Tone
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Tone is the storyteller’s attitude toward the subject matter and the audience. The story’s tone is conveyed by way of word choice, sentence rhythm, and overall emotional register of the narrative. Whereas mood describes what an audience feels while hearing a story, tone describes how the storyteller feels about the scenes they’re sharing; possibly reverent, matter-of-fact, wry, tender, welcoming, or defiant.
In personal storytelling, tone is one of the most revealing choices a storyteller makes, as the same event can be told in a variety of tones depending on how they want the audience to react to the story. A challenging childhood can be recounted with humor, longing or bitterness. Sometimes humor is the best option, while a tone of clinical detachment takes on a more serious tone. Each choice conveys to the audience as much about the storyteller’s relationship to their own past as the basic facts themselves.
And tone doesn’t have to stay fixed throughout the story. The opening could be light, with self-deprecating humor, then shift towards a softer, more vulnerable style as the story deepens. Alternately, the narrative may shift from anger to calmness as the narrator works through an traumatic experience over time. These shifts, when handled intentionally, mirror the way we process difficult events – rarely with a single emotional key from beginning to end.
Audiences can accept a variety of emotional registers, from dark humor or unflinching honesty to warm nostalgia, as long as the storyteller commits to it and remains consistent. What breaks an audience’s trust is a tone that wavers between registers without there being a clear reason for such a shift.
Examples
“My father taught me plenty about hard work, mostly by demonstrating exactly how much of yourself you could lose to a job that would replace you within a week of your funeral.”
“I like to tell people my first marriage lasted eighteen months, which is technically true, though it makes it sound like I gave it a fair shot rather than white-knuckling it for a year and a half out of sheer stubbornness.”
“The diagnosis came on a Tuesday. I remember noting, almost from a distance, that the fluorescent lights in the office buzzed at a slightly different pitch than the ones in the waiting room.”
“My mother sat with me through every treatment, every terrible cafeteria coffee, every 3 a.m. worry, and I don’t know how to properly thank someone for simply refusing to leave.”
“I used to tell this story as a joke – the time I got fired the same week my apartment flooded – because laughing at it felt safer than admitting how frightened I actually was. I don’t tell it as a joke anymore.”
these resources will make it more impactful!
The Essential Literary Techniques
The Essential Literary Elements
The Essential Literary Devices
Ten Fundamental Story Blocks