Mood and tone

Hey, I'm a newbie here, but I'll give it a try:

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Willa came into the room and sat down at the table. "I found Mother's diary,' she said.

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Suddenly the door burst open. Willa stood there, fuming, the flickering gaslights casting harsh shadows across the angular lines of her face. Our cheerful conversation died away like a candle guttering out and we scarcely dared breathe as she stalked over to our table, drew out a chair, and lowered herself into it, almost trembling with rage. When she glared up at us and spoke, her voice was so soft and choked as to be all but inaudible. "I found Mother's diary," she hissed.

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Sunlight flooded the breakfast room, making a bright spot in the corner where the cat lay dozing. Father was sipping his coffee and reading his paper and Mother was in the kitchen, fixing lunches and humming cheerfully to herself. Willa, still in her pajamas, skipped into the room and cuddled up next to me, grinning.

"What?" I asked. She beckoned me to lean down, so I bent my head close to her tiny face.

"I," she started, then giggled, unable to control herself. Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, "I found Mother's diary."

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He looked around, his heart pounding. The drawers were all pulled out, their contents scattered across the floor. The bed was pulled apart, the closet door ajar--in short, the place was ransacked. "Oh god," he murmured, falling down on his hands and knees. Was it still here? The carpet was threadbare and gritty under his hands as he pawed desperately through the wreckage of his mother's past, pushing away the meager hoardings and pointless discards that had cluttered her shelves and storage.

A grinding, creaking noise made him spin on all fours like a startled coyote. Willa was there, pushing the door open with one finger, distastefully, and giving him a cool, disapproving stare. He ran a dry tongue across his dry lips and scuttled to his feet as she stepped carefully into the room, avoiding the trash and avoiding him, but always watching, staring, measuring him and finding him wanting. She picked up an overturned folding chair next to the bedside table and enthroned herself on it.

"I found Mother's diary," she said at last, her voice as cold and emotionless as the sterile off-white paint on the walls surrounding them.

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Once with no mood/tone, then three different moods/tones. Willa comes in the room, sits down, and says "I found Mother's diary," but the feel is different each time because of the difference in context and the associated details: color, texture, lighting, emotion, family situations, etc. This is just off the top of my head, but we could also add smells, temperatures, social cues -- anything that prompts the reader to associate a certain scene with a certain emotional context.

One of the things I've noticed is that a lot of writers focus on writing dialogue, and they ignore the narrative except to punctuate the dialogue. Narrative, however, provides a vital role to the story, building the mood and tone to the story. As an example ...

Your book is a romance novel. The guy and girl take a romantic walk through the woods. With the narrative, you would describe the woods to match the romantic mood you want to convey.

Your book is a thriller. Your heroine is alone in the woods, and the bad guys aren't far behind. With the narrative, you would use mood and tone to make the woods a very frightening place.

I use it to evoke the feelings I want the reader to experience in that scene.

As to mood...

I want to quote from a text on acting. I think it's highly relevant, because to write convincing characters, you do need the same skills as an actor. Anyway, the quote below is very enlightening. In theatre, every line is said to boil down to an "action". Directors will often prod their actors, "Remember your action!" And in this sense "action" is the underlying mood of the character...

Let us take the question “Do you know where the mail is?”



What is the action? Well, like music underneath, the meaning or impact of the sentence changes depending on our action. Try it like this:



“To beg” Do you know where the mail is?

“To scold” Do you know where the mail is?

“To console” Do you know where the mail is?

“To inquire” Do you know where the mail is?



And you can definitely see where it can become like putting scary music under the line, or putting clown music under it. And you can also see where, in the overall context of a script we can most definitely decide where and when certain action “choices” are WRONG. If the original underlying intent of the author (and of the play itself) was for your character just to come in and ask the very simple question “Do you know where the mail is?”

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Of course, in a novel it's a big no-no to indicate the correcte "action" behind a line by simply writing, "He scolded" or "he inquired". You have to imply the correct mood by the context, and by associated body language of the character, but the point is the same.

Tone is another thing. The first several chapters of my WIP take place in a washed-up town, in the chill of winter, and mostly at night. All of this adds to the tone of the story... that of darkness, cold, and hoplessness. That tone has a big effect on how the reader interprets the actions of the characters. Mine are lively, bright, and energetic characters, so it creates a real contrast, which hopefully makes the reader care more about them.

"The table stood in the centre of the room."
"The table rested in the middle of the room."

