894. Whether you're getting ready for National Novel Writing Month or just want to watch movies or read novels with more insight, this interview with fiction editor Joshua Essoe will help you about mood and atmosphere in ways you probably haven't considered before.
894. Whether you're getting ready for National Novel Writing Month or just want to watch movies or read novels with more insight, this interview with fiction editor Joshua Essoe will help you about mood and atmosphere in ways you probably haven't considered before.
| Transcript: https://grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/mood-atmosphere-in-fiction-an-interview-with-joshua-essoe
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Mignon:
Grammar Girl here, I'm Mignon Fogarty, and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff. And today we have cool stuff and a little bit of rules because I'm here with Joshua Essoe, who is a fiction editor I have known for probably, I don't know, a decade. And we're gonna talk about mood and atmosphere and some of the rules, as they are, for writing fiction. Joshua, thank you so much for being here with me today.
Joshua:
Yeah. Thank you for having me. It's great to be back.
Mignon:
Yeah, I think it's been a couple of years since we talked. When you had your last set of books out.
Joshua:
Yep.
Mignon:
And now you have a new set of books. Why don't you tell everyone about these two new books that we're gonna talk about?
Joshua:
Yeah. So the two new books, or if you were a part of the Kickstarter, the single new special edition book is a flip book where you have on one side, you have "World Building" and on the other side you have "Mood and Atmosphere." And then when I release them wide, there'll be two separate books. So "World Building," I mean, as the title suggests, it's about creating worlds. "Mood and Atmosphere" is, is a little bit more of a difficult and more advanced topic where we're talking about how to, imbue your book with different kinds of emotions. I call it emotionality. You're combined mood, which is how you make your readers feel and through your characters primarily, but there's a lot of different ways that you can evoke mood. And that's what the book goes into. And atmosphere, which is a subset of mood, but atmosphere is created primarily through your setting, which you can see why it pairs well with world building.
Mignon:
Yeah. And let's, let's actually back up a little bit because I know you, but the listeners may not. So I mean, why should, explain why they should listen to you when it comes to writing fiction. You're, you know, an accomplished editor and talk about how long you've been doing this and some of the people you've done editing for.
Joshua:
Sure. Okay. So I have been editing since 2010, since shortly after the very first Superstars Writing Seminar. That's where you and I met. And since then I have been able to sort of wrangle opportunities for myself to become known, especially when I was first starting out, it was a big question of like, why would anybody want to come to some new guy for their editing? Like that
Mignon:
Doesn't make sense. Right. It's something every new editor faces.
Joshua:
Yeah. So my idea was to get somebody who was already well known in the field to give me, you know, the thumbs up to be like, yeah, this guy is good. This guy is okay to use. So one of the instructors at Superstars was David Farland, and that's where I met him. And so soon after the seminar was over, I went, took a workshop with him with the goal of editing one of his books.
Mignon:
Dave was so generous. Can we just stop for a minute? You and I both adored Dave Farland, and he recently died and you know, I was crushed and I know you were too, so we owe so much Dave for our early … your early career and my … he encouraged me in, in writing too; he was a great man.
Joshua:
Oh, that's wonderful. I didn't know that he did that for you. That's that's
Mignon:
Really good. Yeah. Just like you, after I went to Superstars, I was like, I need to take a workshop from Dave. So that was the next thing I did.
Joshua:
Yeah, yeah. It was kind of crushing. And, and it's taking a while to get over. I'm dedicating the book to him. Because he was, he was at first a teacher, and then he became my mentor, and then we became friends and our conversations and, what time we spent together was more often focused on like our, our lives rather than writing. So yeah, that relationship, you know, went on for a decade, and I wish that it could have gone on for another decade. It was, it's been really difficult, but
Mignon:
Yeah. So, yeah. So you dedicated one of the books to him because he's absolutely such a great guy and so influential.
Joshua:
Yeah. Yeah. So onto more pleasant things than lost friends.
Mignon:
I'm sorry.
