Writing Process

How to Use Weather and Seasons to Deepen Emotion in Your Fiction

/ RG Newhouse / Leave a comment

You know what doesn’t get enough credit in fiction? The weather. And I don’t mean that one liner your English teacher loved about “pathetic fallacy.” I mean real, visceral, mood soaked weather. Storms that mirror inner turmoil. First snows that crack open something tender. Oppressive heat waves that bring characters to their boiling point. Fictional worlds live and breathe on more than dialogue. They move with the seasons, and a well placed gust of wind can hit harder than a punch.

Storybook-style illustration of a girl with long blonde hair sitting by a rain-streaked window, reading a book. She wears a cozy pink sweater and fuzzy slippers, with scattered pages and a glowing candle nearby. A thunderstorm rages outside.
When the scene aches louder than the dialogue, let the storm do the talking. Writing meets weather in all the best ways.

Let’s be honest, some of the most memorable scenes in books are wrapped in a specific feel. Think rain hammering the roof during a heartbreak. Sun drenched fields on the first day of freedom. The hush of snowfall that makes everything seem just a little more magical or dangerous. Weather, when used well, is more than atmosphere, it’s tone with teeth.

And let’s not forget the seasons. They aren’t just calendar filler, they’re emotional arcs:

  • Spring breathes new life, hope and possibility.
  • Summer simmers with tension or basks in youthful freedom.
  • Autumn is ripe with nostalgia and foreboding, the scent of endings in every leaf.
  • Winter? Oh, she’s dramatic, harsh truths, death, stillness, or that final, aching peace before the thaw.
Storybook-style illustration of a joyful young girl running barefoot through a sunlit meadow filled with wildflowers. Warm golden light surrounds her, with glowing petals and firefly-like sparkles in the air. The scene radiates freedom and happiness.
Let the sun do the storytelling! Freedom, joy, and the kind of scene that practically hums with warmth.

When you sync your characters’ journeys with the natural rhythms around them, your world gains gravity. Is your protagonist grappling with loss? Set it in the brittle quiet of late autumn. Are they being reborn? Let spring crackle at their heels. Trying to show isolation? Trap them in a snowstorm or a dusty drought. Bonus: it keeps your pacing honest. You can’t skip over an emotional beat when a thunderstorm is sitting right there, daring you to dig deeper.

Weather also grounds your reader. Whether you’re writing fantasy kingdoms or contemporary suburbs, everyone knows what it feels like to be caught in the rain or to melt in July heat. It’s a sensory shortcut to immersion. Add a character wiping sweat from their brow or curling deeper under their blanket, and suddenly the reader’s there, no teleportation spell needed.

Some moments call for silence. Let the snow fall, let the stillness speak, and let your story linger a little longer in the cold.

So don’t treat the sky like set dressing. Make it a character. Let the wind whisper secrets, let the sun burn too bright, let the frost bite back. Trust me, your story will breathe a little deeper for it.

What’s your favorite way to use weather or seasons in your writing?

What’s your favorite way to use weather or seasons in your writing? Drop your best atmospheric trick in the comments—bonus points if it involves heartbreak in the rain or a sun drenched kiss!

Working with Myth Without Taking What’s Not Yours

/ RG Newhouse / Leave a comment

I love mythology like some people love true crime podcasts… obsessively, deeply, with a whiteboard, a lot of chocolate, and a steaming cup of green tea with peppermint. It’s a mess of names, symbolism, tragedy, transformation and just enough blood to keep it interesting. It’s the scaffolding under nearly every story I love and many I’ve written. But when you’re writing fiction that draws from real-world mythologies, things get complicated.

A softly lit writing desk near a window at dusk. An open notebook, a steaming teacup, flickering candles, and scattered greenery sit beneath a backdrop of bokeh lights and bare autumn branches.
Generated with Midjourney magic and exactly one too many cups of peppermint tea.


There’s something irresistible about mythology. It’s archetypal and raw and weird in all the right ways. It carries a current that hums under your skin. One obscure god or whispered folk ritual can ignite an entire novel concept. But it’s not a grab bag of “cool stuff” to mine without care. Especially when that mythology belongs to a culture you weren’t raised in.

Stories are sacred. And mythology? Mythology is a kind of living memory.

The trouble happens when we treat it like window dressing. When we turn someone’s spiritual practice into a costume, or flatten ancestral wisdom into a plot device. I’ve read stories that tried to be reverent but instead came off like the author skimmed the folklore section of Wikipedia, sprinkled a few foreign sounding names around, and called it homage.

I’m not interested in writing that kind of story.

When I pull from myth, especially from a culture not my own, I try to ask more than just “what can I use?” I ask, “what does this mean to the people who live it?” “How might it feel from the inside?” “Am I honoring this… or just wearing it?”

In the short story I worked on today, I drew inspiration from Norse death traditions. I didn’t want to copy and paste a funeral rite. That felt empty. Instead, I built around the feeling of being marked. I imagined two yew trees intertwined as a passage, and asked: what if this place remembered every grief that passed through it? What if the myth wasn’t a record, but a presence?

That’s the work.

Two massive yew trees with thick, entwined branches form a natural archway in a misty forest. Golden leaves, moss-covered roots, and faint lantern light create an ethereal, sacred atmosphere.
Midjourney conjured this. I just followed the path through the trees.


It’s not about erasing yourself or writing only within your lane, it’s about being a respectful guest in someone else’s house. It’s learning the stories before you retell them. It’s caring about more than the aesthetic.

Mythology is not a buffet.

It’s a language. A warning. A bridge.

And if you want to write with it, you better listen first.

If you love a culture’s stories, the best thing you can do is read the voices from within it. Learn from them. Buy their books. Amplify their work.

So I listen, with my notebook open, a candle lit, and cats occasionally trampling across my outlines. That’s where the myth begins for me.

Behind the Fog: Writing, Wind Riders, and Eye Strain

/ RG Newhouse / Leave a comment

Hey everyone! Welcome to my cozy little corner of the internet where I’ll be sharing my writing adventures, musings, and maybe enjoying a few virtual chai lattes along the way.

A cozy, softly lit writing desk covered in open fantasy maps, aged notebooks, and a pink teacup steaming gently. A dark pawprint marks one of the map pages, hinting at feline interference in the midst of worldbuilding.

Lately, I’ve been happily hiding away from the chaos of the world by immersing myself in the Wind Riders universe. There’s something magical about escaping into a world of sky islands, Wind Riders, and airborne adventures that makes reality feel a little less daunting. One of the best parts of world building is when you stumble on those hidden gems beneath the clouds that make you blink and think, “Why didn’t I think of that before?” It’s all part of the fun and games of creating new worlds.

In the process of dreaming up new things for the Wind Riders, I’ve somehow managed to give myself a bit of eyestrain. A thousand words later, I find myself with a headache and the will to go on, but my body is definitely not on the same page.

I’ve got a bunch of short stories in mind for the Wind Riders series, and I’m also outlining two novels: one exploring the origins of the Wind Riders and another set in their future, full of new adventures and discoveries. So, there’s plenty of excitement on the horizon!

I’ll dive back into it once the aches and pains subside and I can wrap my brain around all these ideas again. Until then, I’ll be resting up and dreaming of sky islands and adventures to come!