Tone of Voice
Have you heard someone say: "Don't use that tone of voice with me" or "I don't like your tone of voice"? It is usually said when someone believes the other person is being insolent, threatening, belligerent, angry or sarcastic. In short, the tone of voice used reflects the speaker's attitude to someone or something.
How Does it Relate to Writing?
That everyday meaning of tone of voice is easy to grasp. Happily, you can apply it to the literary meaning of tone and learn to use it to good effect in your writing. Tone in a novel is the author's attitude to his or her subject. This can emerge unconsciously, but most often it is a deliberate construct of the writer. We choose our tone because we want to influence and manipulate our readers.
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Manipulating the Reader
Do you realise the extent to which authors are manipulating your feelings and your response to their story? Are you aware that you, as author, will do this to your own readers, too?
This manipulation may be as simple as choosing the right words and scenes to ensure that readers thoroughly dislike one character, often the villain, but are charmed by the protagonist of your story. In a romance, for example, the reader will probably fall in love with the character that the protagonist falls in love with as the story progresses. How many women yearn for a Mr Darcy?!
However, tone can engineer this manipulation of the reader at a deeper level. Perhaps the author wants to show the evils of slavery, chauvinism, racism, capitalism, socialism ... or whatever ism is a favourite target of that particular author. You can bet that, by the end of the book, a very thought-provoking argument will have been presented to the reader, while they believed they were just enjoying a great story! The reader can, of course, resist the author's persuasion, but great novels have been responsible for a shift in public attitudes on many social evils.
The Narrator's Tone
An overall tone can be set that is happy, positive, gloomy, negative, serious, lighthearted, cynical or satirical. As you can see, any of those tones can be achieved personally in your tone of voice when you speak to friends. In a novel, much of this work is done by the narrator or the narrating voice that the author chooses - yes, every aspect of writing is a deliberate choice, even if you are not aware you are making one.
As writers, we have only two tools to work with: punctuation marks and words - words being primary, by far the more important of the two. We communicate tone by a careful choice of words. A sun shower might sweep across the garden, refreshing the world, heightening the colours (a positive happy vibe) or a cold, leaden rain might leave flowers tattered and drooping and turn the pathways to slush (a gloomy, negative image). As for characters, the narration might read:
a) Miss Bowler was a fidgety, scrawny woman with a pallid face like a corpse OR
b) Miss Bowler was a lively, slender woman with a pale delicate complexion.
Both those lines speak of much the same movements, body shape and skin tone, but there is no mistaking that one is a negative image and the other a positive one. Later in the story, we might see Miss Bowler (a) kick a dog... or Miss Bowler (b) giving money to a homeless man. Thus, the author's attitude to a particular character can also be rendered by choice of actions in scenes, which help convey the overall tone.
Tone in Revealing Character
You can detect the author's underlying tone in the way he or she reveals a character. This is not always a good/bad dichotomy but a more subtle revelation, sometimes aided by a little satire.
Here is a snippet from my novel Beetle Creek, set in a small Australian bush village in the 1950s, where the narrator, Jack, is talking about his father.
Dad was the reader in the family and had a penchant for big words. I don't think Mum could read or write at all, so the whole family was doubly impressed with Dad's literary bent -- especially Dad.
"I read the Sunday papers from cover to cover every week, whether there's anything in 'em or not," Dad often boasted, "and I can get through a Zane Grey Western in a week."
Dad had an extensive personal library, acquired in job lots at local farm auctions. He once bid sixpence for an Oxford Dictionary at Maguire's clearance sale and brought it home proudly.
"You never know, Mother, it might come in handy some day. One of the boys might go on to th' university." He always hoped that one of us might 'gravitate from university.' Indeed, he often said he might have gravitated himself, but for a lack of education.
I am sure you can see from this that the tone is facetious. Dad is not actually a literary giant, has no idea how universities work and his penchant for 'big words' only gets him into trouble by choosing the wrong terms. I am poking a little gentle fun at Dad's expense, but nevertheless, the reader will not just dismiss him as an ignorant fool (I hope), because there is a warmth to the description that tells us Dad, for all his foibles, is a lovable character.
You might also notice a social comment: Dad hopes one of the boys might go to university ... even though there are two girls in his family. By this simple device, I hope to alert my readers to the prevailing injustice of that era where higher education was considered wasted on girls who were destined for marriage and motherhood.
Tone through a Character's Words
Tone (the author's own attitude) is sometimes delivered by a character in the story -- one that the reader has first been encouraged to like and respect. After all, if the villain were to deliver the author's message, it would likely be dismissed by the reader.
In my novel Aunt Harriet's Legacy, I put words into the mouth of Fred, a wise and wily bush worker, a humorous character with a philosophical bent. The protagonist of the story, Sarah, lives in colonial New South Wales and is strongly impressed by what her English forebears have done in colonising Australia. Fred, a second-generation Australian, will not agree and Sarah takes him to task.
“You have a uniquely sour vision of the English. Look what they have achieved, for goodness sake. They have made every heathen wilderness an outpost of the realm.” I think it was my link to Sir Charles McCarthy that put me on the offensive. “Wherever they go, they bring light, beauty and civilization.”
“If you think my view sour, then you must ask the blackfellows what they think of the English.”
I put my hands on my hips like a scold. “Fred, that is a glib remark. You know as well as I, there is not a blackfellow for miles. I doubt I have seen more than a dozen in my life. They are all gone.”
“I rest my case,” he said, then strolled into the house to inspect the mass of bacon and eggs spitting and bubbling in the frying pan.
I use Fred (and a little cynical humour) to point out that colonisation did not bring civilization and light to the indigenous population, but rather the destruction of their culture and, indeed, wholesale slaughter of Aboriginal tribes. Thus, I present my own attitude to the colonisation of Australia (and many other areas of the world) via Fred, to balance the glowing account that my naive protagonist delivers.
Conclusion
I hope that I have demonstrated how important tone can be in adding depth to your novel and in exploring the theme that underpins your story. [Theme will be examined in another blog post]. You can see that the tone of the narration - the author's own attitude to his or her subject matter - can influence the attitude of the reader to both the topic being explored and to the qualities possessed by the characters who play out the events. As well, the tone can be furthered by the dialogue as certain characters express contrasting opinions on thematic issues. Novice writers can attune themselves to this aspect of writing by reading widely and trying to identify what message the author wants to communicate. It may be as basic as 'Crime does not pay' or a much more profound message. Once you believe you have determined that message, look for the evidence of tone that the author used to get that message across.