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Apologies that this post is late, but the book release overshadowed it on Tuesday and a big storm here knocked out power for most of the morning today.
Okay, for a quick recap: Tip 01 began with an overview of show vs. tell, Tip .02 discussed weak words, Tip .03 covered details (too much and too little), and Tip .04 differentiated between description and descriptors. This week's topic - atmosphere and tone - is a good transitional topic to move from talking about sentence-level construction that captures and engages readers, into larger concepts of telling a story. No matter how epic or complex your story is, it is still built sentence by sentence, but the detail and descriptions and emotions you create in those sentences will combine to give the work as a whole a sense of atmosphere.
Every author has a different process to get from concept to finished story or novel. For me, the very first step is nearly always atmosphere. (BTW - Not everyone defines atmosphere, tone, and mood the same way. I tend to refer to the overall feel as tone, because I think in terms of setting the tone for the novel or short story. Most people would call this atmosphere, or perhaps mood, and say that tone refers to smaller sections of the story that can change with the circumstances.)
Sometimes I can put the atmosphere I want to evoke into words - Gothic, dark, noir. Sometimes I can’t, and have to settle for shooting for duplicating something I feel. For anyone interested in my individual process, the next few steps of story creation - steps which often occur nearly simultaneously with defining the atmosphere I want - are a sense of the protagonist and often an image of the location (real or imagined). Next comes the inciting incident and a general feel for the arc of the story (in other words, a vague - or sometimes defined - idea of the beginning and end). The point is, for me, atmosphere is such an important component of story creation that it usually comes to me before anything else. Not that it can’t change. I once started writing what I thought was a humorous flash fiction piece and it quickly let me know it wanted to be horror instead. I had to rethink all the details, from setting details to voice, to change it. I wish I still had the earliest version of that story around, because comparing the first draft paragraph with the final version might have helped show how changing just a few words can affect atmosphere, tone, and/ or mood. Probably better - here are a couple of excerpts from well-known authors who are masters of their craft:
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
Compare that atmosphere to this:
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless and without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway.”
-Stephen King, The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I
Setting your atmosphere early on and maintaining it throughout your story will add essential depth and feeling, and bring out the tone or mood within the scenes.
Okay, for a quick recap: Tip 01 began with an overview of show vs. tell, Tip .02 discussed weak words, Tip .03 covered details (too much and too little), and Tip .04 differentiated between description and descriptors. This week's topic - atmosphere and tone - is a good transitional topic to move from talking about sentence-level construction that captures and engages readers, into larger concepts of telling a story. No matter how epic or complex your story is, it is still built sentence by sentence, but the detail and descriptions and emotions you create in those sentences will combine to give the work as a whole a sense of atmosphere.
Every author has a different process to get from concept to finished story or novel. For me, the very first step is nearly always atmosphere. (BTW - Not everyone defines atmosphere, tone, and mood the same way. I tend to refer to the overall feel as tone, because I think in terms of setting the tone for the novel or short story. Most people would call this atmosphere, or perhaps mood, and say that tone refers to smaller sections of the story that can change with the circumstances.)
Sometimes I can put the atmosphere I want to evoke into words - Gothic, dark, noir. Sometimes I can’t, and have to settle for shooting for duplicating something I feel. For anyone interested in my individual process, the next few steps of story creation - steps which often occur nearly simultaneously with defining the atmosphere I want - are a sense of the protagonist and often an image of the location (real or imagined). Next comes the inciting incident and a general feel for the arc of the story (in other words, a vague - or sometimes defined - idea of the beginning and end). The point is, for me, atmosphere is such an important component of story creation that it usually comes to me before anything else. Not that it can’t change. I once started writing what I thought was a humorous flash fiction piece and it quickly let me know it wanted to be horror instead. I had to rethink all the details, from setting details to voice, to change it. I wish I still had the earliest version of that story around, because comparing the first draft paragraph with the final version might have helped show how changing just a few words can affect atmosphere, tone, and/ or mood. Probably better - here are a couple of excerpts from well-known authors who are masters of their craft:
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
Compare that atmosphere to this:
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless and without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track that cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway.”
-Stephen King, The Gunslinger: The Dark Tower I
Setting your atmosphere early on and maintaining it throughout your story will add essential depth and feeling, and bring out the tone or mood within the scenes.
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