Watch your tone. (In your book, that is.)

Try this exercise if you're worried about the voice and tone of your writing.

“It doesn’t sound right.”

I remember the frustration of one of my writing workshop students after she read the opening to her short story. She had interesting characters, nice dialogue, a good hook. But she wasn’t happy because the words she’d written didn’t sound right to her ear.

The tone was off.

My advice to her: How would you describe the tone in one word? Brooding? Sarcastic? Witty? Charming? Cynical? Spend a little time finding the perfect word for the tone you want to achieve, and remember it as you write. If you need to, write it on a sticky note and stick somewhere near your laptop as a constant reminder. 

Think of this tone as your narrative attitude. Obviously, your protagonist’s mood and attitude will change from scene to scene, but this is sort of your story’s umbrella attitude.

Let’s use a few mystery novels as examples. How many mysteries start out with the protagonist leaving the big city for a house in a small village or rural area where she may or may not have grown up and where she expects quiet—either of a peaceful or boring nature—and instead finds herself dealing with murder?

Many.

But the tone, well, that depends on the subgenre. Is it a cozy mystery? Gothic horror? Psychological thriller? Every subgenre (and every writer) has its own distinct tone. Let’s take a look at three passages from published mystery novels in which the protagonist reaches the house. How would you identify the tone—and the subgenre—for each of these?

Example #1

My mother’s massive house is at the southernmost point of Wind Gap, the wealthy section, if you can count approximately three square blocks of town as a section. She lives in—and I once did too—an elaborate Victorian replete with a widow’s walk, a wraparound veranda, a summer porch jutting toward the back, and a cupola arrowing out of the top. It’s full of cubbyholes and nooks, curiously circuitous. The Victorians, especially southern Victorians, needed a lot of room to stray away from each other, to duck tuberculosis and flu, to avoid rapacious lust, to wall themselves away from sticky emotions. Extra space is always good. 

The house is at the very top of a very steep hill. In first gear, you can drive up the cracked old driveway to the top, where a carriage porch keeps cars from getting wet. Or you can park at the bottom of the hill and walk the sixty-three stairs to the top, clutching the cigar-thin rail to the left. When I was a child, I always walked the stairs up, ran the driveway down. I assumed the rail was on the left side going up because I’m left-handed, and someone thought I might like that. Odd to think I ever indulged in such presumptions. 

Example #

2

It was a very pretty village, even by Cotswold standards. There were two long lines of houses interspersed with shops, some low and thatched, some warm gold brick with slate roofs. There was a pub called the Red Lion at one end and a church at the other. A few straggling streets ran off this one main road where cottages leaned together as if for support in their old age. The gardens were bright with cherry blossom, forsythia and daffodils. There was an old-fashioned haberdasher’s, a post office and general store, and a butcher’s, and a shop that seemed to sell nothing other than dried flowers and to be hardly ever open. Outside the village and tucked away from view by a rise was a council estate and between the council estate and the village proper was the police station, an elementary school, and a library.

Agatha’s cottage stood alone at the end of one of the straggling side streets. It looked like a cottage in one of the calendars she used to treasure as a girl. It was low and thatched, Norfolk reed, and with casement windows and built of the golden Cotswold stone. There was a small garden at the front and a long narrow one at the back. Unlike practically everyone else in the Cotswolds, the previous owner had not been a gardener. There was little else but grass and depressing bushes of the hard-wearing kind found in public parks. 

Example #3

The house loomed over them like a great, quiet gargoyle. It might have been foreboding, evoking images of ghosts and haunted places, if it had not seemed so tired, slats missing from a couple of shutters, the ebony porch groaning as they made their way up the steps to the door, which came complete with a silver knocker shaped like a fist dangling from a circle. 

It’s the abandoned shell of a snail, she told herself, and the thought of snails brought her back to her childhood, playing in the courtyard of their house, moving aside the potted plants and seeing the roly-polies scuttle about as they tried to hide again. Or feeding sugar cubes to the ants, despite her mother’s admonishments. Also the kind tabby, which slept under the bougainvillea and let itself be petted endlessly by the children. She did not imagine they had a cat in this house, nor canaries chirping merrily in their cages that she might feed in the mornings. 

