What season does your novel take place during? I guess that can change depending on how long your story is, but what season did you start with and why? How did/does it affect your story? When I started my novel, I didn't have a season in mind. I went back and added some winter, and it seems to be an improvement. Some slippery ice, a crash or two into a snowbank, the closeness we seek when it's just that cold. Adding a season, made my story feel more real. And seasonal settings aren't that hard to write or include. Do you have a season in your setting? This is more for fun than anything else.
I almost always go with spring or summer, simply because I can't stand the winter. But usually the story supports it (unless it's irrelevant). One of my earlier novels is primarily about characters playing music outside, practicing and working toward playing the annual spring Equinox Festival. There are parts that take place in the colder months, especially toward the end, but the vast majority has them on park benches in the summertime building their following. Another novel takes place over the summer, building up to the start of the school year for the main character's daughter. The story as a whole is about the main character recapturing her childhood after separating from her husband, and the summer vacation vibe really works well with that (and the upcoming school year helps to build tension around child custody conflicts). The two novels (one I'm actually writing, the other is still percolating in the subconscious) I'm currently "working on" are less dependent on the season. One is an urban fantasy on a tropical island, so it'll be warm and summery even if it's not summertime. The other I really haven't decided on yet.
Winter. A dark, north of the Arctic Circle, Post-Apocalyptic, unrelenting winter. Set in an abandoned diamond mine turned refugee camp turned shanty town that's been built up around a geothermal power plant. I went for winter and cold to give a definite line between the relatively warm, relatively safe city and the freeze to death within minutes high stakes danger outside where both people and machines have a distinct disadvantage.
I don't feel so bad about not choosing a season for my novel when I began to draft now. It's a Colonial town so people are more effected by a season... with a little bit of help from me, it decided to be set in autumn. People work their farm plots during the day when it's warm, then it gets chilly at night. I pictured the forest scenes in a fall environment, but never acknowledged it as much as I should have. I'll have to add more details for it in later revisions because of that. I think depending on how one words the descriptions to indicate a certain season, it can add to the mood of a scene or overall story. (Hyperbole incoming...) Winter can be a white, fluffy wonderland that fills the hearts of children with utter joy as they romp through plumes of snow, or it can be a frost laden tundra that fills people with despair as they fear for imminent hypothermia, or at the very least it inconveniences them horribly. Because who doesn't love mining through ice like a stereotypical dwarf to free their car in the morning?
I use seasons as a subtle "mood modifier". In my storyline, it goes something like this: Autumn. Big tragedy happens. Huge time jump. Now it's the last days of summer, several decades later. Story progresses for several chapters. Now it's autumn again, and the MC is reminded of the big tragedy (Not directly mentioned, it's THAT subtle). Another time jump, this one's smaller. It's the start of spring, and the MC is living a different life (Spring symbolism, wink wink). From this point onward, it's just spring and summer until the end.
The seasons play a big role in my WIP but I didn't "choose" them. My FMC is a high school student in New York City, and then a college student, so the seasons correlate with whatever is happening in her school calendar and her school vacations. I like making the seasons part of it, though, and the unique opportunities each season brings to mess with the characters.
Mine's set in a generic Southern California where the people are rich and spoiled and the weather never really changes. I might let it rain at some point, although a wildfire... Thanks for the thought!
What season is space? Well Mars is a bit chillier than Earth, but is pretty much like a mild autumn I guess? As for Earth it is still roughly the same with the seasons. I haven't thrown winter in there yet, but I might towards the end. We'll see.
I'm in the same boat as @Shenanigator - the MC in my current WIP is a student, so I chose the season based on the school year. It's autumn of his final year of university - just starting to think about the future, the big "what next"...
Only if you've done some terraforming, even a hot summer day in the northern hemisphere is just over freezing, IIRC.
Yep they did that, and bit of 'global warming' too, so they could function without having to wear 100lbs of gear to stay warm.
My current story starts in the winter, mostly because one of the characters needs to have a hat or hood to conceal and extraneous limb.
"Fate" takes place over several seasons because it encompasses several years of time. I'll have certain events take place in certain seasons, though, because I need to have those seasons help portray a mood. I can't very well have a cold, wet day in the middle of summer in New Orleans. My short story for Camp NaNoWriMo primarily has scenes taking place in late spring/early summer because Apollo's the god of the sun and I want to use warm, bright tones in my writing to help with romance I'm trying to portray. I can use the summer storms to show Zephyrus' jealousy and make things dark when I need them to be. Overall, I just really enjoy using the world to help create mood because, in real life, it does create mood.
I can't say the seasons have played much of a part in what I've written so far. Two of my novels take place primarily in the Los Angeles area, so the moderate weather there year-round probably plays into that. I did make a conscious decision to set my short story Kneadful Things in the winter though, because it takes place in a crappy dead-end town in Pennsylvania and I wanted the outside world to be as bleak and cold as possible to contrast the magic inside Jin's bakery.
Rapax takes place in the winter ... an extended and harsh winter due to reverse climate change, as one character says "50 years with next to no industry had really fucked the climate" Honest intent - takes place around fireworks night (5th of Nov) since its premise derives from the saying that "Guy Fawkes was the last man to enter parliament with honest intentions" Darkest storm takes place in the summer months ... its not specific but the narrator says "the Georgia heat hit me in the face like a hammer" My current WIP Pulse (or whatever I wind up calling it) takes place in the autumn but its not particularly important to the plot
Autumn through to Winter. The weather is more dramatic and it's a time when this world and the other feel a little less clearly divided.
When my characters bury someone it is in the late fall. If they're getting married it is in the spring. Struggles IE sweat and tears are in the summer. Death and murder are in the winter. That should cover it.........
The story begins November 13, 1792. I had chosen the date at random, only that I needed to begin in the Winter of that year as to align with certain historical events. As it turned out I was very lucky because that date is the very same that my villain, Louis Antoine Saint-Just (real person, who historians would later nickname 'The Angel of Death') took the podium and made a speech before a gallery of cheering politicians, calling for the overthrow of the King, and his immediate execution. It was the beginning of the 'Terror' phase of the French Revolution. Aside from that, I love stories set in the colder months... when the wind blows cold and the snow falls. (The second paragraph of my WIP takes in a bit of the weather) Her attention shifted to the lone window in the room. She wiped a spot clean with her palm and peered out to the plaza below; gaslight cast the world in sepia—couples out for an evening stroll, revelers mingling outside the Jolly Robin Tavern, a horse-drawn carriage rounding onto Waterfront Street. She turned her gaze upward to see a winter moon behind a bruised sky, its dull light dusting the peaks of cypresses and the rooftops of the cruddy buildings that sprawled across the street. Dusk had given way to the blacker end of night. She reckoned it was half past eight, more or less, and she would soon be called on. A chilly draft found its way in through a broken windowpane. She rubbed her hands together to conjure some warmth, took a sip of tea that'd gone cold, shut her book, and placed it on the windowsill against the broken pane.
My story starts in June, and everything is simply grand all summer long. Bad things start happening in the fall, and by the winter my MC is in his darkest days of bad luck and depression. Then things start looking up for him in the spring, and everything comes together for a happy ending in the next June. SORT OF LIKE MY LIFE.