The sentences are synonymous, yet each have different tones. For me, "middle" is a much softer word than "centre". When talking about a table, "stood" and "rested" mean exactly the same thing, but they evoke different emotions. If I were writing a horror novel, I would use the first sentence. If I were writing a romance novel, I would use the second.

I'd better look this up, but I always thought the "tone" was the choice of words, and the "mood" was the overall feeling your words and dialogue and situation amounted to. But.... mistook said it's the other way round. Help!

loquax said:

... I always thought the "tone" was the choice of words, and the "mood" was the overall feeling your words and dialogue and situation amounted to. But.... mistook said it's the other way round. Help!

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Novelists too often boil things down to the level of the word or the sentence. Why is this? You can't construct a best seller with that kind of viewpoint. Novels are just another medium of storyteling, like movies, theatre, comic books, whatever. Even in poetry, the first thought is about the over-all impression you want to make, and you work your way down to those individual words.

But for some reason, aspiring novelists want to start with a grab-bag of brilliant individual words and expect to connect them like leggo blocks into something meaningful. Tone is not choice of words. Tone is somtheing that exists before you put your story into words. Mood exists before words. Plot exists before words. You rough all those larger issues out in your mind at least before you commit to a first draft, and then you go back and polish and revise that draft to groove better with your tone, mood, etc.

Again, I'm sorry to always come out sounding contrary, but I see so much niggling over apostrophe's and pointless little details, as if this is the level at which a story is made or broken. It's NOT! Words are your last concern. Your primary objective should be to have a story worth writing at all. Without that, no mastery of vocabulary can save you.

Look at the big picture... forest for the trees... etc.

Mistook said:

Look at the big picture... forest for the trees... etc.

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For a better understanding of the Big Picture, I recommend that every novelist study "The Writer's Journey" by Christopher Vogler.


Powerful stuff.

Mistook said:

I see so much niggling over apostrophe's and pointless little details

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I see...

loquax said:

"The table stood in the centre of the room."
"The table rested in the middle of the room."

The sentences are synonymous, yet each have different tones. For me, "middle" is a much softer word than "centre". When talking about a table, "stood" and "rested" mean exactly the same thing, but they evoke different emotions. !

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Well said -- and to the point mood and tone are NOT conveyed by MORE words, they are conveyed but the RIGHT words, used in the most effective way.

This is often what you are looking at when you see astonishing first sentences. They capture mood and tone and essence of the story in a single sentence -- or maybe two. Or three. Whatever it takes, but you get the point.

annie
Luanne Jones
Heathen Girls (MIRA avaialble now)

Mistook said:

Again, I'm sorry to always come out sounding contrary, but I see so much niggling over apostrophe's and pointless little details, as if this is the level at which a story is made or broken. It's NOT! Words are your last concern. Your primary objective should be to have a story worth writing at all. Without that, no mastery of vocabulary can save you.

Look at the big picture... forest for the trees... etc.

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Maybe it's just me, but honestly as a reader, I couldn't stomach going through the greatest story out there if it was expressed in a bland way. I of the opinion that a great tale requires eloquence to grasp and maintain the readers attention and suck them in before it unfolds. For me, as a reader, mastery of the language is just as important as the quality of the tale in and of itself. Just today in fact I put down a book that seemed like it had a good story going for it simply because I couldn't get into the way it was written.

I hope he will step in and clarify for us, but, what I think James is referring to has to do with the level of involvement the author has to the story itself, and whether this can/is maintained throughout the story.

If the narrator isn't careful, he/she may fluctuate between a detached point of view and a more involved one, making it hard to get a feel for the voice of the writer. I have a problem with this sometimes when I try to force myself to write, and I have to go back and reread earlier chapters to try to capture the same tone.

Mistook said:

Words are your last concern. Your primary objective should be to have a story worth writing at all. Without that, no mastery of vocabulary can save you.

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On the other hand, you can also have the most brilliant story idea imaginable banging at your subconscious, demanding to be written, but your inability to properly WRITE it (using that all-important mastery of vocabulary and grammar) will save you the trouble of being published.

How do you know loquax doesn't already have a story worth writing, and now it's time to flex the mechanics?

Misktook said:

Look at the big picture... forest for the trees... etc.

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Yes, and once you've seen the trees, go deeper. See the grass, bushes, rabbits, squirrels, moss, frogs, decomposing logs, dried leaves.....all part of the whole, and all just as important to the finished product.

