🤡 Inneresting #257 - Are we taking this seriously?
Tone is a conscious point-of-view communicated by the writer. But are we talking about style or vibes?
In part of this video, Born to Rant compares the tone of The Rocketeer to Raiders of the Lost Ark, saying The Rocketeer tells its story like an earnest attempt at making a film out of time, while Raiders is a loving, but winking, homage to the early days of serialized adventure storytelling:
[The Rocketeer] is a movie that doesn't make fun of itself. It has jokes, but they're never at the expense of the movie. There's not a single moment where some big thing happens and a character turns to another and says, "Well, that just happened..."
For another example of this in practice, watch the original Halloween back-to-back with the original Scream. One looks to create dread and terror in the audience, and the other brings the scares and the gore while also reminding the audience "You're in on it, because you're genre savvy like these characters."
The difference isn't just how self-aware a story is. It's tone.
Tone and transition are two of the most neglected things we talk about in storytelling.
–Scott Frank, Scriptnotes Ep #695
Is the tone coming through clearly?
When exploring tone, it can help to look stories that are as superficially similar as possible, yet still feel fundamentally different. This is where long-running characters and remakes make good subjects.
Joe George looks at two scenes with a similar premise from Man of Steel and the latest cinematic Superman, where Kal-El allows himself to be arrested. George highlights the differences in tone of the two films, and how those tones are an extension of the characterization of Superman used in each. Bill Bria takes a broader view, looking at how the most recent Superman acknowledges or diverges from previous film and television incarnations of the last son of Krypton.
Haunted Hippie compares the original The Wicker Man to its Nicolas Cage-starring remake, not only highlighting the elements that give both films distinctly different tones, highlighting that while the writer sets the tone of the movie, getting that tone on screen requires the work of a long list of professionals who resonate with it.
Practical Exercises and Examples
- This week's Rebroadcast email for Inneresting subscribers combined two posts John wrote about Archer, pointing out how the show's tone comes through on screen and on the page by dissecting its particular take on pre-lap dialogue.
- Sometimes naming a feeling makes it more concrete. Joe Bunting offers up examples of 42 different tones of writing voice as a helpful taxonomy.
- Chandra S differentates tone and mood: Tone is how the writer feels emotionally about the story they’re telling. Mood covers the emotions the audience feels responding to the story. The article also includes exercises to understand the tone you want and get some handholds for establishing it.
- Chris Blankenship gets down to the sentence level, showing how changing a few words or their order sets a different tone for the reader.
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Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, last issue’s most clicked link, CJ Chilvers argued that video may work best for The Algorithm, but sometimes two sentences of text can explain the point better.
What else is inneresting?
- That time Mister Fred Rogers defended the importance of public broadcasting, expressed his central beliefs about his work, and an earnest argument that conflict does not require violence to be dramatic.
- Via NPR, Nell Wulfhart with advice and exercises to help people make better decisions more quickly.
- Max Read examines the fake text messages in Apple product demos. I have way too many questions re: the guy who is too cheery about having lots of extra rain boots in his basement.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
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