Tone and Mood in Fiction

Countdown to 10 year of HTWF: After 10 years and over 100 entries, this is the third to last post (other than a coming Index Series).

What do you want your reader/audience to feel while experiencing your story? In most cases, it's whatever the main character is feeling. In commercial fiction, a lot of effort is put into creating empathy between the character and the readers because readers primarily read for emotion (according to Ray Bradbury). Often, in fact, writer/character/reader emotions are one and the same throughout the story. Perspective, mood, and tone coincide. 

Character perspective includes the emotional states of the characters through whom the story is told (generally, first person or third person limited).

Mood is the emotion evoked in the reader by the story.

Tone is the emotion of the narrator of the story, who may be the writer, one of the writers personas, or a character addressing the reader directly.

Now, a good dominant character, who carries along the writer and the reader creates deeply immersive experiences. Who doesn't like that?

Sometimes us. When a character is disturbing, we might not want to live inside him or her. Or, the story might demand a character with secrets. The intrigue and mystery we're looking for would be spoiled if we got too close. In a more positive way, a character who is brilliant or saintly might be diminished by too close a look. It's hard to feel that a character is bigger than we are if we are sharing all of his or her thoughts and feelings.

Humor often depends upon having some distance. Wit may require the writer (say, Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde) to step out from behind the curtain and address us directly. More often, humor depends upon the reader having a superior position. Many protagonists in comedies are flawed and obsessive and take themselves much too seriously. They may tell their stories as tragedies, but we, recognizing the absurdities, find their stories humorous.

Irony also depends upon separating ourselves, as readers, from the characters. The teen protagonist on Lovers Lane is interested in smooching, not in the escaped murderer who is approaching the car. Good horror depends on anticipation by audiences, our worrying about oblivious characters. Similarly, Hitchcock’s men discussing baseball, and not knowing a ticking bomb is under the table they sit around, creates delicious suspense.

Tone or Mood?

Both tone and mood are created by the writer (if the writer is successful). Mood is always present. Tone should only appear intentionally. 

For disturbing stories, I think of the Grandfather in The Princess Bride:

She doesn’t get eaten by the eels at this time. The eel doesn’t get her. I’m explaining to you because you look nervous.  

He dials down the tension for the Grandson deliberately. (And the actual writer, William Goldman, adds comic relief, while staying hidden, relying on mood.) 

For intrigue, I love the old Mission Impossible shows. With “Good morning, Mr. Phelps,” the narrator on tape made the mission and its goals absolutely clear, but the narrator never returns to divulge the plan, and, while Phelps specifies tools and roles he keeps many secrets from the audience. The omissions invite audiences to connect the dots and guess the secrets before they play out. The tone created by the writers is evident by their superior position. 

More subtle is presenting the pieces with no explanation. This is done brilliantly in a Better Call Saul episode (“Mabel” Season 3, Episode 1) that presents Mike’s efforts to understand how he was tracked. It’s almost a silent movie and challenges the audience to pay attention, think hard, and be smart while playing fair. It’s not just narration-free. It’s almost scientifically objective. I haven’t had to lock my brain in so completely since I watched Inception.  

Sherlock Holmes stories are told using Watson’s point of view so we can be amazed by Holmes’s genius. We feel (often) what Watson feels. It could be argued that this is all mood, but, to me, Watson is such an obvious stand-in for Doyle that the writer makes himself visible, so tone seems more accurate. 

As stated above, a witty narrator is always tone. And even a witty character feels more like tone that mood. We know Shaw speaks through Henry Higgins and Alfred Doolittle. (This was so obvious, the poster for Broadway’s My Fair Lady showed Higgins as a marionette, with Shaw pulling his strings.)

Huckleberry Finn is first person narration, and I’d say it is funny and ironic without Twain stepping out from behind the curtain. It’s one of those wonderful cases where humor comes from an authentic character voice and empathy for the character. The result: Our mood may not match Huckleberry’s all the time. Readers easily align and diverge from his feelings. 

Compare this to Dumb and Dumber, where the protagonists are presented as fools from the very beginning and never grow to be the equals of the audience. The directors present their tone for the movie and we’re forced to adopt it if we want to join in the fun. 

We also join into the fun of horrors and thrillers in a different way. The irony is baked in deliberately, with the creators being as manipulative as Shaw. I suspect people who can’t buy into such deliberate emotional design can’t enjoy such stories. The characters are oblivious; the audiences need to accept a superior position even as they surrender their emotions to the creators; and the creators work on the levels of characters, audience, and emotional design simultaneously. Isn’t that ironic?

Mood can be created in many ways. Setting, music, cultural triggers, genre tropes, empathy, diction, and more. In Get Out, Jordan Peele seems to use every tool in the box. The many approaches to mood are exquisitely balanced, making this film a masterpiece worthy of study.