Tune up tone deaf writing
Do you worry that your writing is falling flat? Attune your tone to shape how readers receive the story.
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Watch your tone
Tone in fiction writing is the literary equivalent of a chameleon’s skin—it shifts and shimmers, coloring the entire narrative landscape. It’s the author’s secret sauce, the je ne sais quoi that transforms mere words into a living, breathing story world.
Building the tone of a novel is like analyzing a masterpiece painting. Each brushstroke—each setting, each emotion, each reflection—contributes to the overall composition of the story. Blend the colors just right, and viewers will be lost in the canvas long after they've left the gallery. But muddy the palette, and you might find your literary artwork collecting dust in the back of a thrift store faster than a velvet Elvis.
So get out your blending brushes, O Writes-ers, as we hone our practice of The Writes of Fiction.
38 tone examples: How to use tone in writing
Tone reflects the author’s point of view and their attitude toward the audience. Unlike mood or voice, tone is situational. For example, a character’s voice and its peculiarities remain constant throughout a story, but the tone of their voice will change based on what they’re experiencing.
Mood pertains to the emotional feeling or vibe created by the writer’s choice of words, imagery, and setting. It’s much more about the reader’s response and the mood the writer evokes in them. The author writes (the cause) and the reader reacts (effect).
Voice refers to the author’s distinctive style and personality that comes through in their writing. It’s like their fingerprint on the page and encompasses their tone, choice of words, sentence structure, and perspective. Voice is what sets one writer’s work apart from another and makes it recognizable.—Keep reading from Linda O’Donnell at 38 tone examples: How to use tone in writing.
More on voice: “Running commentary” may sound like something suited for first-person or deep third point of view. In fact, continually inflecting the story with a character’s personal concerns is a fit for any point of view whose narrator is also a character. It’s a seamless way to write. The character voice—with all its attendant observations, judgments, opinions, prejudices, preferences, thoughts, and emotions—effectively becomes your framework for worldbuilding.
The idea of character voice often brings to mind a character’s favorite words and phrases—for example, whether a character calls something neat, cool, lit, or dope. That’s coming at character voice from the outside in. To build character voice from the inside out, start with what the character observes in the first place.—Keep reading at The secret to authentic character voice.
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