Category Archives: mood

Reader Friday-That Stinky Mood

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Thinking back to my teenage years, it seems like I was in a bad mood about something most of the time. You’d think I would have outgrown those sour moods by now. Sigh.

I don’t get moody as much anymore, nor (heaven forbid!) about the same life stuff as when I was younger, but sometimes a mood strikes—one that causes me to slam my laptop closed and walk away.

You?

I ran across this website the other day:  Moods and Writing

It contains 5 tips for shooing away the doldrums in order to get back to work.

Listen to some upbeat [or your favorite] music.

 

“Music affects mood, so choose something that gets you happy and dancing. Try listening to it for just 5 minutes before you start writing, and see if your session doesn’t go better than you thought it would.”

 

Eat some dark chocolate. (My favorite!)

“Chocolate is good for you, and studies have also found that it can boost levels of the good-mood neurotransmitter, “serotonin,” in your brain. It also boosts dopamine levels, which will give you more energy. As if you needed another excuse to eat some chocolate! Just try to be sure it has at least 70 percent cocoa.”

Give someone a hug.

“A loved one, friend, pet—give someone a quick hug before you start writing. It lowers stress and stimulates the release of oxytocin, which helps boost mood.”  (And the cool thing is, you’ll usually get hugged back!)

Dress up. (Not so sure about this one, but hey, it’s worth a try!)

“This can be particularly helpful if you’ve been in sweats all day. Put on something you like and that you think makes you look good. Studies have found that clothes really can affect our mood! (Read more about that here: “What Are You Wearing? Why Writers Should Care”) Better yet, choose something colorful. Green and yellow are associated with happiness, red with energy, and blue with calm.”

Look at nature images—and make sure they contain some green. 

“Studies have found that simply looking at pictures of nature can help relieve stress and put you in a better mood. If you want to boost creativity too, make sure the pictures have some green in them. (In other words, no winter pictures!) Studies have found that green helps stimulate creativity.”

 

TKZers—what would you add to this list? What is your surefire way to combat a stinky mood so you can get on with the fun stuff of writing?

 

The Scent of a Story

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The Olfactory Nerve and Mood

We are instructed to use all five senses when writing descriptions. I must admit I often forget to use the sense of smell.

We smell with the olfactory nerve, the first cranial nerve. Cranial nerves are paired nerves that connect to the back or bottom of the brain, exit the cranium (skull and facial bones), and help us taste, smell, hear, feel sensations, and move our facial muscles and tongue. The olfactory nerve is also involved in autonomic function (automatic function) – affecting salivation, gastrointestinal function, appetite, nausea, interest or lack of interest, and sexual arousal.

Much of our sense of taste is actually from smell and the olfactory nerve.

The olfactory nerve endings are in the upper nasal cavity, near the opening to the frontal sinuses. The nerves connect to the bottom of the frontal lobe. And, because the olfactory nerve tract is connected to the limbic system, it affects emotions and memory, and thus mood.

That’s why a smell can quickly set off a memory or mood, and use of smell/scent in our descriptions may help to establish mood in our stories, ex. smell of our favorite meal, our old baseball mitt from Little League, corsage flower from prom, the scent of a tree that bloomed in our backyard, or the scent of our favorite cologne/perfume, etc.

Thus, olfactory nerve function—smell/scent—may help establish emotion and mood in our stories. But, how exactly does that happen? The bottom line is that we don’t really know. Here are a couple paragraphs from an article in GoodTherapy in 2019.

“The brain makes new neurons from stem cells in the hippocampus (part of the limbic system), suggesting the hippocampus and the feelings and memories it supports can change with new experiences…

“The limbic system is dynamic, changing with input from a person’s environment. Experience changes this important brain region, and that may help explain why people’s psychological and physiological experiences change over time…”

Though it may be fuzzy logic we’re using here (fuzzy can be good in fiction), let’s train our backsides, each time we sit in our writing chairs, to send our brains a memo to spray some smells/scents into our descriptions and plot.

Questions:

  • What examples have your read or written with smell/scent as source of mood?
  • What is your favorite scent/smell? What smell do you hate?
  • What smells/scents (in your opinion) are most powerful for creating mood?
  • Bonus points: What are the two most powerful smells on Mackinac Island?

Nail it with Just the Right Word!

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 by Jodie Renner, editor, author, speaker  

To set the mood of a scene in your story, bring the characters to life, and engage readers in their world and their plight, it’s critical to choose just the right nuance of meaning to fit the character, action, and situation. And verbs are the heavyweights in your sentences, so pay particular attention to them. Especially avoid the very common but tired, overused verbs like walked, ran, and looked. Instead, find a synonym that shows how that action is taking place.

Say you’ve got a character going from one place to another. How are they moving, exactly, and why? Convey their physical and emotional state at that moment by using a strong, precise, evocative verb. Readers will envision the character and situation much differently, depending on whether you show them strolling or striding or skipping or shuffling or sauntering or slinking or strutting or sashaying or slogging along, just to name a few “s” movement verbs, for example.

