Due to his recent death, a lot has been on line regarding Elmore Leonard, who wrote crazy books set in Florida. He was an excellent writer and will be missed by those like my husband who thought of him as wonderful entertainment and very knowledgeable at the same time. I came across his rules of writing I thought I'd share them with you, along with my thoughts:
1. Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
How do you feel about this? I understand that the weather helps the reader understand the time and place where the story starts, and being not nearly the writer as Elmore Leonard, I've been known to throw a lot of weather into many of my scenes. As a starting point though, not so much. But it was just dumb luck on my part. A mistake I easily could have taken. Now I can see that it won't.
