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.
