It Always Starts on a Rainy Night

Sure, there are exceptions, but in literature and movies, there's always that air of mystery wrapped into those rainy nights. Maybe it's a cheap and automatic draw into the shared experience that comes with the rain. Inconvenience, the love/loathing of the rain's smell, the warmth/chill of water on the skin, the concealment, the greater population staying out of it in favor of staying dry--whatever it is, there are layers for the writer to explore or to leave to the reader's imagination.

Whenever I start a story, one of the primary concerns I have is where I am setting the first character that will serve as a lead-in for the story. How much they are aware depends on how they feel about the weather. Would they love snow or rain or be complacent on a dry night? Does cold make their scars ache or does the heat make them sweat and itch? So often, a writer will talk about how deep and rich a character is, but it's also true that good writing is on the skin. You don't have to write the ode to itchy skin, but it's also important that the writer is aware of the skin they're in.

Speaking of skin, are we aware of the subjectivity of beauty? Are they perceived as beautiful or ugly and do they agree? Does being called one or the other always seem to stun them or do they ignore it unfazed? Are they an ugly crier or does their skin blotch red when they swallow their emotions? Does rain make their skin uncomfortable or do they avoid it to preserve their vanity and expensive fashion choices?

Wherever you begin the setting of your writing or just imaginations, the layers beneath it aren't always an active process of doing. As a gatherer of observations, there may be less notes and more scattered thoughts as we jump from one curiosity to the next. Sometimes it doesn't really start at a neat spot; sometimes it's an overwhelming web and when we whittle it down...

It's just odd how often that the place so often comes down to a rainy night.

UnNamed started there and the idea I was hashing out last night came around to the rainy night too. Despite my own meditative experience with rain, in my stories, I always see it in the reason for urgency, the playground for the determination of someone to brave it because life has more pressing matters than waiting for the rain to stop.

Time and again, I start there too because I'm looking for something across those oddly-sentient nights where water and air are testing human affairs for resiliency.

And the rebel in me started UnSung in a place quite opposite. Why let the curiosity always hover on obsession? What's on the polar opposite of an obsession has answers too.