Tone, Feel, Theme, Mood...

Recently I have been thinking about the tone of my story, the theme, or mood of the actual text, could it be described as dark, bright, humorous, what about the pace of the story, would it be described as slow, fast, I believe it is important to understand the tone of your story or tale, the theme or mood of the story, similar to tones or moods of films.

After looking into tones, (read post below) I have a better understanding on a subject that has always intrigued me, from an early age, I have always been drawn to the way words are delivered, the way words are pronounced, it says something about the speaker, it adds volume (or added character) to the (speaker themselves or / and) speakers message and helps capture the interest of the audience.

The same is for writers, writer’s words can have added volume depending on delivery of the words, (intonation is not restricted to just spoken words, but written words also) this sets the pace of a piece of writing, it gives rhythm to writing, something I have seen in my own work, and leads me to this question, what if the rhythm changes during the course of the writing? Does this alter the tone of the overall piece?

I think the pace helps to set the tone of a piece of writing, but the tone is not solely dependant on the pace, or the rhythm in which the writing is set to. There are other elements that make up the overall tone of a piece for instance… Character traits, environments / surroundings, dialogue and speech, actions (of characters)… all of these elements go into producing the overall theme / mood / tone of a piece, and should all work in sync to create a complete piece.

One of my concerns with my story is that the pace at the beginning of the writing, changes and is calmer towards the end, does this mean that the tone has changed, not necessarily, it depends on the tone at the start of the piece / writing, here is an excerpt from the beginning of my piece.


…She sits down in her favourite spot, with her favourite cup, towel wrapped ever so tightly against her bod, but still well able to be move her dainty frame, she puts her feet up on the table and smiles, looking down at her feet as her toe polish matches the colour of her towel almost to a tee, not to mention the colour of her shades, blueberry rays’, she has a different colour for every day of the week, she is barely seen outside, alive or not without her shades.


As I read this before adding it into this post, I realised what the difference was in the writing that was causing me to question the tone, and if it had changed, the answer is a quite probable yes, even if it is a slight change, the introduction of the writing, within the first few paragraphs, I adopted a habit of stripping down sentences, for instance…

…not to mention the colour of her shades, blueberry rays’,

This line shows the chopping or stripping down of the text, shades was used rather than sunglasses, and then the text jumps into the colour and style of the sunglasses, without saying ‘they are’ or something similar, now I understand why the start of the writing has a bouncy pace, and this bouncy pace derives from the stripping down of the text at the beginning, but fades out as the story unfolds, giving the impression that the tone might have changed, but it isn’t that the tone that has changed, it is merely the pace, and the slight style of the writing.

Below is another excerpt from the piece taken from further down in the story…


...After a few openings and closings of the door, he is woken by a loud fluttering clunk, like something or someone hitting the floor, he opens his eyes, but doesn’t really look to see what it was or is, as the sound was right next to him, so as it passes him he’ll get his chance to glance anyway, “wha’ you do that for?” the poor girl asked, picking herself off the floor, after she was tripped,


Further down in the text the stripped down style of writing is non-existent, I have come to the conclusion that this is not a bad thing for the text, as long as the stripped down style is smoothly faded out as it gives way to a more wholesome style of writing and what comforts me about this change of style within this text, is that the beginning of the story focuses on a particular character and the style of the writing fits well with the character being introduced in the story, as the story unfolds and more characters come into frame the style fades out, but I think the style at the beginning was there to serve a purpose, something I didn’t really notice when first writing the story, as I look further into the tone, feel, pace, style, theme, mood, of the overall text, I may change my mind about the impact of the slight change of style within the text, but right now I’m content with it. ;)


But another question has arrived, if the character being introduced in the beginning, is being introduced WITH the story, and not just a character WITHIN the story, then the chopped down style of writing, should maybe proceed with the story with or without the character, but perhaps not, hummm, for now I’m happy, but I will be keeping a close eye on this change of style as I continue to read and re-read the text.