Joshua:
That's okay. So David did agree to, let me edit one of his books. I edited his book called "Nightingale," and that went on to win a bunch of awards, and that was such a formative experience. And from that point on David was secure in recommending me to other people. And I didn't know about this until years later, but he was talking talking to people about me when they went to his workshops. I, yeah, I didn't, he didn't even tell me about that. He was, he was doing that, but yeah, so that's how I got started. I got started with Superstars. I got started with David Farland. And through the course of the last decade, I've had the opportunity to work with Piers Anthony, who was he was like my childhood, like idol of what an author life was like, you know, he's, he's literally the person and his writing and his author's notes at the back of his stories was, that's why I wanted to become a writer.
Joshua:
I was like, this sounds perfect. This sounds great. That's what I wanna do. And you know, that dream got lost along the way. And then back in 2010, it picked it back up
Mignon:
And this is your full-time thing, right?
Joshua:
Oh, absolutely.
Mignon:
More than full-time probably.
Joshua:
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I wish there was at least a few more of me so that one person could deal with this project and this person could deal with that project.
Mignon:
Well, and that's why it's been two years for you to come up with these next advice books.
Joshua:
Yeah.
Mignon:
Because you've been busy editing.
Joshua:
Yeah.
Mignon:
Clearly, but you know, the first two were on action sequences and sex scenes, which are some of the hardest things to write, and now you've sort of, it feels like it's almost more advanced … like mood and atmosphere. Like that, that's the stuff you add in … well, you can plan for it, but you can also add it in the editing process. So why don't you talk about, you know, what's, well, first what's the difference between mood and atmosphere?
Joshua:
So mood and atmosphere are like, you were just saying they're, they're more advanced techniques. Don't worry about them being advanced techniques. First of all, it's because anytime you write a story, you're going to have an inherent mood to it. Whether or not you're trying to evoke it, it's gonna happen.
Mignon:
Mm-Hmm
Joshua:
That's sort of the same thing with a lot of different aspects of writing, like theme, sometimes message. But mood and atmosphere will appear based on what you are, what your story is and how you're writing it. So, but let's, like you said, let's define. Okay. So mood is the emotional response that the writer wants to evoke in the reader. It's the framework. It's the framework of your emotionality, and the emotionality is basically your combination of mood and atmosphere. It's a word that I'm using throughout this book to help define things.
Joshua:
It is the emotions diffused in your story, through your characters, as they move through your plot and your conflicts and your various themes. Now atmosphere is very similar, and it's easy to see why they're confused and used interchangeably. A lot. Atmosphere is a subset of mood, but atmosphere is about the setting. Atmosphere is a way to evoke emotion through your setting. Whereas mood is a way to evoke emotion through primarily characters, but there's a lot of different ways. Atmosphere is evoked through your setting and your world building. That's the emotional framework that of a scene that's created through your sensory descriptions through their, the specific details that you use throughout your settings. So that's, that's kind of the difference that we're looking at there.
Mignon:
Thanks. One suggestion you had … one thing I liked about the book is that it's filled with really practical tips. I mean, it gets at this high-minded stuff, but it also has great practical tips. And one of your tips is to actually name your setting. Give your setting a name. And I thought that was so interesting and helpful. Can you talk more about that?
Joshua:
Yeah, absolutely. So why I suggest sometimes naming your settings, and I'm not talking like you know, Weather Top, like a well-known setting, actually like a place that has a name. I'm talking about Bob, you know,
Mignon:
So can you give an example of how Rachel, as a setting, for example, might describe how she's feeling in a way that lets you give your setting a mood?
Joshua:
Sure. So if Rachel were, for example a foggy forest.
Mignon:
Uhhuh
Joshua: What kinds of things would Rachel be feeling? What kind of things would she want? What goals would she have? And I would think that depends on your story, right? If you're writing horror, then your misty forest is going to have a much different feel than if you're writing like a swords and sorcery or, you know, sort of a fantastic children's story. But let's go with horror.
Joshua:
So if you're writing a horror story, and you have a misty forest, likely you want Rachel to be kind of spooky, you want Rachel to be scary, because you want your readers to start feeling the tension of that setting. So if Rachel's goal is to scare the people who walk beside her, within her as the case may be, then you're gonna have Rachel trying to achieve those goals in different ways than you would, if you wanted your, your characters and your readers to feel warm and fuzzy, right? So that's like the beginnings of how you can start rolling with a setting as a character. You start thinking about who they would be, what they want, what they would do to achieve those wants, those goals. And then you'll start feeling like, oh, it's coming to life. I've used this technique a couple of times in my own writing when I just, I couldn't quite nail it. And I knew that it was there because I could feel it like in the back of my head, but this helped bring it forth.
