Do you obsess about the tone of your writing as you revise? You should. Tone is one of the most overlooked elements of writing. It can create interest, or kill it.
It’s no wonder that so many of the countless conversations I’ve had with writing students and colleagues have been about problems related to tone. A friend submitting a novel says the editors “don’t like the main character.” A nonfiction book on balancing a family and a career skirts the edge of whining. An agent turns down a query because she feels “too much distance from the heart of the story.” I scan the latest work of a journalist friend who’s coming to dinner and find it meticulously sourced and well written, but grim in outlook.
And of course any publication you want to write for will have its own tone, which it would be smart for you to try to match. Notice how quietly all New Yorker profile pieces begin, while Utne Reader favors unconventional and unexpected viewpoints that challenge the status quo.
What exactly do I mean by tone? That’s a good question, as there are many terms—mood, style, voice, cadence, inflection—used to mean much the same thing. For now let’s agree that tone is the author’s attitude toward his subject: grave, amused, scientific, intimate, aggrieved, authoritative, whatever.
If you were a photographer, tone would be the way you light your subject. For dramatic shadows, lit from the side. For a scary effect, from above. For romance, lit with candles. In a movie, tone is often conveyed with music—think of the ominous score accompanying the girl swimming in shark-infested waters in Jaws.
A writer doesn’t have a soundtrack or a strobe light to build the effect she wants. She has conflict, surprise, imagery, details, the words she chooses, and the way she arranges them in sentences. Like the tone you use when you talk to somebody, tone in writing determines how a reader responds. If the piece sounds angry, he gets nervous. If it’s wry and knowing, he settles in for an enjoyable read. If it’s dull, he leaves it on the train, half read.
Thus, the wrong tone can derail an otherwise good piece. I’m surprised how seldom writing students note this during our workshop discussions, as if it’s impolite to admit that they’re made uncomfortable by how much the narrator seems to hate her mother, or to say that their thoughts drifted elsewhere by the second page of the overly abstract piece about mindfulness in the workplace.
You can detect tone problems in your own work simply by noting where your attention wanders as you reread it. Or, better, by reading it aloud. When you’re ready to revise a piece, try reading it to someone else, or asking someone to read it to you. You won’t have to search for awkward or boring or whiny parts—you’ll hear them.
Some problems with tone are small and can be easily fixed during revision. Others might require a new approach to the piece as a whole. Let’s look at a few of the easiest and most effective ways to improve the tone of your writing.
Need more, contact me - rimeriter@gmail.com
"ooroo" Jim.
No comments:
Post a Comment