Mood and tone are crucial when you're trying to find your voice as a writer. Think about the difference of the "feel" between the shows Avatar: The Last Airbender and Steven Universe, and you'll see what I mean, or the feeling of elation and hope you get in Steven Universe when the Diamonds are redeemed versus the pragmatic and introspective feeling you get watching Azula go mad in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Mood is the feeling that the reader has toward the story as a result of the tone the author chooses to put into it. Tone is the emotion(s) that the author has toward a particular subject or toward their story.
Tone is important because it connects the diction (word choice) of the story to the themes you're trying to convey. We'll explore how tone works with theme a little later, but for now, know that tone is important to giving your readers the right emotions when they read a scene. Below are two descriptions of a park; see if you can tell the difference in the emotions you feel.
Description #1:Â The sun beamed upon the slides and swings, and children laughed, racing through the woodchips with bandaids on their knees and their hair tangled with grass. One of the girls carried a sandwich in her meaty little hand, munching it happily. "You can't catch me, Jolie!" she said through a full mouth.
Description #2: Stormclouds gathered around the abandoned park, and large raindrops spat onto the swings and slides. The faint sound of forgotten laughter could be heard in the park; a mother dressed in black sat on a bench and remembered a time long ago, when she used to bring her daughter to this very place. How empty it seemed now.
See what I did there? I adapted the tone to fit what was happening in the scene. So how does one turn a happy scene of children playing into a mournful scene about a grieving parent?
The key is in connotation. Lots of details about the park are the same, but you have to paint them in a different light. Connotation is the emotion behind a certain word. Pardon the brash example, but it's why fetish and obsession are used in different contexts, even though they're technically synonyms.
The key to striking the right tone is to choose ideas and words that evoke the emotion you want to convey. Below are the examples I used, with details and words underlined to convey the tone.
Description #1: The sun beamed upon the slides and swings, and children laughed, racing through the woodchips with bandaids on their knees and their hair tangled with grass. One of the girls carried a sandwich in her meaty little hand, munching it happily. "You can't catch me, Jolie!" she said through a full mouth.
Description #2: Stormclouds gathered around the abandoned park, and large raindrops spat onto the swings and slides. The faint sound of forgotten laughter could be heard in the park; a mother dressed in black sat on a bench and remembered a time long ago, when she used to bring her daughter to this very place. How empty it seemed now.
Think about the emotions each underlined example brought. Of course, the key to describing a place and setting with the proper tone is sensory details. Think about all five senses when gathering details to describe in a scene; list them in your journal if you want. Then you'll have a wealth of ideas to put on the page and craft the proper tone you want, and therefore give your readers the proper mood for the scene.
In the next chapter, I'll discuss the oldest writing cliché known to this generation: what exactly "show, don't tell" really means.