How can I give a novel a particular atmosphere?
I've been writing fan fiction for 7+ years now. Recently, I went back and compared the ratings my fan fiction has received from my readers, compared to what they contained. I discovered that those fan fictions with a distinct feel had generally better ratings, and were in fact some of the highest rated things I've written. These include:
- A zombie story with a very dark atmosphere of despair and defeat.
- A war story with an atmosphere of useless struggle against the conflict.
This research seems to indicate to me that I should focus more on finding and maintaining a specific feel for my stories. There is, however, I problem: how to do so?
I'm a very design-oriented person. I need structures and plans if I'm to make anything. This is no different. I need a step by step process, by which I can give a story a particular feel. Can you provide me with such a process?
Some feels will be easier than others. I originally thought giving a story a feel would be fairly simple, until I tried it. I've determined that my current fan fiction requires an atmosphere of desperation. Not despair, but desperation. I know how to create an atmosphere of despair. But how do I make the difference to desperation? The feeling that people have been pushed to the edge and are willing to do literally anything. The answer escapes me.
1 answer
Suppose you are hosting visitors to your city and you want to control the impression they get. If you want to give them the impression that your city is safe, you take them down certain streets at a certain time of day. If you want to give them the impression that your city is dangerous, you take them down different streets at a different time of day. If you want them to feel your city is green, you take them to the park. If you want them to feel it is a concrete jungle, take then to the freeway interchanges and the industrial district. If you want to give the impression that your city is cosmopolitan, take them to an ethnic restaurant. If you want to give the opposite impression, take them to Denny's.
Now, you can control the impression they get to a certain extent by how you talk up the city, by the language you choose, but your words will do much less than the actual experience of neighbourhoods to create the impression that stays with them.
It is the same in a novel. Most of the feel of the novel will come from the places you take the reader, the scenes they witness, the weather, the food, etc. In other words, all the things that would shape the feel of an experience if they were there in real life.
Don't think about this in terms of words, therefore, but in terms of storytelling. To make the reader feel something, take them to a place or through and experience that will create that feeling, just as you would if you were taking them on an adventure in real life.
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