Consider changing your tone, young lady!

(don't worry, it's actually about writing)

I’ve been struggling with the tone of my new project. The book that currently sits in my head and in forty odd record cards on my desk, is a tragi-comedy (the book in my head, it should be noted, is always a far better book than the one I finally end up writing). But there is a character in the 25,000 words I have written so far that that keeps showing up as so ‘heavy’ on the page, so brooding and dark, that he keeps unbalancing the lightness in the rest of it. I realized last night that corrective surgery is needed.

Writing, I have found, over the past 16 books, is a balancing act, and the hardest thing to keep on that tightwire is a consistent tone. When I occasionally read first novels, one of the most common problems is uneven tone. And one of the things most likely to impress an agent or future publisher is an absolutely consistent one.

I like to write books which look at serious topics, and sometimes even traumatic ones, but leaven them with comedy to stop them feeling too bleak. That, if you like, is my voice (for me, voice = the subject matter I am repeatedly preoccupied by, crossed with the mood music and language of my writing). My voice – the kind of characters I create, the plot twists, the subjects – are pretty consistent. My tone, however, varies wildly from book to book. Here are some examples of very different tones -

“Listen: Three miles deep in the forest just below Arnott’s Ridge, and you’re in silence so dense it’s like you’re wading through it. There’s no birdsong past dawn, not even in high summer, and especially not now, with the chill air so thick with moisture that it stills  those few leaves clinging gamely to the branches.”