboree in Whiskey Straight Up and then the annual Miss Blossom pageant in Whiskey & Tonic, followed in Whiskey and Water by a rash of riptides. My novel in progress was inspired by my own experiences at a fall dog show in Lancaster, PA. Whiskey with a Twist features Afghan hounds amid the Indiana Amish. Add harvest season, and this fictioneer can’t type fast enough.

What role does season play in the novel you are writing or reading right now? Does the author comply with seasonal expectations or defy them? How does season impact character, plot and/or theme?

As I write this, a new year is opening before us. Whether the season is sunny, snowy or rainy where you are, I wish you a bright Aught-Eight.