Fi Phillips

Today, the weather is frosty and grey. There are no warm skies to compliment the remains of ice and white left by the night-chill. The view through my window is blanched, bled out, deathly pale. I long for a touch of blue or green to lift my mood. Weather is a constant although it is so commonplace that we don't always notice it. Rain. Snow. Fog. Sun. It all affects us in some way - the clothes we wear, the route we take to work, and how we feel when we step out of the door on a morning. It can also be a mood setting device in our writing. Dark clouds can bring a feeling of impending doom. Floods suggest the loss of control. Snow can be magical or a blanket over what is buried beneath it. Sunshine lends optimism. Victorian smog added to the element of mystery and something unpleasant lurking unseen in Gothic novels. There are so many ways that weather can be used to affect the reader. Write an opening paragraph where the weather creates a mood.

Over in the UK, September has brought us weather that is reminiscent of Noah's ark-building days. There have been floods galore. The town I grew up in, York, has been especially affected. https://www.facebook.com/YorkPhotographer Over here in Wales, the playgrounds at my children's school have turned into ankle-deep paddling pools and I was forced to buy myself some new wellies. Cold, crisp September mornings are bracing and encourage me to look around but the constant drip drip drip of rain drops from my hood or umbrella just make me want to curl up on the couch. I use this feeling of rain chasing us away home, causing us to look down and inwards, in the first chapter of the novel that I'm writing to create a sense of people apart from the crowds that surround them, caught in their own thoughts, which is a major characteristic of my main character, Steve Haven. In The Mist , a story by Stephen King, the fog lends a similar quality of being disconnected but in...