Hello, lovelies!
Autumn is another beloved time of the year, full of beautiful, fiery and earthy colours, when nature slows down and prepares for its long sleep.
Its aesthetic can be very appealing for any story, really, but if you want to really make a theme fit the season, there are a couple of types of stories you can try.
This will be the last of the season writing posts, so let's go!
Melancholy:
As beautiful as this season is, it's also bittersweet. The leaves start to fall, the former, fresh colours start to fade, and the animals try to collect the last few food sources, so they don't starve in the winter. The world around us becomes quieter and more subdued, like an elderly person in their last years.
So, stories with a melancholic or bittersweet theme are a great fit for the setting of autumn. Characters discovering a terrible secret about someone they love, leaving their beloved hometown for a better future, or a happy time in their life coming to an end, these are all possible scenarios that would work well with an autumnal environment. This is especially true when the nature around them is literally losing its old colours and giving way to a more 'final' aesthetic.
The characters could easily identify with the environment around them, giving you an external aspect in your worldbuilding to work with. However, just the association of autumn with the end of warmth and colour can resonate with both your audience and your characters, without placing too much focus on it.
Death and Loss:
Going a little further than melancholy, stories centring around loss, death, or the more symbolic end of something in the character's life, fits just as well with a season that is the literal end of summer and the beginning of winter.
The more literal topics of stories centred around death and loss would be someone passing away, a funeral, the loss of money, family etc. All of these are parts of life most of a reading audience will be able to relate to, and it gives you an opportunity to discuss the more painful topics of life, as well the grieving process.
A more symbolic or fugiritive loss would be an 'end of an era' story, such as the loss of innocence or illusion. While not directly about death or loss, these are also phases of life an audience can relate to. However, you must remember that these follow a grieving process as well, albeit without a physical thing to remember. Instead, the characters grieve a time where life was 'better' or 'happier' for them, and it's impossible for them to return to that place.
Nostalgia will be a big part of your story in either cases, but how deep your characters delve into that will depend on their personality. Grieving works differently for everyone, so make sure that if multiple people are going through this, that you show multiple ways of coping.
Calmness and Retreat:
Spring and summer are typically full of energy, with people making plans for fun activities, parties, and nature in full flow of life. However, once autumn hits, time seems to slow, the air becomes quieter, and the cold drives people back inside. It is the perfect time to write stories about retreat, taking time for oneself, or looking up the calm after the storm, without the claustrophobia the winter's freezing temperatures can sometimes bring.
In a literal sense, a character can choose to stay inside, away from the buzz of the world, while looking outside towards a world that's quietly preparing for a long, cold slumber. In another literal sense, a character can retreat into nature itself, either through taking walks in a park, or spending time in the forest. The point here is that they need to get away from chaos and energy, in order to calm themselves or clear their thoughts.
These stories can work for someone whose life is simply to busy to cope anymore, but also for someone who running or hiding away from something else. The calmness of autumn can act as a buffer for the outside world, and be used in your writing as a time to breath and recuperate.
Resolution:
Autumn is when things slow down after the energy of spring and summer. So, writing stories about resolutions or reflections are a good fit for this season. Just like a character can retreat during this season, so can the calmness allow things to finally become clear, without the distraction of the earlier seasons.
What kind of resolution or conclusion the characters come to in your story will influence the type of feel autumn will have to give off as your setting. If the resolution is one of danger or anger, autumn will probably appear as a wasteland. Whereas if the resolution is positive, or at least bittersweet, the beauty of the colours and nature will probably be more prominent.
It's also possible to use the calmness of autumn to bring your audience into a false sense of security, before suddenly springing a conflict, followed by the resolution, onto them, and shatter the previous peace. In keeping with the season, spring and summer may have had more going on than the characters thought, and now that autumn is here, those things are now showing their consequences and have to be dealt with.
This then leads to a time of reflection, before finally, the characters reach a conclusion.
This was the last of the season writing posts! I hope you liked it and that it at least help some of you pick the setting for your stories.
Goodbye, lovelies!
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