August Seminars: How to Set the Tone of a Story

We've spent the last month showing setting up your writing and diving into that mysterious and difficult world. However, I've never so much as dipped my toe into the world of actually helping you to write, itself. In this final seminar for the month, I'm going to talk about something very difficult, very abstract, and extremely important: tone.

Time for the final August Seminar to begin! (sorry that it's actually September but things happened)

Tone is extremely important, and while I realize that I say this all the time, there is nothing more important in setting your story and drawing your reader into the emotion of the piece. However, tone is really abstract and subjective sometimes. You may aim for a certain emotion to be felt, but a singular reader may take a completely different emotion.

That's okay. You can't be perfect for everyone. But you should be perfect at capturing it for you. There are multiple ways to achieve this, and you'll often have to employ each and every one of them for that perfect tone that encapsulates a scene. In particular, I am going to use the second to last chapter of Love in the Time of Teamwork to show how I built the overall tone of that chapter.

Now, let's talk those tools that will help you set a tone!

1) Pacing

Pacing is something that, perhaps, I should have mentioned in my planning seminar, however, pacing works more with tone than it does with planning. Of course, with pacing in the planning stage, you want to make sure that a chapter doesn't pass without something happening, but that's just something you work in.

No, instead, what I am here to talk about is the pacing of a scene or a chapter being used in setting the tone. First, we'll talk those broad strokes of the chapter. Naturally, you'll want the chapter's pacing to have a certain speed. Is it slow and lethargic, giving a feeling of laziness? Is it going to be full of a lot of whams that leave the readers unable to breathe? Is it going to shift between characters, to give a balance instead? These are questions you need to ask yourself before planning your chapter. When you've decided how that's going to happen, it allows you to work your chapter at the pace and speed you'll want your reader to read at. Naturally, everyone has their own speed, but the writer can still help dictate that speed. Goodness knows the more engaging a chapter, the faster I read.

To use my example of a chapter (Teamwork Chapter 21), I decided to split it into three. Starting off with the intense battle, cutting to another group, and then the cathartic conclusion to the battle. I knew this, going into the chapter. It helped me to set a gradual downturn in pacing that set the tone as "definitive end of the battle". I did, ironically, the opposite in Chapter 28 of Trials. There, the pacing geared upward with every switch until the blistering ending to it. Knowing how you want your chapter to be paced (upwards in speed, downwards, or flat out even) dictates the story.

More than that, however, is the scene. Pacing sets the tone of a scene. A high moving pace with clipped screams, sharp battle moves and rough action will set a tone of intensity that leaves your reader unable to breathe. While a leisurely conversation between friends will have little details that would seem out of place in a swift-moving battle. That will slow it down and help the reader to understand and feel how relaxed the setting is. That pace of a scene sets the tone for the reader subconsciously. You don't want a battle sequence to read like a comfortable walk in the park, after all.

To help with an example, my first scene of Chapter 21 is the finale of the battle against Zinnia. It's full of fast paced action with a lot of dialogue. There is rarely a paragraph that goes on for a long time or a huge string of action with nothing breaking it. That kind of pacing makes it fast paced until the end of it. The next segment is similar until it reaches the end, where description starts up more than dialogue, and the final segment actually features dialogue and little action, but rather a description of feeling inherent in the words. This presents a winding down, almost melancholic feeling of the battle being over.

It is with this pacing, and knowing how swiftly you want a story to read that allows you to help set tone.

2) Acting

"Acting?" you may be asking at seeing this, but I'm not kidding. One of the first things I tell people when it comes to capturing a scene, particularly dialogue, is to act the scene out. The dialogue and scene above was something that I was actually screaming out to make happen. This acting gives you, as the writer, the sense of emotion you want people to feel when you're writing the chapter and delivering the product. You can tell what the characters are feeling for yourself, and that will translate to the page below.

Setting the Tone for Teamwork

Just read the sample, then listen to the audio sample (my apologies for the cringe factor; I'm by no means an amazing vocal artist), the way I felt the characters as I wrote them and then tell me if that was exactly what you felt as you read the passage (granting the lack of context, of course). By acting, you feel as though you are the characters in that moment and thus can channel those emotions. It's such a simple thing, but something that is so easy to help you get that scene just right and nail the tone. Whether it be happiness, rough emotion, sadness, depression, or feeling as though you got a stone thrown at your gut, that acting will help you nail that.

3) Music

Yes, music. It's amazing how much music sets the tone for a scene. And no, I don't mean for you to break up your chapter going "A/N: Listen to this song here!" That's just stupid. You should never break up your chapter with anything, after all. I mean, when you write, use music. Naturally, this means appropriate music. You're not going to write a depressing scene with heavy battle music. That would be so unfitting.

When I head into something where I know what it will be, I pull out my playlist of Battle Music, Emotional Music, Sad Music, Dark Music, etc. It helps you to feel that tone pounding in your head. There's a certain ambiance to be gotten from using music to write your works. Take the scenes and chapter we've been talking about. The above two songs were used during the epic vocal faceoff above and the resolution scene at the end. I wanted both of them for those final scenes because one set the tone of the climactic battle reaching its end and the other of a sadness that fades away.

By using music, you subconsciously allow the music to aid your writing. Typically, it shouldn't be obtrusive, but will flow into your prose. The swelling feeling of the first song allowed me to let the yelling of the characters and the message being hammered in take on a greater emotional tone. The soft piano gave a certain solemnity that when it faded at the end allowed me to write the scene so that the reader could exhale at that moment and go "It's over...". You want that feeling to be shared with your readers, and with something as universal as music, that becomes just that much easier.

4) Soul

The final point (though there are many things too much to define for tone) is by far the most ambiguous of them all.

I have said a lot that writers write with their soul. They bare their soul to the readers in their writing. Now, that doesn't mean you show your life's story in your writing. Not at all, since readers don't care. Rather, I mean that when you write, every little emotion you felt as you wrote those words will leak off the page. Your readers will tell and know. If I can't feel you writing with passion or anything such as that, then I won't be emotionally invested. More than that, you'll be lacking tone.

In my passage above, particularly the end, I cried a bit writing it. Now, that sounds ridiculous to some, but if I, as the writer, will not cry...how can I expect the readers to? When it comes to establishing tone, pouring your soul and letting yourself feel the nature of that scene sink into you helps you to present the tone of the story and the moment. A depressing chapter I posted recently had me feeling consistently empty inside as I wrote and edited it. The intense climax of Trials had be nearly gasping for breath as I wrote it (not literally, but you get the point). And Teamwork all came down to the sheer breadth of emotions from hope in the midst of despair all the way to the silent feel of being done. I took a breath at the end and let it out, knowing my readers would feel the same.

You need to put your soul into every word in order to set the tone of a scene, and if you don't, the tone will either not be as intended, or it will fall utterly flat. You need to feel that scene on a level that your readers may not experience, but within reason, of course.

Conclusion
Tone is a tricky thing to get a handle on, and while there are likely infinite ways to lock tone down, it's not always perfect. Even I struggle with it. However, there are some tools to make it possible. You should pace your chapters and scenes accordingly with the kind of tone you want, or you act the music out, or write with music. On top of it, pour your soul into your work. In the end, you'll need a combination of all of these to make it all work. It's a hard thing, and only your readers can truly say if you've succeeded in landing the tone.

With this, we conclude the August seminars. September will be taking a break from any posts, and in mid-October I plan to bring a different series forward! Until then!

Dare to Be Silly,
Epicocity