In this article we'll consider:
The importance of mood in storytelling
Using the senses to create mood
The power and flexibility of word choice
Environment as mood enhancer
Pacing and page space
Harnessing the unspoken
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Novels, ironically, are not just about telling a story. In order to hold your readers' attention throughout 50,000-plus words, you need them to get involved. Emotionally.
When a reader puts your book down after finishing it, you want them to have been so immersed that their satisfaction at the plot conclusion is tinged with sadness at bidding farewell to the fictional lives they've grown attached to. But where to begin? How can you be certain that the emotional attachment you have to your story will translate the same to readers?
Regardless of whether you write high-octane thrillers or romances overflowing with heartwarming feels, the atmosphere you cultivate through your writing has the power to elevate how readers experience your story. Let's take a look at six effective ways you can set the mood in your fiction writing.
1. Use sensory details to paint a vivid scene
Starting with the obvious and most often taught, the senses are a simple but powerful way to establish your scene's mood. What your character sees, hears, feels, tastes and smells can instantly draw readers into the world you’ve created, whilst simultaneously revealing something about the character's perceptions and their own mood.
Example: Gemma is forced to spend the night alone in an abandoned house when her car breaks down during a storm. Instead of simply saying how unnerved Gemma is about the situation, you might instead suggest her fears by writing what she perceives:
The wind snaked through the cracks in the window and rattled the glass panes. The scent of rain-soaked earth mixed with a claggy musk of resistant mould. A cold draught whispered across her bare arms. She shivered. The all-pervading darkness and driving rain meant she could no longer see the car; or anything.
Tip: It's not necessary to run through all of the senses. Focus on those that match the mood you're aiming to create. For an eerie scene, you might emphasize sounds (creaking doors, distant whispers; things that aren't clearly seen but fire the imagination), while for a romantic moment, you could focus on smells (roses, perfume) or touch (softness, warmth).
2. Use words to your advantage
Being mindful of word choice when setting the mood is the epitome of what creative writing is all about. It's also relatively simple and lots of fun.
However, it's easy for writers to forget, in their rush to get the story down on paper, just how powerful their choice of words can be. Rather than selecting the first words that come to your mind, or the most familiar, when you get to the editing stages consider how just switching some of those words or phrases up can convey, or compound, a particular mood.
Example: Consider the difference between the following two sentences:
Laurie was furious. He went over to the fireplace, clasped his hands behind his back, and remained like that, looking at the flames.
Laurie was furious. He marched over to the fireplace, curled his hands into tight fists behind his back, and glared into the flames, unmoving.
Both sentences tell us how Laurie feels and what he does, but the second does so with a greater intensity that allows us to more easily connect with his anger.
Tip: Adjectives and verbs carry a huge amount of emotional weight. Consider the mood evoked by cold, jagged, crawling versus bright, soft, fluttering.
3. Weather and setting as reflection of mood
Another excellent way to evoke mood in your writing is through your scene's environment. Both the weather and the setting itself can mirror or contrast your characters' feelings - either as a subtle backdrop, enhancing the emotional tone, or at the forefront of your plot, such as a freak weather event.
Example: The following extract is taken from Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song, and in this scene the protagonist Chris Guthrie is realizing she can never leave the land she's inherited. Note how her description of the setting is pinched with bitterness (as I've highlighted):
"The wet fields squelched below her feet, oozing up their smell of red clay from under the sodden grasses, and up in the hills she saw the trail of the mist, great sailing ships of it, going south on the wind... she could never leave it, this life of toiling days and the needs of beasts and the smoke of wood fires and the air that stung your throat so acrid..."
Tip: Avoid overusing weather as a means to directly mirror emotions; instead, consider using it subtly or strategically to heighten the reader's emotional response. A glorious, sunny day in the middle of a heartbreaking moment, for example, can create a jarring contrast that emphasizes the scene's emotional weight.
4. Character reactions and internal monologue
The way your characters perceive and react to their surroundings or circumstances is naturally going to set the mood in your story, as long as you are keeping in mind their unique perspectives. Remember, it's not simply about conveying what happens, it's about what the events in the story mean to your characters as witnessed and interpreted through their eyes.