How do they differ in tone?

All three of these protagonists are approaching three houses. The houses are all old, once beautiful, but there are some less than beautiful details too. And they all evoke childhood memories in the protagonists. 

But the tones are very different. Tone in writing is most frequently established in things like verb and adjective choice, metaphors and simile and imagery. Say your narrator sees a bird flying. How does she describe it? Does the bird slice through the air? Drift aimlessly on the wind current? Soar toward the horizon? Slice, drift, and soar are three very different verb choices that change the image the reader conjures up of this bird in his mind. So which of those images best fits the mood of your story? 

Let’s keep that in mind and break down what’s going on in each one of these examples. 

Example #1

This passage is from Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, a psychological thriller that includes elements of horror. It’s dark, gritty, and gruesome in places. This passage obviously isn’t gruesome, but it definitely doesn’t give off cozy mystery vibes. 

My mother’s massive house is at the southernmost point of Wind Gap, the wealthy section, if you can count approximately three square blocks of town as a section. She lives in—and I once did too—an elaborate Victorian replete with a widow’s walk, a wraparound veranda, a summer porch jutting toward the back, and a cupola arrowing out of the top. It’s full of cubbyholes and nooks, curiously circuitous. The Victorians, especially southern Victorians, needed a lot of room to stray away from each other, to duck tuberculosis and flu, to avoid rapacious lust, to wall themselves away from sticky emotions. Extra space is always good. 

We’ve got sarcasm right off the bat. The wealthy section of this town is barely a section. The protagonist’s mother is one of the few elite, and the protagonist is derisive in the way she points that out. 

The protagonist offers a detached description of her childhood home, with a few verb choices—jutting, arrowing—that are slightly violent, or at least, they could be softer, but they’re deliberately sharp. Cubbyholes and nooks and curiously circuitous evokes the idea of hidden secrets.

The dark, gritty tone is particularly strong here. Some narrators might romanticize the Victorians and their spacious homes, but this narrator takes it in the opposite direction. This house was built big, she tells us, so people could stray from one another, avoid deadly illnesses and evil temptations. The phrase wall themselves away pushes the idea of isolation and personal distance even from one’s own family members. Sticky emotions: a very specific choice of adjective that emphasizes this idea even more.

The house is at the very top of a very steep hill. In first gear, you can drive up the cracked old driveway to the top, where a carriage porch keeps cars from getting wet. Or you can park at the bottom of the hill and walk the sixty-three stairs to the top, clutching the cigar-thin rail to the left. When I was a child, I always walked the stairs up, ran the driveway down. I assumed the rail was on the left side going up because I’m left-handed, and someone thought I might like that. Odd to think I ever indulged in such presumptions. 

The last paragraph offers us a few more highly specific details of this house, as well as more insight into the protagonist herself. She’s reflecting on her naivete as a child and how strange she finds it now. 

Word choice is everything when it comes to tone. Key words and phrases in this passage that evoke the right tone for this dark and twisted tale include: widow’s walk, jutting, arrowing, cubbyholes and nooks, curiously circuitous, stray, tuberculosis and flu, rapacious lust, sticky emotions, cracked old driveway, cigar-thin rail. 

Example #2

The Quiche of Death by MC Beaton is a classic cozy mystery. A pub and a church, gardens bright with cherry blossom, a shop that sells dried flowers...everything about this first paragraph is, well, cozy. In particular, look at how the narrator describes a row of older cottages, they “leaned together as if for support in their old age.” That’s an absolutely charming way to describe tilting houses all crammed together, isn’t it? Definitely not how the narrator in our first example would have described them!

It was a very pretty village, even by Cotswold standards. There were two long lines of houses interspersed with shops, some low and thatched, some warm gold brick with slate roofs. There was a pub called the Red Lion at one end and a church at the other. A few straggling streets ran off this one main road where cottages leaned together as if for support in their old age. The gardens were bright with cherry blossom, forsythia and daffodils. There was an old-fashioned haberdasher’s, a post office and general store, and a butcher’s, and a shop that seemed to sell nothing other than dried flowers and to be hardly ever open. Outside the village and tucked away from view by a rise was a council estate and between the council estate and the village proper was the police station, an elementary school, and a library.