Maybe it's worth mentioning too that setting the mood/tone is part of polishing the story, or at least that's how I'm writing right now. My first draft, I'm just blurting everything out to get it all on paper--laying down the first coat of paint, as it were. The rewrite is when I'm going to go back over word choices and atmosphere and overall tone (among other things).

This is one of the probs with writing discusions, often nobody has the same starting point for the terms of reference. Anyway, as I understand it tone is about setting a mood, through word choice, rythms, etc. to create a feeling.

Here is a good excercise to help get a handle on tone. Write a few paragraph's about going for walk along a route you're very familiar with. First write it in a happy tone, then in a more neutral tone, finally in tone that suggest danger or threat.

Here are my examples...

1

Dylan took his time over the long ambling walk from Cwmllechwedd Lane to Lledrod Village. He liked the way the road gently spiralled around and down until the last steep stretch rolled downwards so that he almost fell into the village in a loose-limbed stride.

As he walked, on his left, over the fence was the common, unusually flat, bright and open. On his right beyond neat drystone walls the view spilled down onto rolling hills covered with sideways forests. He liked that he could look down onto the treetops, down onto the world. He loved the silence of it all, the clean green freshness of it all.

The soft white of clouds in the sky, was almost mirrored, by the contented summer fat sheep that wandered and dotted the fields. With blue sky above and green fields below he walked the narrow lane with a swing in his arms and legs as if he walked through the very middle of the world and the sun sang it’s song for him and him alone. He was looking forward to reaching the sleepy village.

2

Dylan took the too long walk from Cwmllechwedd Lane to Lledrod. The road seemed to bend as if doing its best to stop him reaching the final steep stretch, which would almost tip him into the empty village in an undignified rush.

He walked quickly not wishing to linger. On his left, over the wire fence, flat and lifeless the common stretched out dark and empty. On his right, over neglected drystone walls, the hills tumbled down spiked with forestry. It was silent but for the sound of his own footfalls, which sounded too loud, alone on the road.

Under the spell of dim grey sky, solitary sheep eyed him vacantly, their mouths grinding, chewing constantly, monotonously. With a feel of darkness to come on his shoulder and the hard tarmac of the road beneath his feet he pushed on, his head down, almost marching. He was alone and just wanted to reach Lledrod before nightfall.

3

Dylan pushed himself, walking, sometimes stumbling as fast as he could. He was trying to make short the journey from the narrow lane, to the tired village and its redbrick estate. The road to him felt like it wanted to twist him away from his destination, to hold him in the open, to slow him, stop him reaching that final dark stretch that ran down into the street-lit safety of the houses.

Breathing hard, he quickened his pace. On his left over a taut barbed wire fence the dark, brown-green, dead land of the common, stretched on, open, hostile, wide. To his right over derelict kicked down drystone walls, the hillside dropped into dense dark forest. It was too, too silent, except for the slight rush of wind through treetops that went through him like an uneasy whisper.

Over the common dark clouds rolled in, low and heavy, pressing down until there was nothing between the heavy dark of the sky and the earth dark of the common. In the half light he saw a sheep; it looked at him with mucus glazed eyes, in the corner of one of its rotten eyes, he caught a glimpse of something small, soft-fat, alive and burrowing, before he turned away. His head now rigid, straight-fixed on the road. Dylan was cold inside and now his eyes looked only at the floor. He knew, was certain, would stake his life on it, that he wouldn’t make Lledrod before darkness. Worse, he was no longer alone on the road.


All three describe the same walk, but each has a different 'tone'.

Here is an article on the subject...

http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/dec02/keegan23.htm

To me, tone and mood are all about immersing the reader in the scene. There are a number of ways to do this but it's much easier if the writer is first immersed in her own scene. If you can't feel the mood and step inside your characters, your ability to create tone and mood will be seriously hampered.

I try to "experience" my scenes and my characters through as many senses as possible before committing them to paper. What can I hear? What can I see? Are there any smells? What do I feel (this should include both tactile and emotional)? Is it hot or cold or wet or dry? Is my sixth sense telling me anything? And which of these senses would best communicate the feel of this place to someone else?

What about a given character? Is he happy, or sad, and why? Is she angry? Sarcastic? Vindictive? And why? What motivates him or her? Lost love? A lifetime of abuse? Jealousy over a beautiful friend? Incredible success? Unexpected failure? How can I show these characteristics rather than tell them? Whose POV am I using, and is that POV colored by a personality, biases, and emotions?

Writing is more than just telling a story, it's also painting a picture, setting a scene, and plopping your reader right smack into the middle of it.

