After days of heat and sunshine the weather is breaking.
All afternoon it has been getting steadily darker. Now, at a few minutes to six, the sky is a wonderfully ominous combination of low lying, pale pearly light, topped off with gloomy grey. It looks deliciously creepy. I really need to remember it for future use There is a slight breeze, a sprinkling of rain and an eerie quiet.
You can tell I write suspense, can't you?
It's giving me ideas. Not very clear at the moment - but definitely something.
I'm thinking of a story that begins with the weather. Although that is one of those things that you are not supposed to do, so maybe not. Apparently readers get restive if they do not have a character to latch onto.
So - where does that take me? If a character is watching this the way I am, I think they would have to be alone. But who are they? Hero? Heroine? Villain? I can make a case for all of them. It would be a sinister beginning - maybe for that Gothic novel I'm always threatening to produce?
A lot is written about setting being almost a character in a book. Can the weather do the same thing? Something to ponder. It would need to be identified at the outset and developed - a bit like a theme - but I don't really do themes.
I've been re-reading Jayne Ann Krentz/Jayne Castle's Harmony series - comfort reading while not feeling well - and on the planet Harmony there are a lot of references to the strange green light that suffuses everything, emanating from the ancient and mysterious ruins left behind by alien inhabitants many thousands of years before. It certainly adds to the atmosphere of the books.
Something to think about.
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