Creating atmosphere and mood

So, you have planned your story carefully, you know your characters so well they are practically your best friends, and it is all jogging along nicely. The thing is you don’t want your story to jog nicely along, you want it to bring tears to your reader’s eyes, or make them laugh out loud, or make them so involved they miss their bus stop, or read long into the night even though they know they will struggle to get up in the morning.

To keep the reader gripped and hanging on to your every word, you need to bring in changes to the pace and the atmosphere of your story.  Avoid keeping it on one straight level, let moods darken; let the atmosphere become more tense; let heartbeats quicken; bring the reader in even closer to what’s happening to your character.

Before you can do this, you need to create a character who the reader cares about. And the way you get a reader to care, is to let the reader in on your character, let the reader understand what’s going on in that character’s mind – reveal their inner worries and concerns; show that they are human by the things they do, say, think and feel. Strive to make the reader identify with them in some way.

Once you’ve hooked the reader in that way, when things become more difficult, or the mood darkens, then the reader will feel the tension and keep turning those pages.

Changing the atmosphere is down to your planning – you may have decided earlier that at a particular point in your story, something dramatic will happen; or that particular scene might just creep up on you unawares as you write. Whichever way it happens, when you have a scene that requires some change in atmosphere or mood, then work your magic on it to make it really effective.

I’m a firm believer in the calm before the storm. If the scene just before the dramatic moment is a complete opposite, then the contrast of calm/frantic, relaxed/tense, works really well. Then, once you get into the scene where tension rises, you keep on going, adding layer after layer of drama as the character’s situation becomes more and more precarious.

So, these layers, what exactly do they comprise of?

• Make the character’s senses heighten. Let them become more aware of things around them, smells, sounds, tastes, things they see are now more threatening.

• It’s more effective to show all this through the character’s perspective, rather than you simply narrating what’s going on around the character.

• Draw the reader closer so they experience everything that the character experiences.

• Tighten those sentences.

• Deliberately repeat a word to empathise a point.

• Physical changes to surroundings e.g. weather, light/dark, silence/noise, movement/stillness etc.

• Dialogue. What your character(s) say and how they say it.

Let your characters talk to each other

As you know, characters need to communicate with each other. Tension, conflict, anger, hatred, love, can all develop through characters talking to one another. Characters can reveal they are afraid or anxious or show the drama rising through their speech and what they say. Staccato dialogue shows their breathlessness. Maybe they don’t have time to speak at length, even the narration should come across in that same short sharp manner. Dialogue that is interrupted, or the speaker stops abruptly fearing they have said too much can all help to increase the tension; the occasional ellipsis can work wonders, if used sparingly.

Here’s a few examples of showing mood change through dialogue:

“Another coffee, dear?”

“Don't mind if...” Jane stopped in mid-sentence. Her nose wrinkled. “What's that smell?”

Another example:

“Pete, if this is your idea of a joke. If you’ve set me up...”

He laughed. “Course I haven’t...”

His voice trailed away.

“What?” Sue demanded. “What? Speak to me. You’re scaring me now.”

In a voice no more than a whisper he said, “What do you think that is, standing over there?”

Even the way one character addresses another can indicate the change in mood. Imagine if Mary normally called her husband, Joe. What kind of mood do these alternatives suggest?

“Joseph, I’m talking to you!”

“Oh, Joey… have you got a moment?”

Today’s Exercise:

Your protagonist is walking across the clifftop with someone their care about and all is going to plan. Using dialogue and narrative, write a scene to reflect what they are doing, and then bring in some conflict. Something happens to totally change the mood and atmosphere.

Tomorrow: Improving your narrative.

Thank you Rob Tysall, Tysall's Photography for the image. This was taken from our trip to France to write about Champagne.