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bfisher · 10-15-2013, 04:17 PM

I recently read a column by Robert Fulford (http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/08...-opening-lines) where he discussed memorable opening lines.

Fulford mentioned Elmore Leonard's 1st rule ("Never open a book with Weather"),and gave counter-examples where using weather descriptions were an effective opening.

Surprising, he didn't cite one of the most effective uses of weather to set the tone of a novel, at the beginning of Dicken's Bleak House:

Chapter 1 — In Chancery
LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Definitely one of the great English novels. Can anyone recommend other novels (besides Perfect Storm

) where weather makes a significant contribution to the atmosphere

of the novel?

10-15-2013, 04:17 PM	#1
bfisher Wizard Posts: 1,638 Karma: 28483498 Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Ottawa Canada Device: Sony PRS-T3, Galaxy (Aldiko, Kobo app)	It was a dark and stormy night I recently read a column by Robert Fulford (http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/08...-opening-lines) where he discussed memorable opening lines. Fulford mentioned Elmore Leonard's 1st rule ("Never open a book with Weather"),and gave counter-examples where using weather descriptions were an effective opening. Surprising, he didn't cite one of the most effective uses of weather to set the tone of a novel, at the beginning of Dicken's Bleak House: Chapter 1 — In Chancery LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest. Definitely one of the great English novels. Can anyone recommend other novels (besides Perfect Storm ) where weather makes a significant contribution to the atmosphere of the novel?