For help in zeroing in on the very best word to convey the tone and mood you’re after, it’s a good idea to use both a thesaurus and a dictionary (either online or print). Use the thesaurus to find a wide range of possibilities, then if you’re not 100% sure of the meaning, check with the dictionary to avoid embarrassing slip-ups.

But avoid choosing words your readers will need to look up in a dictionary.

Just make sure to choose a word that really nails the meaning you’re looking for, not one that will impress your readers with your literary prowess. Choosing obscure words that just draw attention to themselves is a sure way to distract readers from your story and annoy them. So read your story out loud later to make sure the words you’ve chosen sound natural and are words your characters would actually say or think in the given situation. (And remember that narration is really the viewpoint character’s thoughts and observations!)

Example from my editing:  She heard a stridulous sound coming from the basement.

I’ve never heard the word “stridulous” before, so it conjures up no image or meaning whatsoever to me. That’s the danger for a lot of your readers, too – no image, no impact. And a mild irritation at having to look a word up in the dictionary if they want to know what it means.

If you’d like to introduce some interesting words your readers might not know, it’s best to use them in context, so readers can guess at the meaning.

Choose words that enhance the tone, mood, and voice of your scene.

Find vivid verbs

Verbs are especially important, as there are so many variations in the way someone can move or speak or eat or whatever, depending on their personality, mood, age, gender, size, background, health, fitness level, and of course the circumstances. So it’s worth the effort to find just the right verb that nails the action and makes sense in the context of the scene. A verb that doesn’t quite fit can be jarring and turn a reader off, whereas finding a stronger, more specific verb can really strengthen a scene.

Words for “walked”:

I’ve compiled a handy list of synonyms for “walked” to fit various situations and characters:

– Drunk, drugged, wounded, ill: lurched, staggered, wobbled, shuffled, shambled

– Urgent, purposeful, concerned, stressed: strode, paced, treaded, moved, went, advanced, proceeded, marched, stepped

– Relaxed, wandering: strolled, sauntered, ambled, wandered, roamed, roved, meandered, rambled, traipsed

– Tired: trudged, plodded, slogged, clopped, shuffled, tramped

– Rough terrain, hiking: marched, trooped, tramped, hiked

– Sneaking, stealth: sidled, slinked, minced, tiptoed, tread softly

– Showing off: strutted, paraded, sashayed

– Other walking situations: waddled, galumphed (moved with a clumsy, heavy tread), shambled, wended, tiptoed

So in general, it’s best to avoid plain vanilla verbs like “walked” or “went” if you can find a more specific word to evoke just the kind of movement you’re trying to describe.

But don’t grab that synonym too quickly! Watch out for show-offy or silly words.

After you’ve found a list of interesting synonyms, choose carefully which one to use for the situation, as well as the overall tone of your book. For example, for “walk,” don’t go to extremes by choosing little-known, pretentious words like “ambulate” and “perambulate” and “peregrinate” (!), or overly colloquial, slang, or regional expressions like “go by shank’s mare” and “hoof it.”

And beware of words that just don’t fit that situation.

Also, some synonyms are too specific for general use, so they can be jarring if used in the wrong situations. I had a few author clients who seemed to like to use “shuffled” for ordinary, healthy people walking around. To me, “shuffled” conjures up images of a patient moving down the hallway of a hospital, pushing their IV, or an old person moving around their kitchen in their slippers. Don’t have your cop or PI or CEO shuffling! Unless they’re sick or exhausted – or half-asleep.

Similarly, I had a client years ago who was writing about wartime, and where he meant to have soldiers and officers “striding” across a room or grounds or battlefield, he had them “strutting.” To me, you wouldn’t say “he strutted” unless it was someone full of himself or showing off. It’s definitely not an alternate word for “walked with purpose” as is “he strode.”

Or, disguised from another novel I edited:

Joe stood up, shocked and numb, after his boss delivered the tragic news about the death of his friend. He dreaded his visit to Paul’s widow. He sauntered back to his office, his mind spinning.

The verb “sauntered” is way too relaxed and casual a word for the situation. The guy’s just been told his friend is dead. Maybe “found his way” or even “stumbled” back to his office.

For similar lists for the verbs “ran” and “looked,” as well as lots of other tips for writing compelling fiction, check out my award-winning writing guide, Fire up Your Fiction.Fire up Your Fiction_ebook_2 silvers

Here are two recent quotes from two different contest judges about Fire up Your Fiction:

“This should be on the booklist for Master’s Programs in Writing for Publication.” ~ Writer’s Digest Judge

“FIRE UP YOUR FICTION is the Strunk and White for writers who want to be not just mere storytellers but master story-compellers.” ~ Judge, IndieReader Discovery Awards

 

Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction editor and the award-winning author of three craft-of-writing guides in her series An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction: Captivate Your Readers, Fire up Your Fiction, and Writing a Killer Thriller. She has also published two clickable time-saving e-resources to date: Quick Clicks: Spelling List and Quick Clicks: Word Usage. You can find Jodie at www.JodieRenner.com, www.JodieRennerEditing.com, her blog, http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.com/, and on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.