Story building: tone

This is part 2 of 2 posts discussing pacing and tone, crucial elements of story building. Go here for a deep dive into pacing. Today’s topic: tone.

What is tone?

Narrative tone is the feelings created by the words the writer (or speaker) uses that surrounds and embeds itself into the story, giving it an emotional “texture.” Tone is what you’re recognizing when you say a story or speaker is “light-hearted” “flippant” “serious” “dark” or even “sarcastic.”

Yes, a light-hearted story might have dark scenes, but the words used to describe those dark moments are often simpler in emotional thrust than what would be written if the story was a dark gothic tale. A dark gothic tale can have positive moments, but the word choices would, if well written, will not elevate any scene to light-hearted.

Tone is formed from three strategic choices the author makes: diction (word choice), word order or sentence structure (which can create formality or informality), choices of color (adjectives, adverbs, metaphors and other rhetorical devices). If you are writing in close third person point of view, these choices will be guided by the point of view character’s attitudes, emotions, and their personal mannerisms and diction. So understanding who your characters are and why will help you create the appropriate tone.

Example

There are multiple words for the action “walk”.: Stroll, amble, run, dash, racing, pounding the pavement, foot dragging, etc. Each one imbues the scene it’s in with a related tone, and suggests the character has a different attitude, and emotion, about what’s going on.

So, when you want to create a particular tone, you choose words that will add that feeling to the scene. Continue to do that throughout the whole story to get the tone that is appropriate to your genre.

Working out the finer details of your story’s tone will be best done during editing and not during the writing of your first draft, in order to keep your gut instincts and momentum about the story high. Remember, the first draft is always about you sharing the story with yourself. Getting it onto the page. Refinement, in the form of changing out weak words for stronger ones, can only happen if you know what effect you want overall — and that means the story has to reach its end first.

~ Lara