Hello I'm a new person who has been reading the site for a while and I wanted to ask advice on tone. I am about 40k words into my novel (which is a comic novel. After a lively broad satirical start, I need the tone to go darker to really build the tension for a later denouement so to speak - and whilst I can feel this is right to make the book right - I find it very difficult to control the tone of the work - it is going more surreal rather than dark. It is something i haven't seen discussed that much and I wondered if anyone had any advice/exercises/similar difficulties.

Thanks

Snowbell, welcome to the site.

It is disconcerting when you can't make your writing do what you thought you wanted it to. But I do think that usually when something seems to be coming out in a certain way, willy-nilly, the best thing to do is to let it. Nine times out of ten it's a perfectly sound instinct that's dictating what should happen, and if that means the hero turns out to be a villain, or your carefully crafted comedy comes out as something much weirder, so be it. For now, anyway. That way you discover what it's 'really' about, which may not be what your conscious mind planned at all; sometimes our instincts for what makes a good story are much sounder than our idea of 'market' or 'what people want' or even 'what kind of writer I want to be'. When you've got the whole first draft down there, it's much easier to see the species and shape and scale of the story, and trim and prune and train the branches that stick out the wrong way back into shape.

I was delighted to discover that Marina Lewycka wrote A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian thinking it was dark and sad, and was extremely disconcerted to have her agent and editor roaring with laughter over the first draft. But obviously at some level their reaction made sense to her, since she revised it as comedy, and it is, indeed, very, very funny, albeit in a rather dark way, and does have a coherent and consistent tone.

Emma

Thanks Emma,

That is reassuring although I am still wrestling with it. I think I need to build tension across this particular section of the book or else the later section wont work. I am finding this difficult in a comic novel as the comedy punctures the tension to some extent. Maybe I'm trying for too much at once and should relax a bit and let the first draft do its thing as you say and then rework it.

Thanks.

Snowbell - It could be dangerous to completely change the tone half-way through a novel. If what has appealed to the reader initially disappears at a later stage in the book, he/she may just put it aside. If you have a natural style it would surely be better to stick with it in the main. The 'darkness' can be provided by the thoughts, doubts and reservations of the character(s) even though the tone may still be amusing. It's quite legitimate for the author to look at dark events with an amused tone. Evelyn Waugh managed it brilliantly in Brideshead Revisited and even more so in the Sword of Honour trilogy in which the hero goes from enthusiasm through to dark disillusionment but the events and people around him are always described in a genuinely amusing manner.

However, if you want to insert some genuinely dark bits (or bits in some other different tone) how about, as an exercise, finding an author whose tone approximates to what you are looking for. Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon) and Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure) come to mind but there are thousands. Then take a couple of paragraphs of what you want to do and try to write them as a pastiche of the style of the selected author. It may help make the break with your normal way of doing things. Whether the result is OK or not is another matter! Just a suggestion...

Chris

Thanks, Chris

I may try that as an exercise

I understand that completely changing tone is dangerous, however it seems to me there are many novels that change tone counterpointally (is that a word) for example the Lord of the Rings goes from light and comic and everyday (hobbit land) to the sombre and serious and epic (Aragorn and the elves) and that would seem to be partly the point.

Now feeling slightly confused about difference between tone and voice. I'm seeing voice as being the attitude of the author and the distance and filter through which you view the characters. I see tone as being more the creation of atmosphere. For example, I would see the voice of parts of wuthering heights being a little prissy and snobby and fussy (Nelly) the tone as being dark and elemental. Is this what other people see them as?

The voice of the novel I am writing is fairly worked out and is dry and playful and slightly irreverent. The tone i want to achieve for this section is darker and with more tension, although amusing. Because the voice is consistent the novel feels consistent to me at the moment and the characters are certainly present and the action is coming out of them, so to speak, so that isn't really the problem. I have decided to concentrate on tension and see if the tone problem sorts itself out.

Thanks again for the advice
rosy