: Re: How to describe a setting but without making it too cliche? There is this one author technique that I find a bit cliche, which is matching the mood to the setting. This means that for example,

@Angie602

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Just don't.
The weather (or other elements of the setting) can have an effect on the characters, but the character's mood has no effect on the weather.
A gray, overcast day might pull your character's mood down but the depression your character feels can't make clouds appear.
Look at real life, for Pete's sake. Funerals happen on bright, sunny days and people get married when it is pouring rain outside.
Coincidences happen - sometimes funerals do take place on cold, rainy, nasty days. My wife and I got married (over twenty years ago) on a beautiful late summer day.
Making the weather always match the character's mood is just a bad idea, though. That stretches coincidence beyond belief and into cliché territory.
A funeral in October (in the northern hemisphere) can realistically be expected to take place on a nasty day. A funeral in mid-summer can reallistically be expected to take place on a sunny day - with maybe an afternoon thunderstorm.
The weather can contribute to the setting and the characters' mood. Bad weather can make a bad time seem worse.
Conversely, a bad mood can cause a character to perceive the weather as worse than it really is. If you are already feeling down, then a rainy afternoon that postpones a planned event can be a total bummer - it'll be perceived as a totally crappy day, when it really isn't.
Avoid the cliché, or subvert it.
Have a depressed character wonder how life can be so shitty on such a beautiful day - a funeral on a summer's day when other people are going to the beach.
Have a happy character note the contrast of their good mood with the grumpy people stomping through the rainy streets.

If you must make the setting fit the character's mood, try to make it believable. Make it look like the character's mood just coincidentally matches the setting rather than having the setting follow the character's mood.

Of course, a fantasy setting can turn that on its head. A fantasy story may well have a character whose mood really does influence the weather - but that needs to be a part of the story and the fantasy world.

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