Story Tone

What is it? How to find it? How to use it to make a story unique?

I love teaching my Prep: From Concept to Outline online workshop. During Week 1, I have writers start at the beginning with this question: Who is your Protagonist? From there through a series of 6 weekly writing assignments and exercises, a remarkable thing happens: Stories emerge into being. It is quite literally an act of creation and even though I’ve led this workshop — which I created 7 years ago — over 30 times, the marriage of creativity and productivity resulting in fully fleshed out stories never ceases to amaze me.

It’s also incredibly gratifying to see writers at the end of the workshop all charged up to dive into page-writing. They’ve gotten to know their characters. They have a clear sense of what the story structure is. Instead of having to worry about what scene to write next or whether this character is working or not, since they’ve already figured that out breaking their story in prep, when they write pages they can focus on the fun stuff: atmosphere, flavor, entertainment.

It’s hard work, there’s no way around it. A story does not write itself and the bottom line for each of the weekly assignments is to immerse writers in their story universe and engage their characters, so that the plot emerges from character development.

There are times in the process which can be especially challenging. One example of that arose in the current prep workshop I’m leading. During Week 5 in which the class focused on expanding plotline points from an earlier iteration of four— Beginning, Act One end, Act Two end, Ending — this kind of left brain work can leave a writer questioning whether what they have in the way of plot is compelling or not.

So a question arose this week: Is what makes a story distinctive plot twists? Or is it more important to focus on having a unique tone? If the latter, how to find that tone?

Here is my response from our online forums:

It’s not surprising someone hits on this issue at this particular point in the prep process because what you are dealing with — Ten Major Plotline Points — is about securing the backbone of the story structure. That is pretty dry stuff. Event. Event. Event. So on.

Your instincts are right: A story’s tone is super important. But what do we mean by ‘tone’? Some say it’s the writer’s attitude toward the story as opposed to voice which is the writer’s personality. Maybe. But to me, no matter the definition, it’s all about the characters. They carry tone, they convey tone. Their personalities, decisions, actions, dialogue, interactions, all of that combined is at the core of a story’s overall tone.

This is why during the brainstorming part of the Prep workshop, I have everyone do those character development exercises, particularly focusing on direct engagement (Interview, Monologue, Sit-Down). The idea is to tap into the beating heart and pulsing soul of each character so they start to come to life in each writer’s imagination.

It’s why I have people zero in on what lies at the core of the Protagonist’s transformation arc. That is fundamentally about emotion and psychology, and every other character, every event services and supports that central dynamic of the story.

As we move forward in to the scene-by-scene outline, I will ask everyone to think about why each character is in each scene, what their respective goals are, how that influences tension and conflict in each scene, what archetype ‘mask’ would each character be inclined to ‘wear’ in order to try to mold and manipulate things so they can achieve that goal in that scene, as well as their overall want.

For the most part, plots are pretty traditional. Yes, there may be a twist (“Oh, my God! Malcolm Crowe is actually dead” / The Sixth Sense), but the omnipresence of the Hero’s Journey and Three Act Structure (Separation / Initiation / Return) exists for a reason: It’s the foundation of Story Structure. Yes, we can play around with narrative — tell a story backwards, nonlinear, backward and forward, etc — but tone is more tied to characters. And here’s the thing: Characters are limitless in terms of their personalities. Like snowflakes. Each one is different.

Think of the movie Baby Driver. It has a lively, musically-infused tone. That may well have been a narrative angle Edgar Wright started with, but he was smart enough to ground that idea in a character: Baby. The story’s Protagonist suffered a tragic car accident as a child, developed tinnitus and as a result listens to music through headphones all the time. That specific aspect to Baby’s backstory allowed Wright to fashion his desired approach to the story and out of that the touchstone for the story’s tone.

So here we are at this stage of the prep process dealing with the structure of the Plotline and we find ourselves relying on our left brain. Linear. Logic. Sequential. Dry stuff. We look at the plot. Seems pretty flat. No surprises.

Sure, there may very well be some twists we can discover as we go forward. As far as I’m concerned, Baby Driver had three and each one was tied to a choice a character made (Buddy, Doc, and Baby himself, each choice happening in Act III; I won’t mention them here — no spoilers — but if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I mean). But the overall structure of the movie is Hero’s Journey and frankly aligns nicely with Narrative Throughline, the scene-by-scene outline you will end up with at the end of this workshop.

You want tone… flavor… feel… atmosphere… that special magic that movies have? My advice: Focus on the characters.

You want surprising plot turns? Again, you can rely on the characters. How would they act? What would they do? What is their Want? What is their Need? People can act in surprising ways. Well, so can characters. As noted, the three most surprising plot turns in Baby Driver emerged from character choices. So if you feel like your plot is pretty ‘derivative’, how about spending time with your characters and imagine, ‘What surprising thing might they do?’ They just might actually surprise you!

As you work out Ten Major Plotline Points, that’s why I have you fleshing out each subplot. Remember: Subplot = Relationship. And relationships are between characters. Once you’ve got a preliminary sense of plotline points, I encourage you to spend time with each character relationship and get more of a sense of what’s going on there.

Characters are the heart, soul, blood, and guts of any story. That is tone’s heartbeat. That’s where the magic of movies comes from.

Stories are organic and Prep: From Concept to Outline is structured to respect that reality. But whenever someone is having issues with any aspect of the story-crafting process, I just keep saying the same thing: Go back to your characters. Work with them.

Whether it’s tone or twists, the best way to sort through that is engage your characters. It’s their story. Let them lead the way.

Because of my position as assistant professor at the DePaul University School of Cinematic Arts, I only offer two group sessions of Prep: From Concept to Outline per year . The last one for 2017 starts next Monday, July 17.

To learn more about it, go here. To enroll, go here.

P.S.: Unlike other online educational sites which rely solely on peer feedback, I provide extensive notes for each of the weekly teleconferences. It really is an incredible learning opportunity. I look forward to working on your story with you!