Overview Setting: Language: Tone

Workshop: An Introduction to Writing for Children and Young Adults

Tone overlaps with voice as we discussed earlier. To be a background influence that impacts setting, the word choices need to be precise giving a clear visual. Strong verbs that can stand on their own without punctuation, such as exclamation marks, help give a solid atmosphere.

Another way that tone can have an insightful influence is when what one character is saying or acting outwardly while at the same time is internally having an opposite or other emotional reaction. It turns the setting upside down.

Take into consideration the age you’re writing for as well. Five year-olds and under can rarely hide their feelings from family members or even want to try. Unless? Perhaps they are in on a surprise for a family member. And trying to keep a secret. There are opportunities for all kinds of humorous misunderstandings all around.

The older the character, and the more intense a situation, though the tone can become a shadow for a mystery, or a personal grief, or a difficult moral decision. The tone needs to be authentic to the character’s perception of the situation even if he is in error.

If the reader is in the dark as well they will connect to the character’s struggle. If the reader knows the facts are different they will still empathize with the heroine’s dilemma and be rooting for her.

Action Steps:

1.     Do an internal dialogue of feelings with a character who is interacting the opposite way externally.

2.     Now do the same with the person to whom they are speaking.

Share: Who would be able to tell what either character is really thinking based on her body language?

Read deep, marcy

Overview Character Development: Part Four: Tone

My apologies for the long delay returning to this workshop. I did not expect to be absent from the blog for a whole year. Hope your writing has been forging ahead. For those  who are just joining the conversation--welcome!

Workshop: An Introduction to Writing for Children and Young Adults

“Anwara doted on the baby, and until the onset of the child’s strange persistent tantrums, had bloomed with joy.”  The Moorchild by Eloise McGraw

Tone is expressed throughout the story in several ways that need to be a consistent thread in order to wrap the reader into its ambience. It includes the writer’s voice in that it will be consistent with his/her work worldview. It affects the narrator’s personality. Tone includes attitudes among the characters’ voices, the world at large, the genre, the age group, and the physical setting. Basically it affects all atmospheres, whether spoken or silent, direct or implied.

To be effective tone grows organically in response to the motivation stimulus of your character’s background, attitudes, dynamics, and insights as well as purpose.

Tone blends internal and external motivation with action and setting. We’ll discuss tone in setting more thoroughly in a later segment but for now think of some catch phrases from stories or movies that capture the combined ambience of words and location. “It was a dark and stormy night.” “May the force be with you.” “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.” The level of dark, light, serious, frivolous, happy, sad, will edge the tone into the genre and its story question.

For example, in a dialogue; an adult approaches a young child and says, “Did you eat all the cookies?” The tone of voice in the question will set up not only the reply but also the mood of the relationship. Is the question asked with a teasing voice, an angry voice, a confused voice or a disappointed voice? Does either character in the dialogue speak loud or soft or neutral? Whatever combination the author chooses will impact the overall tone of the situation and character both internally and externally.

Use of time boundaries impacts tone. Is the character’s journey in a brief moment, a few hours, a week, month, or century? Is it a calm conversation exploring life’s curiosities or a life or death race?

The tone reaction a character makes can also affect plot links and build tension. Put your young child hero in a campsite where suddenly a skunk walks into the site where he is sitting. Does he try to run or hide or search for his camera? The danger is objective but fear or curiosity is subjective. Both produce insight into the story and a tone to match.

Action Steps:

1.     Recall a time when you felt vulnerable, either as a pre-teen, or teenager, or young adult. Describe that time without using any words that explain how you felt. Convince your reader you were lonely or frightened, sad etc. without mentioning any abstract terms.

2.     Write a one-page story that begins, “Nothing of real importance happened that day,” and then reveal through the thoughts or actions of a character during a day’s sequence of unimportant events that something important did happen internally.

3.     Practice writing motivation sentences. Write a sentence about an action. (The car screeched around the corner.) Follow it with a sentence about your character. (Bill looked up, saw who the driver was and began to run)

Share: One of your motivation sentences.

Read deep, marcy