Setting the mood and thematic elements

Yesterday I listed a few examples of what to think about when setting the mood: Speed, Weather, Colors, Lighting. Does the living space reflect the person? Chapter Titles: Quotes, Lyrics, Titles, Names, Songs etc...

Anyone who is an avid reader or movie watcher most likely has a good sense of how a story should be told. Go with that. You pick up on clues, perhaps it’s a dark and stormy night, with creepy music playing, doors creek, floorboards squeak, lightning flashes and illuminated a shape that wasn’t there before. This all sets the scene. You know what’s coming next, maybe not exactly what happens but you get the gist. Writing is much the same way, except you are coming up with all of that in your head. You know how you want your characters to feel and to act, and you, as the writer, need to create a physical atmosphere to represent that. There is one exception and I will mention that last.

Now speed may not make much sense in word form, but it does, I assure you. How fast the scene plays out. Is your character frantic? Or perhaps they are stalling, then the scene should play out slower. How fast does your character get from one place to another? Pacing is very important in movies, I believe this should be attributed to being important to books as well. Some books are just Go Go Go (most Dan Brown books I’ve read) These are great books and the kind that don’t put down, which is good, but I tend to feel quite worn out after a reading session like that and can’t read another like it or some time. In order for the fast parts to seem fast, you need slower parts… the intrigue perhaps or the mystery. The calm before the storm…

Which leads me to the next item, weather. This can play a big role. Dark stormy night yes, but then you have the winds of change. A light drizzle is different than pouring. Is it a quick stormy, or is the sky gray as far as the eye can see? The sun is shining, is it nice warmth or a stifling heat bearing down on all the inhabitants?

Colors: This one is bit trickier to play with, as it is opened to much interpretation. There are some tried and true methods here though, White means good, Black means bad. Red is blood or love etc… I encourage a writer to break those molds and create something different. Perhaps your good characters wear blue and bad ones wear yellow, then your main character who is conflicted wears green, or has green eyes, or lives in a green car, drives a green car. Color is where a lot of the deeper level of writing comes into play… or all those little things that most readers don’t consciously think about, but the writer delights in adding, or at least I do.

Lighting: This doesn’t seem as important in writing as inn film, but it can be used to the writers advantage. Most readers are movie savvy. Create movie images using your words. Create a shadow of miniblinds, light the character from behind so the face is in shadow. Tell the readers these things, these visual clues so they can visualize it in their head and make it more real. A brightly lit room will feel different than one with lots of shadows. But a brightly lit room can be a bad thing too, if your MC is trying to hide.

Living Space: In film this would be the art director’s pet project. The buildings, the furniture, the paintings on the wall, all add to the personality of the character. Do they like Monet or Dali, a big difference there. Furniture modern or shabby, hand me down. Is their apartment decorated at all? Do they move a lot? No place is really a home? Is their house pretty mundane with the exception of one room? In the business the saying is Location, Location, Location… and with good reason, people affiliate locations with certain traits, good neighborhood, across the tracks…

Chapter Titles: Ooh, this is my latest baby. Chapter 1, 2… etc. Can get boring. Most of use just overlook them unless we need to remember where we are in the book. Chapter titles have a draw back however. If your reader is so involved that they just have to keep reading, the chapter titles can be distracting and take you a bit out of the story. But a proper chapter title will add quite a bit more to the reader’s experience. The writer can really add to the theme with a proper title. Using a common reference, such as “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and associating it with your chapter will add a lot, especially if you aren’t referring to the death of someone, but perhaps the death of an idea, a relationship etc.

Physical environment: Samantha, my MC (main character), is feeling aimless and unsure of what to do. I have her walking on a winding path, where she can't see around the next bend. She ends up in a carefully planned garden, surrounded by unknown paths and wilderness. While she may have this one moment figured out... She still has many paths and the only one she knows is the one she came from.

She is feeling small and out of her element... So I put her in a large unknown place that has high ceilings.

Chap 4, Samantha wears a bathrobe that is too big for her. She's going through a major change in her life, she is new to this paranormal world and knows virtually nothing about it, she is as innocent as a child, and appears so by her mode of dress.

The one exception I talked about earlier? When shouldn’t the atmosphere reflect the main characters feelings? When you don’t want it to. When you want to create discord between the environment and your MC use juxtaposition, in fact all of the items listed for setting the mood can be used adversely to set a different mood than the one the character is feeling, thus creating… yup you guess it, conflict. You have a mass murdered going to Chuck E Cheese’s… A person so incredibly happy and it’s storming out. Your MC is shy and is forced to where some revealing outfit. Conflict of images also creates conflict in character and plot.


Training scene from Rocky... notice the surroundings, the clothing, the colors, or lack there of.