Originally Published on Storybilder August 24, 2021

This is the second part of our discussion on narrative vocabulary and tone. Part One focuses on vocabulary choice and ways to shed light on your characters’ inner thoughts and world view through the language they use.

What is “Tone”? 

Compared to vocabulary choice, tone is harder to pin down. It’s more or less the way that you, the writer, feel about the story you’re telling, and how, on the page, you convey that feeling to the reader. For example, Terry Pratchett feels irreverent and deeply hopeful in his novel Good Omens. If Jane Austen had written a similar story about an angel and a demon accidentally losing the antichrist on the eve of Armageddon, her tone would likely have been dry and witty. Ernest Hemingway’s version might have been angry and defeatist.

You can set the tone of a story by deciding what mood or flavor you’re looking convey. Is the book meant to be light and frivolous, like a delicious marshmallow? Is it meant to be smooth and dark, like rich hot chocolate? Is it supposed to be astringent and biting, like a tart lemon martini?

Once you’ve figured out the feeling and mood, try to reflect that in your pacing, sentence length, and yes, vocabulary choice. How long you linger on scenery or descriptions, how quickly you move from plot point to plot point, how much of the small domestic moments you share, how choppy your prose is, and which words you choose, all these elements come together to create the book’s tone. 

Alignment and Juxtaposition 

Depending on what sort of tone you’re looking to convey, you can have the character voice and narrative voice work in harmony to paint the picture for the reader, or you can provide deliberate juxtaposition, to make it clear that the narrator’s opinion on the action diverges from the protagonists’.

For example: 

Poetic tone: The heather waved grey and sweet in the florid gloaming. “Oh, my dearest heart, how I love you,” the poet sighed to me, their eyes on the beautiful landscape that marked our last day together. 

Cynical tone: A rock stuck into my thigh. “You know,” he sniffed, eyes glued to the sunrise so he didn’t have to look at me. “Seeing as, eh, you know, it being the last time I’m ever gonna see you, I think I, you know…L-word you.” 

What happens if we mix and match them?

Blended: The heather waved grey and sweet, while a rock stuck awkwardly into my thigh. “You know,” the poet sighed to me, their eyes on the beautiful sunrise that marked our last day together.  “Seeing as, eh, you know,, it being the last time I’m ever gonna see you, I think I, you know…L-word you.” 

Play around with voice, tone, and vocabulary choice, to find the narrative voice works best for your book.

Activity:

Pick a favorite children’s story such as The Three Little Pigs, Cinderella or any other folk tale you know well. How would you tell the story so it sounds sweet and light? Can you tell it again so it sounds terrifying? How do your language, your pacing, and your tone change? What happens if you tell the story as if it were the truth? What does changes if you try to tell the same story as if you thought it were funny or sad?

Originally Posted on Storybilder August 10, 2021

If your characters are the lens through which the reader experiences your story, and you the writer are the glassmaker, then vocabulary makes up the grains of sand which create the glass.  Likewise, tone is the mold into which you pour your hot glass to set the lens.

Some grains will be hard, rough, imperfect; and, poured into a straight-edged mold, would make a wonderful lens for, say, a gritty detective story. Some will be dark, and smooth, and sharp, combined in a rough mold that produces a lens that is uneven and hard to see through, making it suitable for gothic romance. Some will be filled with glitter, poured into a star-shaped mold, ideal for magic and fantasy.

Your combination of Voice, Vocabulary and Tone create the Narrative Voice that is unique to your work and your book.

What is “Voice”? 

Character Voice – the words, idioms, metaphors, and sentence structures that the characters choose to think and speak. These structures are rooted in your characters’ dialogue and reflect their background, education, and culture.

Narrative Voice – the words, idioms, metaphors, and sentence structures that the narrator chooses. If the narration is relayed in second or third person, the narrative voice might not match the main character’s dialogue and thought patterns because the narrator’s voice comes from a different person or entity.

What is “Vocabulary Choice”? 

The words you select to describe things are often freighted with associations and meanings that can elicit emotions and understanding. Vocabulary also influences tone (which we’ll talk about in the next post) and can be crafted to suit the age range and the genre-savviness of your intended readership.

For example: think about the word “hot”. This is a general catch-all word that even young readers understand. Depending on your audience’s age range and your chosen genre, you might describe a landscape as “hot, and parched, and cracked, like the palms of the old men who shielded their eyes from the unforgiving sunlight.” Or you might say it was “hot and lush as a greenhouse.”

In the first case, the word “hot” describes something that is hot and dry and worn out. In the second, it refers to a type of hot that helps things to grow. How the word is interpreted depends on context and the other words that surround it.

If I say the weather was arid, I’m saying it was hot, but also dry and parched, which is pretty specific. If I say it’s humid, then the air is damp and heavy. Deciding to use “hot”, “hot and humid”, or “humid” are all choices you make as a writer; and, depending on how they’re used, your choice tells the reader something about your narrator’s perspective.

Word choice affects more than just the picture you want to paint for the reader; it also tells them what kind of world they’re in, and whether the narrator is the kind of person who would prefer to use “hot” when “sweltering”, “fevered”, or “blazing” may invoke not only a specific meaning, but also a specific feeling.  “Hot” is warm, but “sizzling” sounds dangerous.

Activity

Think about the last story you read. What sort of words do the characters use? What do those words tell you about their social status, their feelings? Now, think about the narrator. Is one of the characters telling the story? If so, what do their word choices tell you about their perspective? Does their language suggest they enjoy telling the story? Are they sad or afraid? Are they reliable? If the story is told in third person, how does language help you to imagine the landscape, the way the characters feel, or the mood?

Tune in next time for the second part of this topic, where we discuss Tone.