wrapping it up with a look at my favorite season
I started this theme a year ago, and it’s with joy that I address the final chapter: autumn. It’s been a while since I started this, so you may have missed the rest. Go back and check them out when you’re done with this!
What is ‘this’? Just me maundering, I guess. Addressing a subject both banal and critical – for a writers – which is the weather. Not everyone lives in a place that gets all four seasons, and sometimes critical details slip your mind when you’re stuck drafting a scene about a snowstorm while the AC’s blazing.
After all, weather isn’t just that hackneyed go-to when you’re stuck making small talk with a stranger: it’s one of the most important factors in your experience of your environment. What matters is the same is true of your characters.
fall cleaning
Autumn is the time when everything dies, but it doesn’t necessarily feel like a somber event. Interspersed with days of gloom and lingering low cloud cover, temperatures may continue warm. Birds and small mammals are going mad in a final fever as they prepare for winter. The sky will never look deeper or bluer than it can on a sunny autumn afternoon.
It speaks to me more of rebirth. The tidying-away of yesterday’s messes and tired old things in order to make way for new beginnings. But maybe that’s just me, waxing enthusiastic about the season like usual.
a vivrant thing
Autumn isn’t just a mood, of course. Nature is retiring for the year, and presents you with evidence of its weariness at every turn. The leaves of deciduous trees go out with a fiery bang, turning flame colors before they give up the ghost. The shed leaves get absolutely anywhere, sticking to your shoes after a rain, blowing in each time a door is opened.
Dead leaves smell like dust when they’re dry, like loam when they’re damp, an odor rich and dark without the cloying sweetness one associates with rot. They hiss angrily when you kick them.
Dying plants will talk as well, crackling as the wind stirs them. Squirrels are in a frenzy, chattering madly as they chase beneath your feet. It’s the season of the rut; if there are deer in your story’s region, be aware they go insane. An elk high on testosterone will attack anything, including inanimate objects and animals of other species. Their hoarse bugling carries miles, and the honking of migrating geese hangs on the wind even when you can’t see the birds themselves.
a season with two faces
The days are growing shorter. The nights cooler. You get up in the morning to find grass and glass caked in a sheen of frost, not dew’s moist dapples. That last gasp of vibrant color spent itself and everything but the oaks and beech are keen to slough off their dead leaves.
Still, autumn is a season characterized by stirring sensory impressions and activity. Farmers are bringing in their harvests. Migrating species have set forth on their epic journeys while any creatures planning to stick out the winter are taking advantage of their last chance to gorge themselves.
It’s a stirring time of year to be alive, and I wish you success in writing it!
For the other pieces in this series, go to:
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