Tone and mood are important aspects of a narrative that can easily become confused.
Let’s examine the difference between them, why they’re important, and how they can strengthen your story.
What Are Tone and Mood?
Tone: hints at the author’s attitude towards their narrative.
For example: “Rachel was the sort of sweet girl who’d give you toothache”
Here, the tone’s biting and cynical.
Mood: is created by the atmosphere and emotions evoked by the prose within the reader.
For example: “The black scowl on Rachel’s face mirrored the storm clouds gathering outside.”
Here, the ominous mood anticipates conflict. Let’s examine tone and mood in more depth.
What is Tone?
Oxford Languages defines tone as, “The general character or attitude of a place, piece of writing, situation, etc.” and, “A musical or vocal sound with reference to its pitch, quality, and strength.”
Tone within a narrative can be viewed as a combination of these definitions. That is, the general character or attitude towards a piece of writing as created by the pitch, quality, and strength of the author’s prose.
Tone creates voice, the sound and mannerisms of prose as it’s read aloud.
It’s influenced by specific word choice, sentence structure, and rhythm.
Examples of different tones include: cynical, light-hearted, inflammatory, nostalgic, etc.
What is Mood?
Oxford Languages defines mood as, “A temporary state of mind or feeling.” Mood is created by the feelings the narrative incites in the reader.
Genre influences a story’s mood. Romance may be uplifting and hopeful. Black comedy will be sardonic. Horror is often dark and threatening. These trends exist in part because genres often espouse particular themes, such as Love Conquers All in Romance and The Truth Will Out in Crime.
Setting also plays an important role in mood. Think of the bleak open moors of Wuthering Heights, or the fog-enveloped London of Bleak House.
A narrative can have an overall mood whilst also shifting variably between other, more transient moods in different scenes. These shifts often reflect the changing emotions of the characters: fear, hope, humour, admiration etc.
Alternatively, when the reader is privy to more information than the characters, the narrative’s mood can instead reflect the reader’s emotional reactions.
Tone vs Mood Examples
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
This novel’s famous opening provides a great example of a skilfully-crafted tone: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
The narrative voice is articulate and teasingly sardonic. The tone is one of light irony. We know this statement isn’t actually true as much as some people may wish it were.
The tone provides insight into Austen’s view of her story as a light-hearted, humorous challenge of the ‘universally acknowledged truths’ of domestic conventions.
The mood can be shown through the following passage from Chapter One:
“‘Mr Bennet… you take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves.’
“‘You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.’
“‘Ah! You do not know what I suffer.’
“‘But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.’”
The mood here is created by the setting (domestic, homely, middle-class), the dialogue (amusingly light with a hint of more serious needs and resentments underneath), and the characters’ emotions (Mrs Bennet is excited and frustrated, while Mr Bennet is detached and mildly irritated).
The narrative’s mood and tone work together, preparing the reader for a story which will:
- Portray a realistic view of middle-class domestic life in Regency England, whilst also
- Subtly encouraging the reader to examine – even challenge – accepted social beliefs about marriage, love, and money, whilst also
- Amusing and entertaining the reader.
It’s really no wonder this opening chapter is so famous.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The story’s initial mood is set in the opening lines: gothic, dark, and claustrophobic.
“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day… the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.
“I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes…”
We know immediately this is a world of hostile surroundings and careless cruelties. The narrative’s tone is brought out in the second half of the sentence above:
“…and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.”
In first person point-of-view narratives, it can be tricky to distinguish the author’s tone from the narrator’s. In these cases, tone is more closely linked to which events and words the author chooses to put into the mouth of the first-person narrator.
In the above extracts, we’re given some insight into Bronte’s attitude towards Jane and her story through her word choices and sentence structures.
The chosen words show Jane as unhappy and lacking self-confidence. Despite this, Jane still possesses her own opinions. She knows what she doesn’t like (long, cold walks). However, she’s no way of asserting her needs and desires, believing herself intrinsically inferior to others.
Bronte, as the author, shows through these word choices how the child Jane lives without autonomy and independence. Bronte also chooses a simple sentence structure of straightforward syntax and diction for her narrator. This creates a narrative tone of matter-of-fact directness and childish innocence.
Bronte’s attitude towards Jane, as brought out by the tone, could be viewed as that of an adult showing compassion towards a child.
The tone of the opening lines prepares us for a story which will challenge social injustices and inequality. The opening mood prepares us for a gothic romance which will subtly subvert conventions.
Another remarkably skillful first page.
The Importance of Tone
Understanding a narrative’s tone, the inflections and rhythm of the sentences, provides a reader with clearer insight into the themes a story explores, and how an author intends meaning to be interpreted. An interesting tone or voice is also more likely to engage reader interest.
For example, imagine if Austen had instead begun Pride and Prejudice with the line: ‘It is important that all single wealthy men look for wives.’
Would you continue reading this? Or would you find this tone so straight-faced, didactic and humorless you’d put the book down?
For writers, it’s important to know how to wield tone as a tool for both engaging your reader, and guiding them towards your intended message.
Understanding how to craft your prose to create varied vocal inflections and rhythms in both your authorial and your characters’ voices allows for greater use of irony and subtext within your narrative.
Subtext brings greater depth to your story. Moreover, as the reader has to work harder to interpret the subtext behind words, reader engagement with the narrative is also heightened.
The Importance of Mood
Understanding how to write mood in a narrative is similarly important. A well-developed mood keys the reader into genre and helps them develop the correct expectations for your story.
Moreover, emotional engagement is key to providing a rewarding reading experience. If your readers don’t feel emotionally engaged with your characters and themes, they won’t care about what happens in your plot.
It’s critically important, therefore, to learn how to write emotions well, so that you can influence the emotions and moods of your reader.
Tips for Writing Tone
- Read your work out loud: This helps develop your ear for ‘hearing’ prose its inflections, its nuances, and its rhythm. It’s valuable to ask someone else to read out your work, in case the way you ‘hear’ the prose doesn’t match the grammar you’ve used. If this happens, then…
- Develop your grammatical skills: I recommend Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale as an excellent guide to the power of grammar.
- Read/ write poetry: The more you accustom yourself to reading and writing with rhythm and inflection, and using this to influence the meaning and interpretation of your words, the easier you’ll find it to create a strong voice and tone in your prose narratives.
- Develop your understanding of subtext and irony: For further study on this topic, I recommend The Story Book by David Baboulene.
Tips for Writing Mood
As you write or edit each scene in your story, ensure the reader has some form of clear emotional engagement with the scene. Choose the emotional impact you want the scene to have on both your characters and your reader.
You can influence a scene’s mood by:
- Conveying mood and emotions through atmospheric descriptions of settings and characters.
- Carefully depicting your characters’ emotional responses to the scene’s external and internal conflict. It helps to understand the difference between ‘showing’ and ‘telling’ emotions. Carefully choose when to ‘show’ or ‘tell’ emotion, and learn how contrasting ‘shows’ and ‘tells’ can create subtext. For further study, I recommend The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass.
- Creating reader anticipation/ excitement through creating strong story stakes and tension.
Ultimately, if you can’t clearly identify the emotional impact of a scene on either your characters or readers, your readers will likely struggle to engage emotionally with that scene.
Conclusion
By learning how to craft tone and mood within your narrative, you open up new avenues for heightening reader engagement with your story and its themes.
