Tone is the mood, attitude, or emotion that your story conveys to your readers. It can be influenced by many factors, such as word choice, sentence structure, dialogue, imagery, and point of view. Editing tone can help you enhance your message, create contrast, and evoke the desired response from your audience. Here are some techniques that you can use to edit tone in a story.
Before you can edit your tone, you need to know what tone you are aiming for. What do you want your readers to feel when they read your story? How do you want them to relate to your characters, setting, and plot? You can use a tone wheel, a list of adjectives, or a mood board to help you define your tone. For example, if you are writing a suspenseful thriller, you might choose words like tense, anxious, or ominous to describe your tone.
I do a few things to identify my tone before I begin a piece. First, I get to know the overall brand tone by reading several pieces from that publication and making notes on how they like to communicate. Then, I do a mental exercise: I picture my target audience and create a character of sorts. What is this person going through? What are they feeling? What do they need to know? How would they best receive this information? I keep this "person" in my mind as I write the piece for them. And voila, you've nailed the tone!
Setting the right tone is as essential, as effective and as intuitive in writing as in conversation. Ensure the use of accurate words to maintain the right tonal ambience.
One of the simplest ways to edit tone is to choose words that match your intended mood. You can use a thesaurus, a dictionary, or a word cloud to find synonyms, antonyms, or related words that convey your tone. For example, if you are writing a humorous story, you might use words like witty, amusing, or absurd to create a light-hearted tone. Avoid words that contradict or dilute your tone, such as vague, neutral, or generic words.
One unique technique to edit tone in a story is through the use of selective word choice, also known as diction. By carefully choosing words that carry specific connotations, you can subtly shift the mood and atmosphere of your narrative. For instance, describing a setting as "gloomy" instead of "dim" can evoke a sense of melancholy or foreboding, altering the reader's emotional response. This technique allows you to fine-tune the emotional impact of your story without making overt changes to the plot or character actions, effectively altering the tone to better match the intended vibe of your narrative.
Another way to edit tone is to vary your sentence structure according to your purpose. You can use short, simple sentences to create a sense of urgency, clarity, or impact. You can use long, complex sentences to create a sense of depth, detail, or sophistication. You can also use different types of sentences, such as declarative, interrogative, imperative, or exclamatory, to express different emotions, such as confidence, curiosity, command, or excitement.
If you write a paragraph full of sentences the same length, it can sound monotonous -- like a whole song that never changes pitch, volume, or intensity. Now, I love a well-crafted long sentence. But varied sentence lengths add dynamic emphasis to keep your readers' interest. Like this! Remember to add some flavor to your orchestra of words, and you'll nail the tone every time.
Dialogue and narration are two powerful tools to edit tone in a story. You can use dialogue to reveal your characters' personalities, emotions, and relationships. You can use narration to provide your perspective, commentary, and insight. You can also use different techniques, such as direct speech, indirect speech, free indirect speech, or stream of consciousness, to create different effects, such as realism, distance, intimacy, or confusion.
Imagery and symbolism are two literary devices that can help you edit tone in a story. You can use imagery to appeal to your readers' senses and create vivid descriptions. You can use symbolism to convey deeper meanings and themes. You can also use different types of imagery and symbolism, such as metaphors, similes, personification, or allegory, to create different associations, comparisons, or contrasts.
Imagery and symbolism can't be overemphasized. It instantly elevates the expression, assists the reader's imagination and enriches the reading experience beyond anything!
Point of view is the perspective from which you tell your story. It can affect how you present your characters, events, and information. It can also affect how your readers perceive your tone. You can use different points of view, such as first person, second person, third person limited, or third person omniscient, to create different levels of intimacy, reliability, or objectivity.
Unless I'm writing an op-ed piece or my client asks for my written opinion, I'm very careful to monitor my writing for bias. My own point of view undoubtedly shapes my writing, but it helps me to argue against myself for the sake of guarding against a one-sided representation. If I make a point, I take the time to try and see it from another angle and during my research, I always try to scope out and include other points of view. This way, my reader can look at the facts presented and decide how they feel about it.
In informal usage, I find emoticons very handy to convey the right emotion and set the right tone. In formal usage, it's more about the careful selection of words and proper framing of the sentences.