Sunlight As A Story Element
July 2017 Editorial
www.ink2quill.com

Sunlight bathes so many of us during the course of the day. We miss it when the sky is grey, as is often the case in northern Europe, and smile because of it in sunny places, like the tropics and around the equator, as where I am now. It is such an important part of our lives.

People say sunlight affects your mood and can cause sun cancer if you are not careful. All of these are true but let us consider sunlight from the point of view of the storyteller. How can sunlight influence a character or reveal an important clue to the story? Well, It can be used in foreshadowing. The presence of sunlight can also impair a character in many ways. It can symbolize salvation or a conflict resolution like the case of a character stepping off a ship into a sunny vacation landscape after a dangerous adventure. Imagine the case when sunlight shines off the sunglasses or visor of a character to get our attention.

The point of this short piece is to use that which is around us in our storytelling. Think of movies like “Blade Runner” and “Dark City” that use sunlight in such clever ways to tell fantastic stories. Some classic books that use sunlight, or the lack thereof, effectively include Albert Camus book “L Etranger” (“The Stranger”), Richard Matheson book “I Am Legend”

There are many more classics and good stories that use sunlight effectively in their tales. So do not be afraid to use the elements of nature in your tale. Sunlight is one of the most obvious for a good reason.

FIN

written by John

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