In middle school, my language arts teacher, Ms. Smith, taught my class what the difference is between ‘tone’ and ‘mood’, within literature circles. I left eight grade ingrained with the knowledge that: “The tone is the feeling that the author wants to give to the reader”, and, “The mood is the feeling the reader gets from the author.” On random afternoons every few weeks during the third and fourth quarters of the academic school year, my class and I would say these two phrases in unison, as though us retaining this information would be the deciding criterion of our value to society. Ms. Smith had us memorize these sentences with such desparation that once, I actually felt fear that I wasn’t going to able to follow along with the rest of the class, mid-chorus.
Having retained the two terms, ‘tone’ and ‘mood’, for nine years, I understand why they are so important to appreciating good writing. When you start reading an article in the New York Times versus the St. Paul Downtown Voice, you will always read the NY Times article in-full and leave the last 99 percent of the Voice’s story unread. Case-in-point: I always force myself to read the Star Tribune every weekend because I subscribe to it. There are some articles that I read beginning-to-end, as though a current were pushing me along, with my head constantly above water. I always take note of those special contributors who author the feature articles that unexpectedly keep my interest, and nine-times-out-of-ten, they are writers from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the Washington Post. Maybe non-fiction is not the best example for my point.
Let’s consider “The Office”, the best thing I’ve come across since David Byrne several years ago. Now, this is completely subjective. The writers of The Office set a “funny” tone, so the viewer receives a “funny” mood. This is the type of media that I am drawn to: fun.I have always thought that if I were to write something, it would be a brutally honest and depressing view of the shortcomings in my upbringing. Now, I realize that I enjoy funny things mostly, and it’s kind of funny that I have to pick this realization apart like it’s a lab practical. I find it a better fit for me to write things with a “funny” tone since this is the media that I relate best to. Right?
I had meant to relate ‘tone’ to ‘voice’ in this post, but now that I’ve pretty much dissected the evolution of me watching “The Office” and realizing that I should write with a specific tone, finding the connection between tone and voice seems like an insurmountable task. Maybe more time would answer that one?