Editor's Checklist for Revising Short Fiction: Tips on Tone

 There's a proverb that says don't muzzle the ox while he's in the field, meaning don't restrain those hard at work; let them finish the job. The same is true of short fiction. If you can write the first draft of the story in one sitting, do it. Before sending your work for possible publication revise using the next series of posts as a "preflight" checklist. Today's tip is on tone.

Tone tells a lot

Tone is created by the writer's prose to reveal his or her attitude toward the subject, and toward the audience. Tone can be formal or informal, intimate or distant, playful or serious. Generally, the tone of a piece should complement the subject and story. Think of tone in writing as you would tone of voice in speaking. Usually, when you're angry, you allow your voice to reflect that emotion. If you're angry and use a different tone of voice, it's for a reason, usually to hide the intensity of your feelings, or to heighten what you're saying by using a contrasting tone. The same principle works for writing.

Exercise: Select the opening paragraph from a story you're working on, and consider how a change in tone would affect the piece. To prime your writer's ear, change the verbs in the excerpt to reflect a different tone, for example, from anger to ironic, or from straight narrative to anger. Notice what the change in tone says about your attitude toward your subject or story, and toward the audience.

We'll discuss mood in the next post. Happy writing!

P/S: To take your writing to the next level, consider author Robert Olen Butler's dreamstorming technique as described in From Where You Dream. For more on dreamstorming and how to select the right details for your story, see writer and editor Jack Sheedy's blog, Sacred Bull.

Fiction: Reality and Writing What You Know

A reality-based scene can work, too

The old adage, especially for emerging fiction writers, was write what you know, meaning what you're familiar with. The thinking was that this approach would tap the writer's strong points from the start and set him or her on a strong foundation. Then we jettisoned that notion. Why should the writer be constrained, we figured, by the familiar? Why not explore new worlds? It is fiction, after all, and there's leeway to create. Then came Angela's Ashes, the memoir by Frank McCourt, and other memoirs, and we returned to the notion of writing the familiar. You could blame the still burgeoning concept on reality TV, but it's more likely due to the sense that truth is not only stranger than fiction, it's more interesting. We instinctually relate to a story that feels real, authentic. Even in fiction, writing what we know of our lives and others' engages us with immediacy and a sense of trust, both apparently still strong attractions.

What are you writing that's based on a real incident in your life?

Writing by Ear: Editing and Improving Your Prose

Learn to listen to your prose

Musicians and singers who don't read music can still learn to play. The key is developing an ear for a piece, and studying what happens when you change a note, a chord or the tempo. The same is true for writing. One great way to improve your writing is to read with these three aims in mind: Read your work aloud, read it with breaks in different places, and read it with varied emphasis. Notice how the implied meanings change when you change these elements.

For more on this topic, see "Developing Your Writing Ear."

Setting Is Where Story Lives

Setting also creates mood

Among the holiday commercials one impressed me — one for diamond rings. Neil Lane, jeweler to the stars, said, "Setting is where the diamond lives." I guess I'm not completely sucked into holiday commercialism because the first thing that struck me, well, the second thing after the gorgeous diamond, was how Lane's observation related to story — that a story's setting is where it lives. I recently did a post on the movie The Descendants, based on the debut novel of the same name by Kaui Hart Hemmings, and was thinking that although the story could have been set anywhere, Hawaii was the perfect spot. In this case, Hemmings grew up there, so from that perspective it was a natural choice. But the setting worked well for another key reason — the variability of the scenery and climate, which the director used with dexterity to match the mood of each scene.

To put this writing principle into practice, select a scene from a story you're working on that includes your main character and has a comparatively common setting, like a doctor's office or café. To see how a different setting could enhance the scene, consider an aspect of your character that you want to convey, a hobby, for example, or an avocation. These say a lot about who a person is when she's not "on display." Revise the scene using the new setting. How does the rewrite change the original?

For more on this topic of setting, see the Writer's Digest article "Rescuing Your Story From Cliché," by author and instructor Peter Selgin.