Mignon:
Great. You know, your work and Dave's work, too, have changed the way I watch movies. You, you're talking about horror reminded me of movies and one thing I love is when you have examples, you use movies often instead of books, because I think more people have seen popular movies than have read any popular book. But also, if I haven't, it's an hour and a half for me to go watch it as opposed to maybe eight hours for me to go read the book and get up to speed. Can you talk about, you know, some movies that have really good examples of mood and atmosphere, like the examples you've used in your book?
Joshua:
The first thing that pops up in my head is "Blade Runner." "Blade Runner" is remarkably, both moody and atmospheric. Man, it's good. Such a good job. Like we were just discussing about Rachel, the misty forest
Mignon:
Joshua:
Yeah. "Fight Club" book, the book and the movie are just really, really good. They're a bit different from one another, they're different experiences. I chose the book because that was my first experience with the story. And I felt like going with another very well, I guess it's not very popular. In fact, it bombed at the box office. It just became a cult classic afterwards.
Mignon:
I didn't know that.
Joshua:
Yeah. Yeah. It did not do well until it went to video, and then people started finding it. Sure. So I liked the book. I feel like it worked better for mood and atmosphere too, and also world building. I think I use it a couple times in there. It's just, it's one of my favorites. So
Joshua:
And so I felt like so the movie definitely did have a voice. It's not nearly as strong as the actual book. So using that as the example was definitely the way to go. So how did how did "Fight Club" evoke? I would say not so much atmosphere though, that was really there. That was very present. When you think back to where the narrator, or Jack as a lot of people call him, and where Jack was living with Tyler Durden in that old broken down Victorian, that was just kind of falling apart where, when it started to rain, they had to turn off all the fuses. Otherwise everything would blow up, right? Where going down into the basement meant walking through, you know, a couple inches of water, where trying to clean off was almost like a pointless endeavor because the place was just so dirty.
Joshua:
And the fact that the characters didn't care that it was dirty. Like they, you see it throughout every sequence, but it's never really acknowledged. I thought that was kind of cool too, because it, it sort of sets up the atmosphere that plays even stronger. But yeah, there are a lot of really atmospheric things in "Fight Club," but the mood that Chuck made us feel as readers, it was both, it was both hopeful for like a new way of thinking and a new way of life, but also is very, very dreary and almost depressing at the same time. Like it's about characters who are going through the very bottom they're, they are just they're down there in the grit. And it it's just if you want to study both mood and atmosphere, primarily mood and voice, "Fight Club," the book, is an excellent place to start. Stephen King is another really good place to start. He's a little bit hit and miss, especially for some people. But I'd say things like "The Talisman," "Pet Sematary," "Salem's Lot," "Carrie," oh gosh, the mood "Carrie." These are all really, really good examples to study if you want to become aware and start practicing how to write it in your own stories.
Mignon:
Mm-Hmm
Joshua:
Yeah, so word choice is really important when you're, one of the really important various tools that I talk about in creating mood and atmosphere. So by controlling your writing on a line-by-line level, you can either speed it up or slow it down. You can choose long sentences or short sentences. You can choose a bunch of, like a couple word sentences that really make it feel kind of choppy, all of these things especially on a subconscious level, start making readers feel different ways if you're using really long sentences flowing and poetic and beautiful descriptions and beautiful writing, then you're gonna have sort of a more flowing, easy type of feeling to, you know, whatever is actually going on in the story. However, that's complimenting it. If you're using the shorter sentences and you're using shorter words with less syllables, then you're gonna start having a more tense reaction in readers.
Joshua:
They're gonna, especially if you use it for like a paragraph, you know, a few sentences in a row where everything is chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, that staccato beat is gonna amp up the tension if that's what you have in your scene. And it's interesting to try and pair those against each other too. Like if you have short sentences and you are trying to, and you're having in your scene, like something more seemingly relaxing and calm, you can sort of belie that calmness with your short sentences and the same as for the opposite, if you have a tense scene, but you're using long flowing sentences that can tend to make your readers kind of calm down, slow things, and pay more attention to the words. Sometimes that's not what you want to do at all. I find whether you want to parallel or if you want to contrast really depends on what's going on in your specific story.