(By the way, this holds true if your narrator is not a character in the book, and even if they are objective. Emotion has to come from somewhere in your story, be it a person, an animal, a rainforest, or a global catastrophic event.)
Depending on your story's point of view, your characters' internal thoughts, physical reactions and/or body language can all offer clues about how readers should feel in each scene - whether that's on the side of a particular character, or against them.
Example: In this extract, taken from my serial killer crime novel, Never Seen, the protagonist Detective Hoskins is in the mortuary with a young victim, internally lamenting why the job isn't getting easier with experience. This scene is in the latter half of the book and a mood of weary helplessness pervades his every sentence.
"It might have been the fact that it was late – ten thirty on a Friday night, when most people were either going out or getting ready to hit the sack. Or maybe because he hadn’t slept more than five hours at a time for at least a month, some nights only three at most. Or maybe it was just that with every new victim it was beginning to feel like he was the one with the drugs in his pocket, the blade in his hand, the one standing between life and death."
Tip: Don't forget to use your character's tone and manner of speaking to create a deeper emotional connection.
5. Pacing and page space
Pace, rhythm, and even the layout of the narrative on the page can be used to influence the mood you want to convey. It's often thought that short, choppy sentences speed up the pace and thus the tension, while long, flowing descriptions slow it down, evoking calmness. This is true to some extent, but it can depend on the context of the narrative.
For example, you may use snappy back-and-forth dialogue, with lots of white space around it, in a light-hearted comedic rather than tense way; or, longer sentences with little punctuation can give a breathless effect rather than a tranquil one. Ideally, the key is to vary the pacing throughout the scene, creating an ongoing ebb and flow of both style and mood, rather than keeping the narrative static.
Example: Both of the following sentences work, but to slightly different effect.
"She ran. Feet slapping the wet pavement. Her breath quick, shallow gasps. Behind her the shadow loomed. Panic tore through her. Nowhere to hide."
"She ran, her feet slapping the wet pavement and breath coming in quick shallow gasps while behind her the shadow loomed and she panicked - there was nowhere to hide."
Tip: Play around with sentence length and rhythm to find what best matches the mood and varies the pace - e.g. you don't want your reader to be constantly breathless, they'll be exhausted. Additionally, take advantage of the white space on the page too; for example, a narrative break or chapter break after a surprising revelation is like the silence that follows a sharp intake of breath.
6. Symbolism and subtext
Think of symbolism and subtext as the subtle layers of your story through which mood can filter. More often than not, what’s not being told to readers outright creates a more compelling atmosphere. From the unspoken, the readers must deduce for themselves the atmosphere that's being conveyed.
Example: A character setting the table for two long after their partner has passed away, or a bird trapped in a room flailing against the window, might symbolize themes of loss, entrapment, or longing, contributing to an overarching melancholic, claustrophobic, or despairing mood.
Tip: Recurring symbols or objects in your story can carry subtle but compelling emotional weight. They help to reinforce the mood without needing explicit description, essentially acting as emotional waymarkers.
Finally...
Conveying mood in your writing is the secret sauce, or golden ticket, to a story that hijacks your readers emotionally and doesn't let them go until the end. Avoid fretting too much during the first-draft stage, but when editing, dive deeper into how you can enhance mood in your scenes to make them more compelling.
Using sensory details, considered word choice, your scene's environment, character reactions, symbolism, and even the page space, you can set the tone and atmosphere for your book that leaves a lasting impression on its pages and in readers' minds.
And the best thing about it is - it's a lot of fun to do. You remember writing is fun, right? When you hit the right word or turn of phrase, or when it becomes clear that being mindful of your scene's mood greatly elevates your writing, there's nothing more satisfying!
Grassic Gibbon, L. (2006 ed.), Sunset Song, Canongate Books, Edinburgh
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Tina Williams of Fiction Yogi is a copyeditor and proofreader who works with writers at all stages, giving them the tools to improve their manuscript and level up their writing so they can meet their publishing goals.
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