This week: Winter Fantasy Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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The winter's a little bit daunting in Montana.
-Phil Jackson
Write about winter in the summer.
-Annie Dillard
The problem with winter sports is that - follow me closely here - they generally take place in winter.
-Dave Barry |
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With all due apologies to those lucky few who live in the tropics, or who are currently experiencing summer even further south, but this newsletter is aimed at my fellow Northern Hemispherians. Here, it's full-on winter, and the weather has been crazy.
While weather can get a little dicey in the summer as well, what with hurricanes and lightning storms and whatnot, the season of winter creates challenges - for us, and also for our characters. Whether you're writing about a world like ours, with seasons, or one gripped with cold year-round, winter weather can be another obstacle for your characters to overcome.
After all, your tauntaun will freeze.
Cold rain, bitter winds, snow, sleet, blizzard, freezing rain, or even just the remnants thereof can create challenges for characters. It's one thing to have to go out and find food or go on an epic quest when the temperature's a nice balmy 70 degrees (sorry, everyone, I'm using Fahrenheit here because I'm from the US); it's quite another when there's icicles forming on your beard. Especially when you don't even have a beard.
It takes dedication, perseverance, knowledge, preparation, and resourcefulness to survive these conditions - all of which can reveal something about your characters. Does she forge ahead, intrepid? Or does he complain with every freezing step? What preparations can they make to mitigate the effects, and how can the weather negate all such preparations? Conditions can change suddenly and unexpectedly, especially in a setting where they don't have access to satellite and radar predictions.
Your readers are likely comfortably ensconced by a roaring fire, sipping hot cocoa, eating donuts, and generally being warm and cozy. For a character in a story, that's boring. You want to give them something to overcome, and winter weather is tailor-made for doing this. So here are a few ways to shake things up:
 The old ice-breaking trick. You're walking across some solid ice when CRACK and now you've got to survive. Might be you have to drop the pack with all your provisions to do it.
A trek could start out in mild weather, and you're suddenly faced with a blizzard. You're not ready; how do you proceed?
Everything gets wet.
Whatever transport your character is using is suddenly useless because of drifting snow or slippery, treacherous ice.
Other critters are hungry, too, and your character looks to them like a nice, warm snack.
Icy ledges on a mountainside.
Frostbite sucks.
It snowed a lot overnight, burying your character's tent.
Even finding dry materials to burn for a warmth-producing fire can be a major challenge.
If it gets cold enough, even materials can behave differently, perhaps even cracking in the deep freeze.
Think of winter weather as another antagonist character in your stories - one without consciousness (or is it?), but one that presents opportunities for plot and character development. |
Some fantasy for you - warm or cold:
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Last time, in "New Year's" , I wrote about a Fantasy approach to the New Year - whenever that might fall.
Quick-Quill  : What a great idea! Not just for fantasy. What about Groundhog day? or freaky friday? Changing the setting/world in a story can hold the reader's interest to see what the changes from the known world will reveal.
Certainly true, but I'd argue that both of those stories / movies have elements of the Fantasy genre, even if they're set in more modern times. The time-loop trope of Groundhog Day is now a staple of science fiction shows, as well - if one of them goes on long enough, eventually you get to a Groundhog Day episode. As for Freaky Friday, body-swapping (or, from another perspective, mind-swapping) isn't just a chance for actors to stretch their acting muscles, but it's fairly common in fantasy stories.
Zen  : In science, every astronomical body has a year beginning on the vernal (spring) equinox, except stars (including the Sun) and the Earth. Stars can't have a year, unless they are orbiting another star, and the Earth's year begins on whatever date your calendar decides (meaning for historical reasons).
For bodies that have no axial tilt (however unlikely that may be), I'm not sure of the protocol.
Note that the vernal equinox is not actually a day, but a moment. It is defined as the moment that the axis of the body is at 90 degrees to the orbital radius and the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere (to differentiate it from the autumn equinox). The Martian year, for example, is 668.5991 sols, so the equinox occurs about halfway through the day-night cycle. This moment also determines the location of the prime meridian, which on Mars passes through a small crater called Airy, hence time on Mars is named Airy Mean Time (AMT - the Martian equivalent of Greenwich Mean Time).
Mostly true, but the vernal equinox thing is an arbitrary standard. Astronomers could just as easily have picked the moment of one of the planet's solstices. Additionally, if I'm writing a science fiction story set on another planet, the new year might begin on the local anniversary of a colonist landing, for example.
Burning Thoughts  : I enjoyed reading the New Year's Day consideration of other worlds.
Thanks! Hope you enjoyed this one as well.
And that's it for me for January - see you next month! Until then,
DREAM ON!!! |
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Fantasy: January 15, 2020 Issue [#9965]
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