Joshua:
But yeah, it's an excellent question because pacing, which is what these kinds of things, all lead in to, pacing is very reflective and also it's dynamic, but also sets your mood and atmosphere especially mood. Atmosphere, it works as well, because like I said, it's a subset of mood and it depends on how, what kind of setting that you want to have. But yeah your word choice, your sentence length and your sentence length can, you know, flow into your paragraph length, and even your chapter length. I mean, think about what if you had a chapter that was just like one sentence long? That's a, that's a statement. What kind of, what kind of mood is that going to evoke? That means like, how are your readers going to feel when they come to the next chapter? And it's a sentence long
Joshua:
And then the last thing is your emotional beats. And I think I talked about this in "Action Sequences" as well, with your emotion beats, your emotional beats. You don't want to generally have the same emotion evoked in your scene over and over and over and over again. What that'll do is it'll tire your readers out. It could even bore your readers because they, they want something to feel less static, less motionless. And if you have, let's say everything is perfect and happy. And then in the next
Mignon:
Mm-Hmm
Joshua:
Yes, absolutely. And I call that the prevailing mood. So the prevailing mood is basically, it's like your central conflict, but for mood. So it's the primary mood that you have flowing through the entire story. Now that doesn't mean that that is the only mood that you're going to try to evoke throughout the story, because that would be, I mean, that would be problematic, but you will have other moods flowing in and intertwining with that prevailing mood throughout, like in a scene where, let's say we are in a zombie apocalypse. I'm sorry. I keep going back to horror.
Mignon:
That's okay.
Joshua:
Let's say, let's say we're in a zombie apocalypse. The prevailing mood of a zombie apocalypse story is probably gonna be one that's pretty scary. It's probably going to be something that is full of tension. So that doesn't mean that you want to wear your readers out with every scene being full tension, because that's just gonna be exhausting.
Joshua:
They'll stop reading sooner than they would if you didn't give them little breaks in that. So give them those breaks in your attention, throw in a different mood for a different scene. Like the characters have been searching for food, because they're starving and, oh my gosh, they just found a Costco, and nobody has raided the Costco yet. All the stuff in the Costco is still there. Yay. New home base. Right?
Mignon:
After that, right? Like zombies find a back door.
Joshua:
That's right. That's right. There's always a back door.
Mignon:
Right. I love that. And speaking of pacing, I have to say your book has one of the best timed "don't freak out" tip boxes that I've ever encountered. I'm reading along, and you're going through all these things, and I'm starting to feel overwhelmed. I'm starting to feel freaked out. And then there's a little tip box that says "pro tip: don't freak out," and you back up and say how you don't need to do this all while you're writing your first draft, and you can add it in later. And it was just, it was so perfect. Yeah.
Joshua:
You have my wife to thank for that.
Mignon:
Pass along my thanks.
Joshua:
Joshua:
I'm still editing. It's like, I don't know, 1:30, 2 o'clock in the morning. She comes and she sits in on the chair over there. And she says after we we've been talking for, you know, a good 15, 20 minutes, she says, but I felt really overwhelmed. And I was like, oh, okay. And
Mignon:
And then, and I think it was right after that, that again, you added a practical tip, which I love, and it was just talk about building a word list that you can go back to. Like talk to me about like how you would build that word list, and how it would be helpful.
Joshua:
Yeah. So I think the one that you're talking about is, like, to figure out what particular moods that you want to use for the various scenes in your book. Sometimes that can become very difficult. Like you don't know where to go next. Like, gosh, I just had a happy one and, and I had a, a scared one. I don't know …what else is there? It helps beforehand if you're, if you're an outliner, especially, and not so much if you're a panther, but pantsers, I do think that you should do some outlining.
