Seasonal Affect, Not Disorders

By Bonnie Randall 

Part of the How They Do It Series

It’s the holiday season and I’m kicking around an idea for a Christmas-themed short story to hang up on my blog (I like posting free fiction there, it gives me the illusion that I’m building my readership ;) ) but I’m reluctant because I prefer for my fiction to have wide appeal—so while I’m a fan of seasonal stories myself, I confess I’m reluctant to read a Christmas story outside of December. Or a Valentine’s romance if it isn’t February.

Yet occasionally I come across a gem of a book set within a certain season and I’m happy to read it anytime (candy canes in June? How mint!) so now, as I toy with crafting my own prose, I am pondering: what gives certain seasonal pieces of fiction cross-calendar pollination while others limit their readability to the holiday at hand? I have some guesses (but that’s all they are; guesses) but I’d like a little more feedback, so this article will be less of a “how-to” and more of a “how do you?” in generating some discussion on how we can make seasonally-themed stories work outside their holiday of reference.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1. If the Season Amplifies the Magic or Magical Realism Which Already Exists in the Story

 Like…maybe you have Cupid in your story, and maybe he works every day of the year—but has to fill a bigger quota on Valentine’s. In a monastery. (Bonne Chance with that, Cupid). Or maybe your infertile heroine sees two lines on the stick…at Christmas time (How did that happen?!) I think when the genre already has us suspending our disbelief and accepting magic, that a seasonal twist becomes more about the magic than the holiday—and therefore it has a broader appeal.

But let’s say magic isn’t your thing (I love magical realism myself—but every time I try to write it I end up with something that looks more like horror. Ms. Romance, that’s me) How about:

2. If the Season Amplifies the Intensity of Emotion in the Story

Being deployed for war would be wrenching anytime, but I’d guess it would be somehow more poignant at Christmas (and here he had that engagement ring in his pocket. *sigh*). Or more bitterly ironic on the 4th of July.

3. If it Accelerates the Irony

Thanksgiving, a time for intensely reflecting on gratitude, would likely be the worst time to receive a cancer diagnosis—but an excellent footing for a chick-lit novel to really twist the knife of irony. And how about that Independence Day holiday? What a day for the jury to file back in with a guilty verdict (and therefore obvious incarceration) for your heroine’s previously free client? Christmas would be a cruel time to have a stillbirth, and it would suck to be left at the altar—but be particularly devastating if it happened on your Valentine’s Day wedding.

I think anytime a setting—place or time—runs counter-intuitive to the theme or events the characters are bumping up against, it can really transcend the season it’s set in with regard to pulling a reader in.

4. If it Underscores the Character Arc

Scrooge, ladies and gentlemen. Need we say more?

5. If it Adds to the Hilarity

The Grim Reaper scares the crap out of her—(those red eyeballs! Something tells her he might be the real deal. GULP!)—but he has the cutest butt at the Halloween party.

Or…your character’s jewelry store just got robbed—by a tiny tribe of men who all have mysteriously pointy shoes and elf hats. And, bizarrely, they each had their own pre-wrapped Christmas boxes for all the stuff they took and they ate his bagged lunch while they tied him to a chair then complained that he hadn’t packed cookies. Who were they?!

Remember Arthur Carlson's famous line from that old show WKRP on Thanksgiving? “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly?” That’s funny anytime. All the time. So I think putting the season to work comedically can be gold.

And….that’s where I run out of ideas. But how about YOU? What gold do you think there is to be mined by using a holiday as a setting for stories? Please share and, to each of you, may the peace, joy, and especially the MAGIC of the Season visit you all, in great abundance.

Bonnie Randall is a Canadian writer who lives between her two favorite places—the Jasper Rocky Mountains and the City of Champions: Edmonton, Alberta. A clinical counselor who scribbles fiction in notebooks whenever her day job allows, Bonnie is fascinated by the relationships people develop—or covet—with both the known and unknown, the romantic and the arcane.

Her novel Divinity & The Python, a paranormal romantic thriller, was inspired by a cold day in Edmonton when the exhaust rising in the downtown core appeared to be the buildings, releasing their souls.

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About Divinity & The Python

Divinity - Where deception and desire both hide in the dark...

The Cards Forecast Work

Shaynie Gavin is so much more than the sexy siren who mixes cocktails at The Python. A carpenter with a business plan, Shaynie is trying to amass enough funds to launch her own dream - Divinity, a place where up-cycled furniture from the past is sold alongside Tarot readings forecasting the future - and all in a setting that could not be more perfect: a former funeral parlor. Shaynie's belief that Divinity is attuned with the passions, the loves, and even the lies of its departed souls, allow her to feel satisfied when the cards she draws there reveal Wands, the Tarot's symbol for work. And yet...Shaynie would be so grateful if the Tarot would also, just once, illuminate a Hellnight from her past. A lost evening whose scars still slither over her skin, Hellnight haunts Shaynie. Yet when she calls the question of that chilling evening into her deck...

The Cards Forecast Love

...and love appears in the form of pro hockey star Cameron Weste. Weste is haunted by scars and superstitions of his own, and he wants Shaynie's Tarot to answer far deeper questions than she first guesses this sexy Lothario to be capable of. Who knew Weste was this intense? The Tarot, apparently. And yet...

The Cards Forecast The Devil

When Cameron Weste lands in her life, a stalker surfaces too, dropping clues to a connection between Shaynie, Cameron, and her lost, brutal Hellnight. Suddenly every card warns of deception, and nowhere feels safe. Shaynie and Cameron have to fight for their love - and their lives - as The Devil, their stalker, is determined to turn the Death Card for them both.