Different Lenses: Tone

So far, we’ve been writing stories in the traditional way. There’s a narrator, it describes the events and the dialogue, and maybe there’s a hint of “writing style” or personality.

In this chapter (and the next), we will look at different ways to “narrate” a story. Different lenses through which you can view and tell the same story.

• This chapter will be about tone. How to give the narrator (which might be the character itself, in first-person) a unique personality and writing style.
• Next chapter will be about different media. How to tell a story through some other format, like letters or email chains.

What is tone?

Even if you know the exact plot of your story, there are still a million ways to tell it. A million ways to phrase every sentence or piece of information. A million things the narrator can choose to tell or not tell.

To make a story even more immersive, it helps to adjust the writing style to match the characters or themes of the story.

I call this “tone”. Some call it simply “writing style” or “narration style”.

It means getting into the headspace of whoever narrates your story/chapter, and really writing like you are that character. Don’t pick words they’d never use. Don’t pick difficult words when the story is narrated by an uneducated character. Don’t make a character with absolutely no interest in architecture describe architecture.

Why does it matter?

Tone is one of those things that, if done right, really elevates a story to a new level. Most writers can construct an okay plot, or a nice opening sequence, and deliver an okay novel.

But tone? That’s harder to master. That’s more unique, because it must be adjusted based on the content of the story.

If you can combine a strong story with a strong tone, you have a winner on your hands. The story is extremely immersive, the characters come alive because the events are really narrated through the characters.

If you look at YA novels, the more successful ones usually have a great tone. The main character has a unique and fitting way of narrating the story, which hooks you from the start. Even if the plot itself is lacking, this tone can carry the book to success. (To such an extent that certain publishers reject YA novels immediately if they make no effort at all to use an interesting tone.)

Now write!

I realize this is little information. But there are no more rules or guidelines on this topic, that’s what makes it hard to master. (And that’s why so many writers completely overlook it.) I can only give examples!

Write a story in which the writing has a unique style, one that fits the story and the narrator.

The most common approach is to let the main character “narrate” the story. Every chapter is written from the perspective of this main character. Create a personality for your hero, then make sure this personality is obvious just from the tone. See how clearly you can signal the personality through writing style alone (instead of showing the personality traits some other way).

If you have multiple characters ( = multiple different perspectives), create a clearly different tone for each. In this case, the challenge becomes even greater: make sure the reader instantly knows whose perspective we’re in at the start of a chapter, just from tone alone. (Maybe leave out any other hints about who is narrating this chapter, to really test if the tone is unique enough.)

Alternatively, a story might have an actual “narrator”. Somebody who isn’t in the story and is just telling it. When you do this, you can obviously give this narrator any style and personality you want. Usually, this is done with fairy tales and children’s adventures. Part of the fun with those books is the fact that the narrator has a fun or quirky way of telling stories.