Purple Prose:
mood

©Stina Lindenblatt

The purpose of the first draft is to get our story down. It doesn’t matter if the imagery is lame or non-existent. It doesn’t matter if the setting is weak or forgotten. And it doesn’t matter if you told the mood and emotion in the scene instead of showing it. All that matters is that you see the scene for what it is—a wealth of possibilities.

It’s not until we step back and evaluate the potential in the scene (or photo) that we can transform our load of cr*** into something magical, something that speaks to us. When I took the above photo, I had an image in mind for the theme and mood of the picture. Unfortunately, I only had my point & shoot camera with me, and it didn’t share my vision. Not even close. But that’s okay. I converted the JPEG file to RAW (it’s the format professional photographers prefer to use) in Photoshop Elements*, and tweaked the settings to give me the image I had in mind. And voila!

©Stina Lindenblatt

Obviously, you can’t try the same trick with your writing. What you can do is identify the theme, mood, emotion of the scene, and brainstorm words that evoke the image you have in mind. Go crazy. Write everything down, then highlight those words that belong to your character’s voice. Now, weave the words into your setting description to create the mood and emotion you’re after. But remember, less is more. A dash adds flavor. Too much and you leave a bitter taste in your reader’s mouth.

What are some tricks you use to make a scene stronger? When you end up with a photo like the first one, do you find ways to make it better, or do you delete it and pretend it never existed?

*Just use ‘Open As’ in Photoshop Elements, and open your JPEG photo as a RAW file. You can then easily adjust for exposure, brightness, clarity, color saturation, etc, to get the image you’re looking for.

Weak writing fails to make an impact. Powerful writing grabs your reader’s attention and keeps them reading.

You don’t have to be a super hero to write power words. You just need to know a few tricks.

1. Never use two words when one word is better. Typically, the two-word issue arises when you abuse adverbs. Dash, bolt, sprint are power-loaded words. ‘Runs quickly’ is for wimps.

2. Use words in an unexpected way to add power to the sentence. These are typically your theme words or scene-related words. (e.g. if your scene deals with death, your power words would be related to death).

Example: . . . he watched the light bleedslowly out of day . . . . (Whispersby Dean Koontz)

3. Use words to show a shift in the emotion and mood of the scene.

Example: skip, sunshine, rose-scented, trudge, stench of rotting corpses, spiraling down

4. For the most impact, put your power words at the end of the sentence or paragraph. It’s not always possible, but sometimes all you need to do is rework the sentence.

Before: I’m the one who came home to witness the body bag being wheeled out of the front door, Nate covered in blood, and the flashing of emergency lights lighting up the afternoon sky.
After: I’m the one who came home to witness the flashing of emergency lights lighting up the afternoon sky, the body bag being wheeled out the front door, and Nate covered in blood. (WIP)
Noticed the difference in how I ordered the phrases between the two sentences. In the second one, they go from least important to the one with most impact (Nate covered in blood).

This is also a great trick for emphasising something or hiding information. If you want to emphasize it, place it at the end of the paragraph. If you want the reader to find out about the information, but not realize it’s important, then bury it in the middle of the paragraph. It’s foreshadowing without screaming foreshadowing. Cool, huh?

Do you use consciously use power words in your writing? Do you have any other suggestions?

To celebrate the release of her Novella Dies Irae, I asked author Christine Fonseca if she would talk about one of her strengths: using setting to set the mood. Not only does she do a great job with this in her story (which I'm currently reading), she wrote an AWESOME post on the topic.

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Thanks, Stina, for hosting a leg of the blog tour for DIES IRAE. I am excited to be here today talking about setting. As most of you may know, I love writing dark and creepy stories. Whether they are gothic, romance, or psychological, one thing unites my stories—they’re dark.

One of the ways I achieve the “dark” tone to my stories is through the use of setting.

I view setting as a “character” of sorts—something that can enhance and enrich the story; the vehicle by which character emotions and plot themes can be revealed or embellished.

Specifically speaking, setting is comprised of the following elements of a story:

* Location – WHEN is the story set?
* Time – WHEN is the story set, both in terms of era and time of day
* Climate – WHAT is the season and/or the weather like during your story

Correctly identifying these things, as well as describing them in ways that work towards the overall tone and mood of the book can help an author create a memorable experience for the reader.

So, how do I do that? How do I use setting in that way? For me, it is always about placing myself in the scene and looking around. Using my five senses, what do I see, hear, smell? And how do these details help to create or push the emotional content of the story? Then I filter that experience into words.

Now, this is not always an easy thing to do. Most of the time, I put too much or too little into the story. My early drafts are often filled with purple prose, some passive language, and too many sensory references that I then need to rework. But eventually, after I’ve reworked and rewritten a scene, after I’ve taken the time to judiciously put in setting references without dragging down the plot, I come up with a scene that is powerful and rich.

Take this tiny excerpt from DIES IRAE:

“The mouth of the cave is complete in its darkness. A cold wind wafts up from the earth’s depths, carrying the scent of death. “Yep, this has got to be it,” I whisper.

Mikayel draws his sword and walks in. The descent is steep and narrow, giving way to an even floor littered with rocks and bones. Too many bones.

Everything is quiet. Stalactites line the cave’s ceiling like teeth meant to consume us. Small crevices recede into the walls.

And still, everything is quiet.”

My goal in this tiny snippet was to establish the setting in such a way as to build the tension the character is feeling. You will have to be the judge as to whether or not that was accomplished, but I would like to think it was.

Setting is a powerful tool in a writer’s arsenal. Sadly, it is one that is not always utilized. Is it one you are comfortable using?

For me, becoming more adept at using setting to establish tone and mood, as well as mirror the emotions, has been one of the best, most useful skills I’ve learned—a skill I am constantly working to develop through writing exercises that include practicing writing different descriptions of places, all to evoke specific feelings or moods.

Try this:

Pick a familiar setting—a beach or mountain landscape for example. Write a detailed description of that place. Now, make it scary and write that description. Make it romantic. Make it foreboding. Keep rewriting the basic description within different emotional contexts. The more you practice this, the more natural incorporating setting will become.

How do you use setting in your stories?