Snow Shenanigans: Fun and Versatile Uses of Snow in Your Fiction

 In this episode, we explore the many playful and practical ways snow can enhance your fictional narratives and everyday life.

Join us as we delve into five versatile uses of snow:

1. Snow Sports - Discover the thrilling world of snow sports, from skiing to snowboarding.
2. Fun Time (All the Things Kids Love) - Learn about the myriad of snow activities that bring joy to children, from building snowmen to snowball fights.
3. Setting for Your Sto - Explore how snow can create a magical and dramatic backdrop for your stories.
4. Melted for Practical Uses** - Understand the practical applications of melted snow, from hydration to household tasks.
5. As a Cooler or Freezer - Find out how snow can serve as a natural cooler or freezer for preserving food and beverages.

We'll also explore our segment "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" where we discuss various pitfalls and complications these uses can create in your story. Perfect for fiction writers aiming to add realism and tension to their narratives!

Keywords: fiction writing, snow uses, character development, writing tips, story ideas, fiction podcast, writing podcast, snow activities, writing realism

Transcript

How can you create believable character interactions using snow? How can snow help keep food from spoiling? What can your characters do with dirty melted water? Do you need comedic relief in your story? How can snowmen, dishes, and skiing with a rifle be used in your story? Learn about all of this and more in today’s episode. 

Welcome to Writing Rural with Alley, the fiction writer’s weekly inspiration station for rural life and lifestyles, from historical to post-apocalyptic, helping you bring your rural stories to life! I’m Alley, and this is episode #94, Top 5 Fun & Versatile Uses of Snow. Stick around to the end to find out all the ways things could possibly go wrong. Now, let’s get into this.

1) Snow sports 

Sports involving snow have been around since caveman times. Skiing started as a practical way to move from one place to another and is a modern day sport. In fact, since the 1920s, skiing has been included in the Olympics. Snowboarding started in the 1960s. 

Other sports include, but are not limited to, ice hockey, ice skating, bobsleighing, and more. There is even one called biathlon that combines skiing and rifle shooting. That sounds like something I want to try! 

So, what can these be used in your story for? First and most obvious is a way for your characters to meet each other. This gives them reasons to interact with other characters, build friendships, love interests, or even create enemies. Especially if there is a baseball bat and ice skates involved. 

This creates challenges and obstacles for your characters to overcome. It can also make teamwork necessary. If an injury happens, your character can have a nice hero moment. 

Now, if you are writing suspense (and I love me some suspense!), this is a perfect way for your character to escape the bad guys. Assuming your bad guys can’t also ski. Then this might be a race down the mountain, and I hope the bad guys don’t practice biathlon, or at least are a very bad aim! 

2) Fun time

Snow has a wealth of ways for your characters to interact, have character-building moments, show their connections, and just have fun. These include, but are not limited to, 

* Making sculptures

* Snowball fights

* Making a snow fort 

* Making snow angels 

* Building snowmen and other snow creatures 

* Sledding 

* Snow races 

* Snow obstacle course 

While many of these are thought of as kids’ activities, adults do them too. And anyone who says otherwise is likely a fuddy-duddy. At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it! 

Remember, these can not only be great character-building moments but comic relief for your stories too. Kind of like how most people giggle when a pie gets in the face; they do the same with a snowball. 

3) Settings for story 

This one is common but has a plethora of options for the backdrop. This can be as simple as flying over a snowy mountain to as intense as ice rescue. A much-loved option for cozy Christmas romances. This is also a much-enjoyed survival setting. 

Just remember to do your research and keep things realistic. There is little chance that someone going skiing will bring fully trained sled dogs; that will take them off the mounting when the apocalypse happens. Just as hypothermia is a real danger in a survival situation or even a normal situation. If you would like to learn more about hypothermia, I have an entire episode about this. 

4) Melted for practical uses

Having lived off-grid, I can tell you that one common thing in the winter is melting snow. While most people think of water for drinking and maybe making food, there are many other uses most people don’t consider. 

Some of these include washing your hands. If your character doesn’t have water coming out of the tap, they will want a bowl of water to wash their hands in. Yes, they rinse in the same bowl of water before drying their hands. Now, you would think they would throw this right out, but that depends. If they have a toilet, they will use the dirty water to flush the toilet. I’ve known people who gave this to the animals to drink, but I know that can cause diarrhea, and that’s not good as it can easily lead to death in animals. 

Another thing the water can be used for is bathing. whether they use it to keep their armpits and privates clean, wash their hair, or do something larger like a bath, is up to you, and how much snow they have. It can take a long time to melt snow in that great of an amount. However, something we did was to take a 55-gallon metal drum and, keep it close to the wood stove and melt snow in it. After a few days, you would have warm water in the barrel. I admit, hot water on demand is one thing I do miss when there is no electric. 

Think about other things that you, or your character, do with water, and remember, the water has to come from somewhere if there is no running water. 

5) Cooler/Freezer

The last method today is to use the great outdoors and the snow as a cooler or freezer for food. This can be done in many ways. In places much colder than where I live, they made ice into the shape of a chest, and will place food inside to keep them cold in the winter. They place them on ice to try to keep predators and other wild animals out of them. Some places use ice houses, built on high stilts, to keep the animals out. 

Personally, if it is winter and the power goes out, I will put the milk outside and let it stay cold out there. If there are predators, I might get out an ice chest, or other way to block them. We don’t have too many bears here, so the car works just fine for me. 

Snow and ice were brought into ice houses and early refrigerators until the invention of modern refrigeration technology. Online, it says the first came out in the late 1920s, but I personally know people who used ice refrigerators until the 1970s. At least here in my part of Tornado Alley. So, keep in mind that while inventions come out, they can take time to get everywhere, especially with poorer families. 

Fun fact: Nordic skiing has been part of the Winter Olympics since the first Winter Olympics in 1924, held in France. 

One quick reminder before we get to the best part:

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And now, for everyone’s favorite part, what could possibly go wrong? 

Likely to go wrong: Your character spends too long in the snow playing and gets hypothermia. 

Likely to go wrong: Your character is playing hockey and falls down. Their teammate accidentally runs over their fingers with their skate, cutting off a finger. 

Possible to go wrong: Your character is outside too long and gets frostbite. 

Possible to go wrong: Your character is playing ice hockey and skates onto thin ice The ice breaks, and your character falls in. This could be deadly. 

Unlikely to go wrong: Your character brings in yellow snow to melt. When they later drink it, they get sick. Seriously, don’t let your characters consume snow that isn’t white. It never ends well. 

Unlikely to go wrong: Your character uses their car as a makeshift refrigerator in the winter when the power goes out. A pack of wolves smell meat in the car and tear the car up, trying to get to the meat. 

Improbable but still technically in the realm of possibilities: Your character is skiing in a new area and goes the wrong way. They ski right off a cliff. This could be deadly. 

Improbable but still technically in the realm of possibilities: Your character is ice skating away from bad guys that are chasing them. They take a risk and skate across thin ice. The ice holds them, but the bad guys fall through. Bad guys, defeated! 

Thanks for listening! Until next time, happy wordsmithing.