Weather can play an effective and interesting role in your fiction

One of my closest friends teaches a conversation course for English language learners in a suburb of Des Moines.

The students who come from countries that see less variety in their climates find it fascinating that Midwesterners spend so much time talking about the weather.

But it's a huge influence on how we act and feel (especially given the extremes we can see here) — as writer and book coach C.S. Lakin knows.

In a guest post for Jane Friedman's blog, she shows how writers can use weather to convey mood in fiction effectively, contrary to the occasional advice to avoid it.

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• Write descriptions that bring a book to life, not put a reader to sleep 

• Avoid these five setting mistakes in your novel