Your Guide to Writing the Perfect Story

Tone and Mood

Tone and mood are both important parts of writing a novel. Lots of times, it isn't possible to place a tone or a mood in a book you are reading and because of this you don't enjoy it as much. If a writer doesn't know what tone and mood are, they won't attempt to use them, and that can be a factor that leads to uninteresting characters and pointless stories. Before I explain how to use them, it's probably important to explain what they are.

Tone, in written composition, is an attitude of a writer toward a subject or an audience.

Mood is referred to as the atmosphere of a literary piece, as it creates an emotional situation that surrounds the readers.

Part 1: Tone

1. Introduction

I found a website that phrased what tone is perfectly so I'm going to take their direct quote. They said the following: 

"Every written piece comprises a central theme or subject matter. The manner in which a writer approaches this theme and subject is the tone. The tone can be formal, informal, serious, comic, sarcastic, sad, and cheerful or it may be any other existing attitudes."

Like they said, there always should be a point to the novel. What is the author trying to get across? Usually it has to do with the conflict of the story and what needs to happen for that conflict to be resolved. Even in fantasy or futuristic novels there are elements that can be related to issues of today. This is called theme. It could be a call for world peace or saving the environment or whatever you want it to be. In order to get your theme or message across to the readers you have to develop a tone. 

Tone is not necessarily related to the main character. The main character might not want world peace or they think animals in captivity is cool, but that might be the problem. Tone is all about what the author thinks. Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes it isn't. People analyse novels all the time, searching for the meaning behind them. I'm going to focus on how you convey your message through tone.

2. Word Choice

Ultimately, word choice is the most important part of conveying tone. Words like fantastic, great, and cool are words to show that someone is happy about something. On the other hand, negative words such as crap, annoying, or horrible have the opposite effect. Some authors use swear words to show their point of view on a subject. Other words like very, or too can say a lot as well.Take the following examples.

Example #1: 

"Oh, Helen, would you look at this? It looks like the city's using the money donated to move the zoo animals out of captivity." 

"Is that so, honey?" 

In this example, you can't tell the viewpoint on the subject at all. Are Helen and her "honey" happy about this? Did they want the money to be used elsewhere? It's impossible to know.

Example #2:

"Oh, Helen, would you look at this? It looks like the city's finally using all that money we donated to move those poor zoo animals out of captivity."

"Is that so, honey? It's about time they did something about that horrid prison."

Words like "finally", "poor", and "horrid" clearly show the viewpoint on this subject. Helen and her husband, let's say, obviously feel strongly about the treatment of animals in their vicinity. If the story centres around this, then the author's message might be to save the animals that you can, or something like that.

Example #3:

"Oh, Helen, would you look at this bull? It looks like the city's wasting all that money donated to move useless zoo animals out of captivity."