This guest post is by Kimberly Belle, author of The Marriage Lie. She talks about using weather to write a cozy scene, build tension and infuse conflict. 

When I begin a new story, I’m thinking about big-picture elements, things like plot and character arc and setting. I’m thinking about conflict and how to raise the stakes for the people who populate my story. I’m thinking about voice and tone and sturdy, evocative language. What I’m not thinking about is the weather.

Yet.

But just like life, a story can’t exist without the elements. We clothe our characters according to the seasons. We equip them with sunglasses for the glare or an umbrella for a sky dumping rain. We have them gather around a Christmas table or, if they’re feeling romantic, place them before a roaring fire. Weather is not just necessary to a story; it creates atmosphere, adds descriptive detail, and elevates a scene from boring to three-dimensional.

Weather evokes mood

How do you feel when you imagine a sunny afternoon at the beach? A thunderstorm rumbling over the dark woods? A wintry evening bundled under a flannel blanket on the couch? Weather elicits emotion because we live it every day, and those emotions translate to the page. Sunshine implies happiness and rain implies gloom. Even when the weather is unremarkable—a crisp autumn morning or a sunny day in May—it still sets the scene. By painting specific weather conditions in our stories, we are telling our characters—and our reader—how we want them to feel.

Weather creates conflict

And I’m not just referring to cli-fi, the genre built around climate change and the weather’s ability to turn life-threatening. For most stories, the type of conflict created by weather will be more subtle, an extra hassle on your characters’ road to The End. Picture a husband and wife on vacation, driving down a deserted road, arguing about how to get back to the hotel. Now add weather to the scene. Is it snowing, the road white and icy? Or is it the hottest day on record, smoke billowing from the car motor? Extreme weather can give the same scene an entirely different feel, and it adds an extra speed bump to your characters’ journey.

Weather foreshadows

There is no bigger clue that something bad is coming than a sudden crash of thunder or dark, ominous clouds in the distance. You don’t have to tell the reader that something terrible lurks on the horizon. They already know, and they’re dreading it just as much as your character is.

But weather doesn’t always have to work against your characters. A sunrise implies hope, as does the first day of spring after a long, hard winter. Or change it up. Give us a welcome downpour after a prolonged period of drought. Readers love to be surprised, and weather is one way to do it.

Weather spices up your scenes

Writing a scene without mentioning the weather is like having your characters walk into a room and not describing what that room looks like. The description may not be important to the action of your story, but it’s essential for your reader to get the full picture. The same goes for the weather. A brief mention of sunshine or snow will bring your scene to life and make it tactile and vibrant and complete.

But writers beware

Weather is such a part of our everyday lives that it can also become tedious. We use it as clichéd and trite small talk when we can’t think of anything more interesting to say. Nice weather we’re having. Can you believe this weather? We may have these conversations in real life, but when our characters have them, it puts the reader to sleep.

Like most description, weather is best delivered in small doses. Readers don’t want long, purple paragraphs of rain trickling down windows, and they only care if it adds something to your scene. Use the sharpest, most descriptive language you can imagine, but do so sparingly. In writing, as with so many things in life, less is almost always more.