What tone are you going for in your story?

I myself am going for a world half full tone, probably most similar to Fallout's.

The setting's has a sort of (light) Grey And Black morality. The nicest faction is about as moral as the NCR, and the evillest is basically INGSOC. The world is a relatively dangerous place to live in-humans are certainly not the top of the food chain here.

However, it's implied that it's quite possible, perhaps even inevitable, that things will eventually improve.

edited 28th Nov '15 3:31:59 PM by Protagonist506

And now I'm writing a story that has an even worse Cerebus Rollercoaster.

The main protagonists are essentially drafted into an XCOM-esque organization, they fight horrifying monsters created by an vile ecoterrorist group that are able to destroy an entire town (or city) using nothing more than low-powered Power Armor, and every mission could be their last.

It's also a story with near zero interpersonal drama(in contrast to my other story), everybody seems to take a page out of Things XCOM Operatives Are No Longer Allowed To Do, and in-base, there's much humor to go around. Even in battle, there's a LOT of Casual Danger Dialogue.

It's kind of jarring, to say the least.

edited 30th Nov '15 11:16:31 AM by handlere

I have two stories in which I'm essentially attempting to explore the experience of a type of character—adventurers (of the fantasy sort) in one and vengeful ghosts in the other—through the lens of an individual character of that type.

Another tone that I like to approach is what I call "Anti-Horror". There's lots of scary things and horror tropes, but the story's usually about surviving and ultimately destroying said monsters and villains. As the protagonist becomes increasingly more badass, it becomes more of a mook horror show-the villains and monster ultimately become afraid of him.

I tend to "bob" in and out of tones in my writing, I don't stick to just one tone. But I never dive too far into a certain tone, such as a dark moment that never enters the "doom and gloom" department, or a more lighthearted one that's not Tastes Like Diabetes.

You know what I'm getting at? :)

So he becomes something like The Dreaded, then? That's cool. Granted I can't stop imagining vampires and werewolves staying in for the night out of sheer terror, but it sounds like a cool concept. I've always put more stock in stories that have heroes fighting against a conflict/issue than just trying to weather the storm. But as they say, YMMV.

Yep, I get it. Writing is a real balancing act, and if you go to far with pretty much anything — characters, plot threads, even techniques — then it'll make for a real mess. Granted there's nothing stopping you from pushing those boundaries, soooooooooo...yeah, go nuts. To a reasonable extent.

In my current plan, I think I'm going for an ultimately cynical worldview.

Revolutionaries often become dictators, the hero in one arc becomes the big bad in later ones, and most importantly, permanent peace never comes. Even when heroes win, they live with the idea that another war will eventually come, it's just a matter of how long can they maintain this peace.

In Almost Night, I go for dark humor. Crosses the Line Twice at some points, with just enough seruousness to make the characters' deaths tragic.

He does. It's justified by the fact that he eventually becomes a super soldier known as an Archon. And he develops into a rather intimidating stoic. Basically, imagine if John Preston or JC Denton was a bit of a church militant.

He actually inverts Evil-Detecting Dog as part of the package. He just sort of emits a field which causes beings Made of Evil (particularly, dumb ones) to just sort of feel uncomfortable around him. Zombies, for example, hesitate to attack him. Having said that, more powerful "legendary" monsters aren't afraid of him. For example, normal vampire might be afraid of him, but Dracula merely thinks of him as a Worthy Opponent. The Antichrist barely considers him a threat.

The issue is that anti-horror can be just stright action and your chararter become a buffy or winchester.

IN my case I one for the serious and my humor come as weird, like running gag consist in one of my villians loosing his arm and replacing every,single,damn,time but from most part I want to be somewhat dark and I prefer to have diferent endings, I mean the big bad can be defeat and the work to be save, that dosent stop one of his minion getting away with his deep because he betray him to save his head and never getting any problem for it.

In fact I freely admit that I want to....let said, "Punch in gut" my readers sometimes, I have seen plenty of moment in fiction throw there just for the sake of the audience: the villian being scared of the hero or having a crub stomp battle just so the public can said "FUCK YEAH!" I consider that fanservice, so if a hero is fighting a villian, he would throw EVERYTHING in order to defeat him/her.

So what more to said....like other troper said I want to put a sense of wonder, in my case I borrow a lot to warhammer 40.000 and his over-the-top gothic imagery, when dealing wit the fantastic and imposible I want to put that feeling in context.

For my own work, I'd say I'm going for a setting of cynicism that ultimately, begrudgingly, gives into idealism.

By which I mean, the world is shit, many of the people in the world are shit, and the characters acknowledged that the country they are fighting for is rotten, tyrannical, and corrupt. But in fighting for that country, they pave the way for a Manipulative Bastard to rise to power, and change said country. To use his dishonourable methods to bring about honourable changes and redeem said corrupt nation.

The general tone I'm going for in my current work is that of a world of both thrilling adventure and constant danger. I want the main premise of the story to be clear and easy to understand, that being an internal war between an empire of anarchistic terrorists and the upholders of the law within my take on the wild, wild west, which the main hero gets sucked into. However, I also want there to be a constant air of mystery surrounding the characters and the history of the country the story takes place in (the history is very important to the plot).

