Rainy Saturday on 1 Cup of Coffee

I was thinking about Elmore Leonard today.  More specifically about his rules of writing.  The one about never writing about the weather, not to put to fine a point on it.  Why?  Because it's still raining.  We're not going to be swept away - yet - but's it's been coming down steadily for days.

Yesterday I was out in it for quite a bit.  Waiting for late trains, transferring at different stations, and waiting at cross walks under trees so soggy and a storm with such force that there was no cover.  Don't mention umbrellas.  I'm not an umbrella guy.  I did wear a hat on Thursday though.

I'm in a position where people come to me.  It's odd, I'm not used to it, but in the rain it's kind of nice.  My office is dry.  It also has a lot of windows and this week, everytime someone came to see me, s/he commented on how hard it was raining.  At one point it looked like a blizzard it was coming down so hard.

#4 summed it up nicely though.  He's 9, for perspecitve.  "Wow, it's still raining Dad.  It's been raining for days.  But we didn't get any before that for a long time, so I guess this is good."

It is good.  "Rain will make the flowers grow."  We often use the expression in life that, "It never rains, but it pours."  I'm seeing that in a very visual way.  A screen writer's way.

You may see it a poet, or painter, or a photographer (or even an astronaught...).  It doesn't matter.  As long as you do see it.

"You're kind to strangers and children, and when you stand in the snow you look like an angel."

I'm going to upset ElmoreLeonard.

Tuesday dawned overcast and muggy.  Not a hot muggy, but the chilly kind that creeps into your bones and leaves you wondering if you are dying of malaria or just a bit too hung over to reach for a blanket.

Elmore says, in his wonderful little book, that you should never start with weather.  It's a good rule.  It shouldn't be broken very often.  When you're writing a novel.  Or, in the case of my 1991, a novella.  I just read Heat Lightning and it was book-ended by weather.  

Groundhog Day - it was about a weatherman, not the weather

Didn't have to be.  If I ever get hired to write the adaptation (which would be cool, I thought it was reasonably well plotted) I would leave the pages of meteorology out. 

FADE IN:

EXT. CITY STREET - NIGHT

Lightning without rain.  A MAN, late 30s, in black - face sweating.  He waits in the shadows beyond a streetlight.  His fist is clenched on a silenced pistol held against his thigh.

...

Showing versus telling.  In the book, that took a couple of pages.  Then there was a man walking a dog.  Then the assassination.  Then the body clean up.  There was plenty of action, but it was held up by the weather.  Throughout the book there was a great deal of effort spent on weather.  I kept waiting for the weather to be a factor – you know, a major storm that upset the fishing boat or a power outage or something.  It never happened.  In “Fargo” the weather was a factor, almost a character, but it didn't get a lot of description.  You don’t need to write about the weather.

It’s small talk in real life.  On the page, where everything is magnified, it shows that you don’t really have anything to say or that you are afraid to say whatever it is.  Call me a conformist, but my advice is that unless you are writing poetry, the best guideline is to leave out the weather report.  Note the word "guideline".  Naturally, you may have a very good reason to write about the weather.  That’s great but make sure that everyone else thinks it’s a really good reason too or you’ll get some polite nods but no commercial success with the piece.

BTW – today is the first morning of my vacation that it hasn't been raining.