Zion Hamilton
asked
Nicholas Galante:
I'm a student at Southern Lehigh High School, and my creative writing teacher, Mr.Hershey, told us that you will be coming in to talk. My question is, how are you able to keep a consistent tone in your book? did you often need to read through it again and again to know what tone you had? I have trouble with writing my novel because I'm worried I will mess up the tone.
Nicholas Galante
I am! I'll be happy to discuss this with you in more detail then, if you'd like, because this is a complicated question with a lot of caveats and exceptions to it. I'll do my best to keep this succinct, however.
Tone can be tricky, and rereading is definitely a huge part of it. There were a number of times during my revisions that I found myself thinking "this isn't quite right." The first chapter of Morningstar, for example, was always the same scene, and the same events happened in the same order, but it took several attempts before I got the tone just right. Part of that was the fact that it was the first chapter; I knew how I wanted to introduce the character of Mrs. Delaney, but until I looked back on the first chapter as a component of the whole, I wasn't aware that my original tone wasn't right for her character. It can be hard to know exactly what you're going for before the work as a whole has taken shape.
The best advice I can give is not to get too hung up in worrying about it. You'll find that a good portion of tone comes naturally, because you have a deliberate intent when writing any given scene. You know if you want it to be gloomy, or joyful, or suspenseful, and you'll purposefully choose your words to reach that end. You're not always going to get the tone right on the first try, but that's what revising is for.
Tone can be tricky, and rereading is definitely a huge part of it. There were a number of times during my revisions that I found myself thinking "this isn't quite right." The first chapter of Morningstar, for example, was always the same scene, and the same events happened in the same order, but it took several attempts before I got the tone just right. Part of that was the fact that it was the first chapter; I knew how I wanted to introduce the character of Mrs. Delaney, but until I looked back on the first chapter as a component of the whole, I wasn't aware that my original tone wasn't right for her character. It can be hard to know exactly what you're going for before the work as a whole has taken shape.
The best advice I can give is not to get too hung up in worrying about it. You'll find that a good portion of tone comes naturally, because you have a deliberate intent when writing any given scene. You know if you want it to be gloomy, or joyful, or suspenseful, and you'll purposefully choose your words to reach that end. You're not always going to get the tone right on the first try, but that's what revising is for.
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