The Craft of Story: Mood & Tone

Mood is a crucial component of how audiences experience stories. The mood and tone of the opening scenes of a movie or literary work should prime the audience to understand the character, the challenges they face, and the author’s point of view about this set of circumstances. The subtle messages conveyed through mood and tone prime the audience to get inside the experience of the character’s reality and foreshadow the meaning of the story. As the story progresses, artful choices involving language, description, image, setting, metaphor and pacing create a realm of subtext operating alongside plot that works subjectively to bring audiences under the spell of the author’s sensibility and point of view. In this class we’ll challenge ourselves to exploit the elements at our disposal to control the audience’s experience of our stories, create the memorable sense of a lived experience, and convince audiences of our point of view.

Course Outline

Susan Hubbard, mood, tone, creative writing, fiction writing, scene, description

Notes

Online registration closes September 24 at 5 pm CT.

All Graham School courses use Canvas to distribute files and announcements. You will receive an invitation to join Canvas about a week before your course begins. Remote courses require you to login to Canvas to access the Zoom Classroom. Please visit the Liberal Arts Remote Learning Resources page to find step by step instructions for Canvas and Zoom.