As for the specifics, I want to make the story feel gritty and "real". There isn't any magic, gods or superhuman abilities for the characters to fall back on, there's just the characters' own wits... and guns. That said, I aim for a specific balance between levity and seriousness. It's going to be the serious aspects of the story that drive everything, but I want the story to keep the fun that comes with western movies as to make the harshest moments more potent. I also want the influence of the villains to feel enormous and foreboding, like the main character and her companions are less than ants when compared to the conflict they've gotten themselves into. This is a world where even the insignificant mooks can be incredibly dangerous, let alone the major villains.

I go about accomplishing a specific tone like this by writing out a "rule sheet" for my story detailing what I wish to accomplish in terms of tone. I personally set these rules based less-used tropes that I like to see... but I also tend to set the rules based on common tropes I hate and want to avoid. Once that's done, I go through all the character creation processes and plot structuring that don't need to be detailed here, then create my drafts of the story. After that, I go back to the initial rule sheet for the story and make sure all the boxes are checked, and make edits based on where I either could have done better or where I completely messed up. An outside opinion can help here too.

Welp, hope that did something.

I want to arise strong feelings Adult Fear from appropriate members of the audience at certain points. I want the audience to laugh at the brief amounts of Comic Relief throughout the story. And my aim for the ending is a Bittersweet Ending that, if I succeed with what I'm doing, will cause the audience to burst into full on (cathartic) Inelegant Blubbering.

Are you sure you want to do that? It feels like there's too much Adult Fear going around these days. Even the banner ad for TV Tropes 1.3 was linked to it for some reason.

One of the characters in my work engages in a lot of not so ethical behavior (don't worry it is actually addressed at one point) in order to protect their child. I want the audience to understand the character's motivation and not risk them being seen as a hypocrite, especially as this is one of the major characters.

Admittedly however, I may end up changing the opening of my story for using a possibly inappropriately strong example of this (especially because I'm worried it could upset people to the point they don't want to keep reading)

edited 1st Mar '16 2:19:03 PM by TheMuse

Generally I'm going for a Earn Your Happy Ending with my cast both canon and OC's.

The tone I am going is what I would call dark, yet idealistic.

People are generally either good or lost, and there is no such a thing as an nonredeemable villain, but at the same time the universe is a chaotic place, in which fate is not kind, and good people may and very often do die before seeing their missions fulfilled. And in the end, things are generally much worst than they started on the short term, although there is a chance a better world will rise from the ashes, and the characters who survived in general become wiser from their trials.

As for more specific aspects, I wish to invoke an air of mistrust and secrecy between the characters, as long as it is plausible for them to keep those secrets, and also keep constant the theme of self-discovery, as the characters confront things they hid away from themselves.

edited 6th Mar '16 1:37:27 PM by EternaMemoria

Graham Lewis, bassist and frequent lyricist and singer for one of my all-time favourite bands, Wire, has said that more often than not, the aim of his music and words is not to portray a situation or even a feeling, but evoke in the listener a combination of emotions for which there are no precise words, ineffable or in-between feelings, an "Emotion X." Ideally, I want to be able to do that through my writing, at least sometimes. I want to short people's emotional circuits and cross their mental streams in engaging ways. But that's easier to pull of in music, where non-verbal associations and non-representative expressions are the norm. Prose is less ambiguous, but at the same time requires more effort on the part of the audience.

In terms of my current big work, I want to give the reader the same sensation as when one is unsure whether one is awake or dreaming, as when waking abruptly from a very deep sleep or having gone without sleep for a very long time. One may feel perfectly pleasant or neutral on one level, but on another there is this sense of attenuation, this combination of paranoid fear and casual acceptance based in an understanding that anything can happen at any moment, whether it will or not. When something strange, terrible or miraculous happens, I want the reader to feel it with every fibre of their being, but I also want them to feel like it makes sense, like they knew deep down it couldn't happen any other way even if they hoped or expected that it would. Nothing should feel like it comes out of nowhere and nothing should feel pointless, even if it does nothing to "advance the plot," because everything should feel significant and loaded with potential.

But ultimately, even if the whole world feels like a series of quivering veils over some horrible, indescribable void, I want each character and all of their thoughts and emotions and sensations to be undeniably present, the dreamers to the dream, even when they may seem more or less real to one another. Who these people are and what compels them drives everything else, and I want the reader to believe in them.

I guess there's a certain quality of solipsism in that, but really, my story's not that inaccessible, I swear!

Maybe comedic with some dark drama from time to time

Realistic but still optimistic.

Hmm... Do we have a trope for that?

i honestly don't know

It seems like the closest ones are A World Half Full and Crapsaccharine World. But I don't think that either one fits 100 %.

I don't really aim for a specific tone, I just write and let the story decide it's tone.

I'm going for a story that starts out being about as dramatic as the last episode of Black Books - so not very. And then eventually it'll enter In Bruges territory.

The characters themselves are very cynical and depressing, but it's essentially Played for Laughs a lot of the time.

Ultimately it's a Black Comedy/Dramedy.

edited 1st May '16 4:32:09 PM by trashconverters