10-15-2013, 04:17 PM | #1 |
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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 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?
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. |
10-15-2013, 04:41 PM | #2 | |
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"It was a dark and stormy night" was the opening to Zanoni, wasn't it? Anyway, I'm sure it was Bulwer-Lytton . It's a cliche now, but only because it was so successful at the time. On to your challenge: Georges Simenon generally opened his Inspector Maigret novels with a description of the weather and I always thought it was a successful trick for setting the mood. |
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10-15-2013, 06:55 PM | #3 | |
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It's been decades since I read a Maigret. Thanks very much for the reminder; I'll revisit a few Maigrets. I did read Simenon's Dirty Snow earlier this year. You're right; the novel is set in winter and Simenon uses that very well in the book. |
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10-16-2013, 06:39 AM | #4 | |
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My favourite by far would be the opening of Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities, in which he ironises opening with the weather:
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10-16-2013, 09:24 AM | #5 |
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10-16-2013, 09:03 PM | #6 | |
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The opening paragraph of Lee Child's first Jack Reacher novel "Killing Floor":
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10-17-2013, 03:59 AM | #7 |
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When Elmore Leonard puts down his rule about the weather, he's not really talking about all books in all circumstances, but a general rule. Sometimes, though, the weather IS the story, or at least the setting, and so it's a good idea to start with it: look at Carl Hiassen's Stormy Weather (hell, it's even in the title!).
And if your story is set north of the Arctic circle, or at the south pole, don't tell me you can't start with the weather... It all depends on the novel itself. Weather can unnecessarily complicate a story and in many novels can be left out altogether. Look at Ian Fleming's James Bond books and see if you can find any weather at all. Not even in London. I guess some writers fall back on the weather to set the scene at the beginning simply because they can't come up with something better on Page One. In which case, Leonard is right on. |
10-17-2013, 06:35 AM | #8 | |
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Here's a less abbreviated version of the rule.
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10-17-2013, 11:49 AM | #9 |
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I can't quote any specific instances off the top of my head, but some of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels start with a description of the weather. But that's because the weather is often a central theme. The story is often about a police investigation that proceeds against a background of swelteringly hot weather, or incessant rain, or freezing cold, or something similar.
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10-17-2013, 12:51 PM | #10 | |
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10-17-2013, 04:25 PM | #11 | |
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The opening paragraph of The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, which has just won the Man Booker Prize, mentions the weather:
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10-17-2013, 06:41 PM | #12 |
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Thanks. It looks interesting - onto the TBR
Funny, I was reading an article in the paper today about the awards bash. Apparently, Ben Okri (previously the youngest recipient - 1991, The Famished Road) mentioned to Catton's partner that "this [the award] could be transformative in a very corrosive way" (http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/10...e-booker-prize) |
10-17-2013, 09:32 PM | #13 |
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I read a book set in Minnesota in the winter. Every chapter had a heading like "6:00 pm, 2 degrees" "1:00 am, -25 degrees" etc. Yeah, I get it, it's really cold in Minneapolis in the winter. I don't really need an hour-by-hour temperature report at the beginning of each chapter.
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10-18-2013, 02:48 AM | #14 |
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Ben Okri could be right. The only other New Zealand winner, Keri Hulme with The Bone People in 1985 hasn't had another novel published since then. Whether that's due to the prize or not I don't know, but it probably does create some expectations which can be difficult to fulfill.
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10-22-2013, 01:27 PM | #15 |
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It was a dark and stormy night is also the opening line in Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 kids' classic A Wrinkle in Time.
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