Joshua:
How do I want readers to feel here? I'm not sure. I, and I know I shouldn't repeat beats over and over and over again. So is it okay if I repeat the last beat? Just do that again or, or what should I do next? So if you create your list, you can just go to it, say what mood can I use? What would work here? And for example, I think this is the example that I used in the book. If you want, here we go again with the scary and the horror
Joshua:
What's a mood that could fit with, with with "creak," "tense," "scary," "terrified," "panicked." Those are all simple. I mean, they're low-hanging fruit, I admit, but that those are all things that you can just put down even like the low-hanging fruit sometimes it's just difficult to think of in the moment. And the last thing that you wanna do is stall your writing out when you're in the zone. So if you can just like flick over to another doc real quick, check out your list, go, oh, that's what I want. Take that word, put it up on the screen for yourself and just like, look at it and be like, okay, that's where I'm going. It gives you a focus.
Mignon:
Exactly. It sounded like a cheat sheet, you know, that you could just grab when you're stuck and, and just help you move forward quickly with the pre-planned mood that you are hoping to achieve.
Joshua:
Right. And it even helps to come up with like dual columns. Like you'll have a word like "skitter," and then you, you have it matched with an emotion. And so you just go, okay, what would that, this word? I just used this word. Where is it? Here? It is. And you look over it at your, at your column. And it goes, oh, it evokes this mood. That's the mood that I could go for. So you can, you can improve upon that list if you want to and make it a little bit more elaborate. And of course that's a list that you can take with you for all your writing once you've created it. It's there, it's a tool now.
Mignon:
Right. And another thing is the book isn't overwhelming with exercises that you can do, but there are a few little exercises that seem really helpful. Another one that I really thought sounded like fun was Bummer Bob versus Julie Joy.
Joshua:
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I, that one is about, that's about writing a scene from various perspectives. So if you were thinking about a character walking through a dappled deer meadow, what if your character, Julie Joy, was the POV of that scene, and she was walking through it. Exactly how would she perceive and interact with that setting? What kinds of things would she do in that setting? How it would it affect her goals, whatever, you know, she's going through the setting for as compared to Bummer Bob. What if Bob was walking through that same setting? He'd probably see it in a much different light than Julie. So this is an exercise that I think not only it doesn't necessarily have to be something that helps you create a finished scene for your work. This scene, I felt like I was writing this exercise was geared towards helping create the ability to write differences in your mood and atmosphere based on your character.
Joshua:
So based on their personality and their actions and the way that the story is feeling in that moment, you can have a completely different experience of that story based on your characters. And at that, I think that's really important, and it also will help choose who the most appropriate viewpoint character for any individual scene is going to be. So you don't have to necessarily do the exercise for every time that you're trying to choose a viewpoint character. But I do recommend trying he exercise out a couple of times, doesn't have to be long. They can just, literally they could be a paragraph. Going through it in your mind will help you discover the best character for this particular scene.
Mignon:
Yeah. That's what I really liked. It seemed quick and easy, but like also very helpful. Yeah, so I love this book. So "Mood and Atmosphere" and "World Building," which I'm hoping to read soon, how can people get them?
Joshua:
So I just finished the Kickstarter for these guys. Probably I'm gonna be safe and say by Christmas. Yeah.
Mignon:
So that, so someone has didn't get in on the Kickstarter, it's gonna be a few months before they can get these books. So they should probably just what follow you on social media or sign up for your newsletter to be alerted when they become available?
Joshua:
Yeah. I am always accessible on Facebook. But the the book "World Building" will actually be in a book bundle next month in October. So that'll be available there. And as soon as my backers have the book, I will start selling it on my website. And that's probably gonna be the first place that, well, I guess both of the books. My website is probably gonna be only place where the, the special edition Kickstarter printing is going to be available though. So when it goes wide every subject will be a different book.
Mignon:
Okay. Super. And what's your website address?
Joshua:
Website is JoshuaEssoe.com. Super easy.
Mignon:
E-S-S-O-E
Joshua:
Mignon:
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Joshua, for sharing your knowledge with us today and through with, through the world, through your books. It's been great to talk with you.
Joshua:
Thanks, Mignon. It was really good to talk to you as well.
Mignon:
And for those of you who are interested, the book bundle Joshua mentions is at Storybundle.com. It's a place where you can buy a group of books that usually have a specific theme, and the National Novel Writing Month bundle with Joshua's book "World Building" will have a mix of writing, business, scriptwriting, and TV writing books and will run from September 29 through the end of November. Again that's at Storybundle.com.
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