Tag: Spring Weather as Writing Inspiration

How to Use April in a Story

How to Use April in a Story

Before I get to this month’s theme of beginnings, which seems like a good theme for a month in spring, I wanted to highlight how to use April in a story as this Monday Spark of inspiration.

April Fool’s Day: The holiday presents a great situation for humorous, middle grade fiction. Maybe a competition between kids to see who can fool the most people. Or maybe a family could be engaged in playing practical jokes on each other. An April Fool’s Day joke gone Horribly Wrong can kick off a mystery or thriller.

Spring Break: A trip always has a lot of potential for storytelling. Whether it’s a family trip, a trip with friends, or a mission trip, the process of traveling in the spring can be exploited for both comic and dramatic effect. Six years ago, my kids and I traveled with my oldest sister and her two kids in their van to visit our youngest sister and her children, who were living in St. Louis then. This trip has gone done in the annals of family history as One of Those Trips–you know, the one in which everything seems to happen.

My nephew was on the verge of wetting himself because we missed the drive to my youngest sister’s apartment. When my oldest sister and I saw on TV at the hotel on the morning that we planned to visit the St. Louis Arch that it was also the opening day for the Cardinals, we kicked into high gear and raced to the Arch in order to get a parking space. My youngest sister met us. Our lunch consisted of whatever she had thrown into a cooler. I thought I’d die of claustrophobia as we went up in the St. Louis Arch, but I was willing to make that sacrifice for the kids. Then I found out the ride was 4 minutes. We visited the City Museum and the three moms nearly lost one or both of our kids as well as our minds.

Each of these incidents could be the raw material for a short story, and all together, I have the inspiration for a comic novel.

Storms: Where I live, in a temperate climate, April is the first month of the year when we usually experience thunderstorms. Storms are a great plot twist or metaphor. As a metaphor, a storm can mirror dueling emotions, desires, or ambitions inside one character. It can also underline the conflict between two or more characters. The storm can be a twist to heighten the tension between characters or force them to survive and reveal their strength and weaknesses.

How would you use April as a setting?

For tips on how to use the themes of Easter in a story, click here.

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Spring Weather as Writing Inspiration

In temperate climates, spring weather means one certain thing — anything can happen at anytime. If I don’t want it to happen, it will. This unpredictability provides fertile ground (yes, it’s a joke) for spring weather as writing inspiration.

Character Development

One of my favorite descriptions for a character appears in the short story “Naboth’s Vineyard” by Melville Davisson Post.

Describing a young woman “.. with an April nature of storm and sun.”

The young woman confesses to murdering her employer because he sent away her fiancee.

I can create a character with that kind of extreme temperament. When he’s happy, it’s as if the sky is pure blue, filled with larks singing arias. When he’s sad, he feels like there’s a steady, unrelenting downpour in his soul.

A character with a hair-trigger temper is like a sudden spring storm. I once described a character with a temper like a tornado. “You never know where it will land and how much damage it will do.”

Setting

The weather makes a wonderful setting for heightening tension between characters. Two characters who don’t get along find themselves stranded in a rural area due to flash flooding or a tornado. They have to work together to survive. Depending on how I want to resolve the story, the weather can get worse and worse as the characters’ dislike for each other grows into hatred. Or the weather can improve as the characters figure out how to help each other.

If I want my story to have a happy ending, it’s hard to beat setting the conclusion on a brilliantly clear spring morning or a quiet, cool spring evening.

Plot

The changeable weather is a perfect way to create believable plots twists. A gang of crooks pulls off a daring robbery. As they make their getaway, a storm ruins their escape route. What do they do?

The amateur sleuth figures out who the killer is when they are alone in a remote location. The killer realizes the sleuth is onto her. She tries to kill the sleuth, but he takes off. A storm or flash flood complicates the sleuth’s escape and the killer’s pursuit. What do they do?

For more ideas on how to use April holidays as writing inspiration, click on my post from 2019 and 2018.

What is spring weather like where you live? How would you use spring weather as writing inspiration?

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