Creating tone in your writing provides a texture to the work. It’s the emotional coloring that shapes how a reader feels, interprets, and remembers a story.
Just as music guides our reactions in film or an actor’s delivery transforms a performance onstage, tone determines the atmosphere on the page and reveals the narrator’s attitude toward events. Shift the tone, and the same scene becomes eerie, tender, or utterly flat.
Understanding tone isn’t about memorizing labels; it’s about learning how word choice, rhythm, and perspective shape the reader’s emotional experience. In this article, I will look at some examples, and offer you a Story Weapon to nail the right tone of your story.
Tone is the emotional texture of a story, shaping how readers feel about events through word choice, rhythm, and perspective rather than plot alone. By adjusting tone, you can transform the same scene into something tense, warm, eerie, or detached, making tone a powerful tool for voice, character, and reader engagement.
What is a tone and how can you use it?
Tone is the style or manner of expression you use in your writing. This is a big part of your narrative voice. It reflects not only what is being said, but who is saying it and how they see the world.
Here are some quick examples to give you an idea of different tones.
1. Formal Tone
Precise, elevated, and professional.
Example: “Given the circumstances, we must reconsider our course of action to ensure the best possible outcome.”
2. Informal / Conversational Tone
Casual, relaxed, similar to spoken language.
Example: “Honestly, we should probably rethink this before everything goes sideways.”
3. Humorous / Playful Tone
Light-hearted, witty, or intentionally silly.
Example: “I tried cooking lasagna last night, and now my smoke alarm and I are no longer on speaking terms.”
4. Sarcastic Tone
Mocking, ironic, often biting.
Example: “Oh great, another meeting. Just what I needed to make this perfect day even better.”
5. Optimistic Tone
Hopeful, positive, looking at the bright side.
Example: “Even though the storm knocked out the power, we still have each other—and a sky full of stars.”
6. Pessimistic Tone
Gloomy, doubtful, expecting the worst.
Example: “It doesn’t matter what we try; things always seem to fall apart in the end.”
7. Melancholic Tone
Sad, reflective, weighted with emotion.
Example: “The quiet house echoed with memories she could no longer bear to revisit.”
8. Tense / Suspenseful Tone
Creates unease, pressure, or anticipation.
Example: “Every creak in the hallway made him tighten his grip on the doorknob.”
9. Awe-struck / Reverent Tone
Filled with wonder, admiration, or respect.
Example: “The mountains rose before us like ancient guardians, timeless and unshakable.”
10. Detached / Clinical Tone
Emotionally neutral, objective, distant.
Example: “Subject A displayed consistent behavioral changes after the introduction of the stimulus.”
11. Warm / Compassionate Tone
Gentle, empathetic, full of care.
Example: “She wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and promised he wouldn’t have to face anything alone.”
12. Bitter / Resentful Tone
Harsh, sharp, filled with lingering anger.
Example: “Of course he apologized—just like he always did, once the damage was already done.”
13. Reflective / Contemplative Tone
Thoughtful, introspective.
Example: “Looking back, I realize that every wrong turn taught me something I couldn’t have learned otherwise.”
14. Inspirational Tone
Encouraging, uplifting, motivating.
Example: “You don’t need to be fearless—you only need to take the next brave step.”
“We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them.”
– Suzy Kassem
Examples of tone changes
There are about as many tones as there are adjectives: argumentative, loving, droll, jovial, aloof, etc. To explore various tones further, let’s mess around with the same paragraph in three different textures.
Example #1: Flat tone
To establish a base over which we can add some narrative flavor, we’ll start with a flat tone — direct, matter-of-fact, and uninterested in style. You may have read some works like this, but they’re understandably rarer than those with more colorful tones. A piece of legal writing would most likely be flat but very formal.
Here’s an example of a flat, informal tone:
Butterball downed his last vodka soda for the evening, setting it on the bar after the last gulp. He caught the attention of the bartender and pushed the glass toward her. As she put the glass away, he fished around in his pocket for his wallet. He pulled out a few denominations – two tens and two ones – and handed it to her. As he pocketed his wallet, he looked around the empty bar. At closing time, even most of the drunks had stumbled home. It was 2 a.m. and the only people left there were Butterball, the bartender, and me. This was when we met.
Most of the information delivered here is a statement of fact, though the narrator is certainly observant or at least paying close attention to the actions of Butterball. Still, there are no judgements passed on the proceedings of the paragraph and no opinions on the matter. The narrator is neither in favor of or against Butterball, and the bartender barely exists in the narrator’s perception. It’s all facts, no filler.
Example #2: Haunted tone
The tone we’re going for in this one is haunted, which means our goal is to fill the reader with apprehension. It’s like we’ve chosen a darker color palette. If the flat tone is a series of grays, this one should be more black, dark blue, and rich purple. We don’t need vampires or murderers to create a tone with some gloom and doom.
