“It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to shew by this statement that I am not his murderer.”
– Opening line, The Thing on the Doorstep, H.P. Lovecraft, 1937
Horror may not be
everyone’s cup of tea, but it is one of the best places to find examples of
foreshadowing – particularly in the case of establishing mood. And while there
is ample room for debate on who was the best, I place my money on H.P.
Lovecraft. For all his faults in storytelling, he could set the stage with one
sentence.
Mood, however, is not
just saying or even showing, “this is horror” or “this is romance.” Hopefully,
that part is a known factor before the story even starts. Mood is about the environment
that sets up all the cues to prepare the reader for a particular experience. It
can be as simple as the adverbs and adjectives used to fill out a scene, the
attention to descriptive detail on the items that relate to the mood, or even
the dialogue used. But it needs to fill in the emotional space to complete
the experience, even if the experience is already expected.
When combined with
narrative foreshadowing, the reader becomes firmly grounded in the story’s
environment. Take the above quote as an example. From the first sentence, we
are given warning of an upcoming event – a shooting – and yet so much more
comes with. Someone confesses to killing their friend and doing so not with just
one but rather six bullets, all while trying to convince us this was not so. It’s
horror, but also confusion, a betrayed friendship, and at least some madness.
The foreshadowing warns us of a friendship going south, but the mood here
suggests the lead-up to the shooting will be a very dark and disturbing
journey.
Grim indeed, but not
the only application. This kind of description can also be used to
create a very rich, real scene. Imagine a narrative about a jazz club. The
first wave of description is immediate. A quintet is playing. Somewhere there
should be an upright bass, a simple drum set-up, and a piano, with perhaps some
brass in the back. A thick haze of tobacco smoke used to be common, but those
days are long gone. But none of this (except maybe the smoke) is actually mood
– it’s the setting. Mood is created with details that might not even add to the
subject.
The mood comes in with
the added features. How about the musicians? Are they dark-suited, heavy-set
men buried under the shadow of porkpie hats, sweat pouring off their brows as
thick hands squeeze soul from every instrument? Is there a silky-voiced woman atop
the piano, long past her prime but still belting out every torch song in the
book? Is the band just pasty-faced college students with flannels over pastel
t-shirts, staring at their ankles as they drag Dave Brubeck into the Grunge
era? Each of these creates more of a mood than a description of the music ever
could. And once the reader feels that mood, their mind is now firmly grounded
in that club.
Now, combining the mood with foreshadowing, you can set a very dramatic stage. If you want to set the stage for a tense, disturbing event, the details of the club can focus on the shadows, the unknowns. Musicians focused on their music but not seeing how they lost the crowd. The music played with a sense of urgency, as if the quintet wanted to end their set and get clear of the club as if a storm was coming that they didn't want to get caught in. This becomes a full, complete scene, established and filled out with merely a paragraph or two but creating a mood that will stick with the reader.
An appeal to the
senses is always a good way to establish your setting, particularly if the
description targets a particular sense and establishes mood around that
feature. The jazz club example targeted visuals, but a more natural fit might
be how everything sounded. And sound isn’t just restricted to the music. Sure,
the musicians might be off-key, but were the instruments overwhelming the vocals?
Was the crowd trying to talk with each other instead of listening? Was the
place so empty that the few people in the crowd could hear the waitresses
talking to each other by the bar? And if you want to appeal to smell, well…
it’s a club. Most of the ones I went to smelled like someone put out a cheap
cigar in a glass of gin and sweat. Take it from there.
I will just offer one
last reminder about the purpose of mood. In a previous post, “The Emotional Description,” I discussed the importance of hitting the important details
in a scene, of describing what mattered and what could be filled in by the
reader. Now I add to that the contribution of mood. As we talk about those
things that matter, we can now describe them in ways that contribute to our
story. If we need to mention that a house is green, we can tweak that to
enhance the mood. A good mood becomes, “The house was as green as summer itself,
outshining all of nature’s splendor.” A dark mood uses the same color, but it
becomes, “The bright green of the house was a distraction, a deception, drawing
everyone’s eyes to the house’s siding and away from its windows and the secrets within.”
And now things are
really rolling. It makes me wonder what could possibly make this writing any
better? Well…
No comments:
Post a Comment