Beth

Mood and Tone

I just came back for Valentine's Day. I've been married for twenty-six years, and almost blew it this year. The one thing you cannot do is be away from your wife on Valentine's Day. Yikes.

Okay, Mood is the way a story feels. A really good horror story has a feeling of horror, or darkness, or seriousness about it well before anything horrific is ever mentioned or brought into the story. A good mystery has a feeling of mystery long before a mystery may be mentioned. A light-hearted comedy adventure also has it's own feel. Setting, atmosphere, word choice, sentence length, rhythm, pace, and style choice all combine to let the reader literally feel the mood of the story with every sentence.

If you can't change all these things according to the needs of the story you're writing, you're going to be a one dimensional writer.

Think of instrumental music, which is probably the best way to define what mood really is. When you hear a dirge, is there any doubt what you're listening to, right from the first few notes? Even without words, you know this is something serious, and no one is going to laugh. Think of taps played on the bugle. Then think of revelle played on the bugle. No words, yet there's no doubt the two are very, very different, and each sets a mood all it's own. Or fife and drum music that would make anyone ready, willing, and eager to march off into battle. Each has a unique feel, and this feel is the mood of the song.

Next in line come movies. The mood of a movie is usually evident right from the opening scene. Setting and atmosphere are fairly easy to set up in a movie, and the viewer can actually see the mood right from the beginning. Movies are good to think about when mood comes to mind, and can help a new writer understand what mood is, but it's tricky because movies do things in a way that novels and short stories can't. Still, you're after the same thing.

But it's probably best to think about instrumental music.

In fiction, the mood of the story is everything. New writers either fail to take this into account, or do so in a clumsy way that turns good fiction into parady. Even many established writers have trouble with mood, and essentially write the same story with the same feel over and over and over. Which can make one rich, of course, but still greatly limits what that writer can accomplish.

Tone, on the other hand, is the attitude of the story. It's a piece of the puzzle that interlocks with mood. Tone is what the story sounds like, and the attitude the writer wants to express in the story. By attitude, I mean pessimistic, optomistic, serious, humorous, light-hearted, etc.

I suspect really great writers get these things right through instinct, as much as through training, but any good writer knows how to set mood and tone in a story, whether by instinct or by training. Any really good writer changes his word choice, syntax, sentence length, rhythm, pace, and style to match the needs of the story at hand, and to give that story the right mood and tone.

MarkN said:

Maybe it's worth mentioning too that setting the mood/tone is part of polishing the story, or at least that's how I'm writing right now. My first draft, I'm just blurting everything out to get it all on paper--laying down the first coat of paint, as it were. The rewrite is when I'm going to go back over word choices and atmosphere and overall tone (among other things).

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That is what I'm about to do also. Now looking at my rough draft.......it needs alot of work done to it to put the proper mood/tone in it. Boy I have a long way to go to get this thing where it needs to be.

Mistook said:

But for some reason, aspiring novelists want to start with a grab-bag of brilliant individual words and expect to connect them like leggo blocks into something meaningful. Tone is not choice of words. Tone is somtheing that exists before you put your story into words. Mood exists before words. Plot exists before words. You rough all those larger issues out in your mind at least before you commit to a first draft, and then you go back and polish and revise that draft to groove better with your tone, mood, etc.

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Exactly...you have to know what you're saying before you start throwing words together. That way you aren't trying to force the words together--you're just taking ones that fit inside the overarching feeling.

Mdlle. Nancy said:

Exactly...you have to know what you're saying before you start throwing words together. That way you aren't trying to force the words together--you're just taking ones that fit inside the overarching feeling.

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Nobody on this thread suggested you should rate style and technique over story. The point is that even if you know what you're going to say, you shouldn't "throw the words together".

"Mood and tone" are pretty nebulous concepts, which is not to say they are unimportant. But I don't think you can glue them onto a narrative later, after getting some rough spillage of words out. If you've properly and deeply enough envisioned your story, if you are integrally participating in it in your mind as you write, the mood and tone of your writing will grow organically from it. That should be evident in a first draft, and only need polishing in later parts of the process.

caw.

I find it difficult to portray a mood in my writing unless I'm feeling that mood. And I'm having a happy, fun day filled with laughs, it can be difficult to write a scene that's dark and tragic. Music helps me "feel" whatever mood I need to be in and it can transport me almost instantly. I have a number of movie soundtracks and there are pieces on them to represent just about any mood I want.

Beth