DIY Homeschooler

The mood of a work deals with the sensory elements that provide a reader’s experience.

Tone refers to the author’s attitude—how they feel about their subject and their readers. It expresses something of the author’s persona, the aspects of their personality they wish to show to their readers. For example, are they being funny or serious? Are they writing with fondness or with derision?

Mood refers to the overall atmosphere or feeling of a piece of writing. It is often closely related to tone, because the author’s attitude influences the overall feeling of a text. It’s difficult, for instance, to take a jovial tone if the overall mood of the piece ought to be somber, or vice versa.

Tone, Mood, and Audience @ Purdue Online Writing Lab

The mood may be:

• Dark.
• Cheery.
• Terse.
• Bright.
• Melancholic.
• Lighthearted.
• Morose.
• Tense

Writers reflect the mood by the word choice:

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including—which is a bold word—the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven years’ dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change—not a knocker, but Marley’s face.

Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Suggestions

• Choose one of the first three paragraphs in the quotation above.
• Copy the paragraph into your notebook.
• Rewrite the paragraph by changing the mood to one that is cheery, bright, and lighthearted.
• Read the paragraph out loud — preferably to someone else.
• Did you accomplish your purpose? Is the mood cheery, bright, and lighthearted?
• Make a chart showing the list of words you changed to convey the new mood (old word | new word).
• Try again by randomly selecting three words to set the mood.

This activity is adapted from our new book, Learn to Write: Write!

Learn to Write, Write!: A DIY Writer’s Companion
Ready to get started writing? Learn to Write: Write! is your guide to discovering and practicing the art of writing. Cover the basics, such as finding something to write and overcoming fears, to more advanced topics like revising your work and cultivating your voice and style. The book gets out of the way as great writers and their writing encourage you to apply their ideas to your own writing. Put pencil to paper and stretch your abilities as you learn by doing. Learn more.