The protagonist’s cottage reminds her of something from a calendar she treasured as a girl - again, very cozy - and that’s despite the fact that the garden is rather depressing. There’s no life in this cottage - yet. But the protagonist attributes this issue not to the house, but to the previous owner. It’s her house now, and she’ll no doubt make it the idyllic home of her childhood dreams. 

Agatha’s cottage stood alone at the end of one of the straggling side streets. It looked like a cottage in one of the calendars she used to treasure as a girl. It was low and thatched, Norfolk reed, and with casement windows and built of the golden Cotswold stone. There was a small garden at the front and a long narrow one at the back. Unlike practically everyone else in the Cotswolds, the previous owner had not been a gardener. There was little else but grass and depressing bushes of the hard-wearing kind found in public parks. 

As for word choice, we’ve got pretty village, warm gold brick, gardens bright with cherry blossom, forsythia and daffodils, tucked away from view, treasure, and golden Cotswold stone. But we do also have depressing and hard-wearing—because this is a cozy mystery, and despite the sunshiney setting, there’s gonna be a bit of murder. 

Example #3

This passage is from Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and as the title suggests, it’s very much a gothic horror. Comparing the house to a gargoyle instantly gives off the gothic vibe. We’ve got a mention of ghosts, the shutters are missing slats, the ebony porch groans, the dangling fist doorknocker, is more than a little grotesque, and the image of an abandoned snail shell isn’t exactly cozy.

The house loomed over them like a great, quiet gargoyle. It might have been foreboding, evoking images of ghosts and haunted places, if it had not seemed so tired, slats missing from a couple of shutters, the ebony porch groaning as they made their way up the steps to the door, which came complete with a silver knocker shaped like a fist dangling from a circle. 

The protagonist recalls fond memories of her own childhood, but contrasts that home with this house, in which living things described as “kind” and “merry” cannot possibly dwell.  

It’s the abandoned shell of a snail, she told herself, and the thought of snails brought her back to her childhood, playing in the courtyard of their house, moving aside the potted plants and seeing the roly-polies scuttle about as they tried to hide again. Or feeding sugar cubes to the ants, despite her mother’s admonishments. Also the kind tabby, which slept under the bougainvillea and let itself be petted endlessly by the children. She did not imagine they had a cat in this house, nor canaries chirping merrily in their cages that she might feed in the mornings. 

Once again, when you examine the word choices—quiet gargoyle, foreboding, ghosts and haunted places, slats missing, ebony porch groaning, fist dangling, abandoned shell of a snail—the tone is decidedly gothic, creepy and dark. 

Try this tone exercise!

If you’re struggling to nail down the tone of your writing, take a passage from a published novel—you can use one of these examples if you like, or choose one of your favs—and:

1. Identify the tone. Describe it in one word.

2. Identify those specific word and phrase choices that set this tone.

3. Rewrite the passage to evoke a completely different tone by changing those words and phrases.

This is a fun, quick exercise that can help you stretch your tonal muscles!

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The posts I publish here will remain free. But I have a series called Ask the Editor, which will publish every Friday. The short pitch: Dear Abby for writers.

The longer pitch: paid subscribers ($5/month or $50/year, cancel anytime) will receive a link to a form where they can submit pretty much anything within a two page limit. Things like…

• Queries

• Synopses

• Pages from their novel

• Questions about writing or traditional publishing

• A current problem or situation in their writing journey (ie: trying to decide if an agent is a schmagent, disagreeing with beta feedback, etc)

• A rant about this whole “trying to get published” endeavor to a sympathetic ear

Every Friday, I’ll respond to/critique as many submissions as I can and publish them together in one post. Because they’ll be behind a paywall, there’s some privacy—your query, pages, or rant about that one really horrible rejection won’t be online for editors to discover when they Google you.

That’s it! I hope to see you over there. :)

Michelle