Butterball drained the remains of the vodka soda, his last for the evening. He placed it on the bar after the last gulp. The glass clinking against dull wood sounded louder than normal in the now still room. Some froth lingered on the rim of the glass and his lips. He made a gesture to the bartender and nudged the glass in her direction. With spidery thin fingers, she wordlessly snatched up the glass and put it in the sink. Not many in there anyway.
Butterball scrounged around his pockets for a way to pay his tab and came up with a worn leather wallet. He dumped it out on the bar: twenty-two dollars in crumpled bills. The bartender swiped it away without even looking up. I waited as Butterball put the wallet back in his presumably empty pockets. His gaunt eyes scanned the dingy bar. At closing time, even most of the drunks had stumbled home. It was 2 a.m. and the only people left were Butterball, the bartender, and me. This was when we first truly met, as I’d planned.
Though there are only slight differences in the proceedings of the scene, we’re in a completely different frame of mind. The choice of words changes the color of the surroundings. Now, the characters are weary and the place is as dingy as Butterball. He doesn’t just give the bartender the money, he dumps it out. The choice to focus on the froth on his lips and the gauntness of his features serves to make the reader feel a bit unclean.
There’s also slightly more character in the narrator. Unlike the flat tone, this one ends with the small reveal that the narrator has been waiting for Butterball. Though it is useful to communicate your tone with the events of the story, the way you color in the details is what gives your reader a sense of how everything feels and who is telling them the story.
Example #3: Soft tone
To contrast with the last example, let’s try to see the same scene through the eyes of a narrator who is more kind. This can be an innocent sort of kindness, though that’s rarer to find in a bar at 2 a.m.
Just as our inner state dictates the way we see the outside world, the perspective of the narrator informs the way the reader sees everything that happens. Even if you choose to have no narrator, you’re still the one speaking to the reader. You likely have some sort of tone, whether you’re aware of it or not. Even no tone, as we saw in the first example, is a choice.
Let’s see what the scene looks like with warmer colors.
Butterball chugged the remains of his vodka soda for the evening, slamming it on the bar with the last gulp rushing down his stomach to meet the rest. This would be his last drink for the evening. He waved to the bartender and pushed the glass closer to her side of the bar. She took the glass away as he started to settle up.
Butterball searched his pockets for his wallet and pulled out a well-worn leather number. It wasn’t thick, but he still produced twenty-two dollars in cash from its folds. The bills found the bartender’s waiting palm and the deal was done. Butterball looked around the empty bar as he put away the wallet. It was 2 a.m. and even the best of drunks are usually tapped out by then. The only people left there were Butterball, the bartender, and me. That’s when we met for the first time.
The tone of this description is slightly warmer than the original, though far from effusive. There’s more freedom in the descriptions, like describing a gulp of vodka meeting the rest of the drink in Butterball’s stomach. There are some colloquialisms, like calling a wallet a “leather number.” The diction has changed as well; Butterball is now waving at the bartender and the bills are finding her waiting palm. By giving life to the little things, it’s almost like the bar is better lit and better kept than the one in the haunted example. This is the texture provided by tone.
Your story weapon: Connect to the emotion of the scene
Tone isn’t a checklist—it’s an atmosphere. It radiates from the narrative voice and the emotional lives of your characters as we dive deeper into your story. When you focus on your character’s experience — what they fear, want, resent, hope for — you naturally begin selecting words, rhythms, and details that mirror that inner world. Tone flows most authentically when it grows out of human emotions rather than cold definitions.
Warmth, for instance, can appear in both formal and informal writing. A character might express affection with polished, deliberate phrasing or with loose, conversational language depending on their upbringing or general approach to life. What matters is not the level of diction but the underlying attitude the narrator or character holds toward what’s being described.
The same is true for colder, sadder, or more anxious tones: you signal them through the textures of your sentences, the imagery you gravitate toward, and the details you choose to highlight or omit. A melancholy narrator may linger on fading light or abandoned objects; an anxious narrator might fixate on small uncertainties or a sensory overload; a cold narrator might relay events with clipped, controlled detachment.
As tones shape the emotional “color” of your writing, they become one of your most powerful writing tools.
The tone helps distinguish one narrator’s voice from another’s, even if they’re describing identical events. Two characters might witness the same scene, but their tones as they interpret the facts before them can completely transform how the reader experiences it. This is how tone deepens character and clarifies perspective.
And importantly, tone is adjustable. It’s not locked in at the start of a story. You can heighten it when you want to intensify tension, soften it to create contrast, or shift it entirely as characters grow or circumstances change. Think of tone as a dimmer switch rather than a light that’s simply on or off. Each adjustment can subtly redefine how the story feels.
Does the tone of your pages feel off? Find out more about connecting to your characters in my next workshop: The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, Story Day
