As a line editor, part of my job when combing through a manuscript is to identify places where language can be strengthened and elevated to enhance a scene. This means focusing on word choice, rhythm, sentence and paragraph structure, and more to bring your writing to life. The edits I make or suggest are often subtle, but aim to make the most out of every word on the page.
Atmosphere is created bit by bit, with small details and a keen awareness of what every word choice brings to a scene. While editing, I look for any detail that goes against the atmosphere you’re trying to craft and seems out of place. As with every other element of your novel, how you craft atmosphere is up to you. I’m not here to tell you how a scene should feel or how you should execute that feeling, but I am here to flag the areas where the atmosphere you’re trying to create falls flat and can be improved with different language or other subtle edits.
Creating atmosphere is difficult. I wrote this article for my literary site, House of Cadmus, some time ago with the intention of peeling back the layers of mystery that seem to shroud the process of creating atmosphere by identifying the many ways writers can create atmosphere within their stories. I hope it’s useful to you, too.
For writers, creating atmosphere can be both an exciting challenge and a source of frustration, but it is always necessary. When we hear the word “atmosphere,” many of us think of the creepy, dreadful, overtly horrific or magical, but there are countless ways to write atmosphere. Whether you’re creating a sense of coziness, mystery, suspicion, unease, anticipation, excitement, joy, or peace, all stories need to deliver some form of atmosphere for readers to truly be immersed in the story.
The word “atmosphere” calls to mind a richness of setting, but a fantastic sense of atmosphere is something that goes beyond the mere events or setting of the story. It’s something in the delivery of the words themselves that feels present in every moment and permeates the story’s very essence.
Atmosphere is crucial.
But what exactly is atmosphere? Often used interchangeably with “tone” and “mood,” atmosphere is actually something separate, though all three elements play off of each other.
Tone is very much an internal part of the narrative, the book’s attitude toward itself and how (the tone in which) all of its elements are presented by the author. It’s the author’s approach to the story.
Mood and atmosphere are more closely related, with mood influenced by atmosphere, but mood belongs to the reader’s end of the experience. It’s the feelings a reader gets from a book, scene, etc.
Atmosphere is the more general feeling or vibe of a story grounded in description of location and emotions. It’s an emotional aspect of the story—because you want an emotional reaction and acknowledgement from readers—built through technical means such as word choice, sentence structure variation and rhythm, and description.
How do you create atmosphere?
Unsurprisingly, following the example of clichés such as, “It was a dark and stormy night” is not the way to go about this. As intimidating or difficult as creating the exact atmosphere we want to deliver to our readers may sound, there are techniques behind the magic to help us bring out the best in our writing.
Setting, Imagery, And What to Focus On
Atmosphere is often a subtle creation. It takes more than choosing to write a scene that takes place in a cemetery at night to create a sense of dread, suspense, mystery, etc. A great setting and plot—that nighttime cemetery when a killer is on the loose, for example—has incredible potential, but it’s only the foundation. If you don’t build upon that setting in ways that reaches the readers’ emotions and wraps them up in the moment, your scene can and will fall flat. And if you’re relying on tropey, familiar, and very on-the-nose settings and events (such as the nighttime cemetery) to do all the work in conveying atmosphere for you, your scene will do more than fall flat. It will be banal, forgettable, lacking impact, and—most importantly—a missed opportunity.
Whether or not a scene’s setting is obviously conducive and evocative in respect to the atmosphere you’re aiming for doesn’t matter as much as you may think. The same atmosphere can be built for a scene that takes place in a cemetery or a kitchen; what matters is where you pull the reader’s attention and what details you make them focus on.
Description is key to atmosphere but selective specificity is key to description.
Listing everything you can think of in order to really fill out a scene and make the atmosphere you’re aiming for as rich as possible for readers can often have the wrong impact. It’s overkill—readers doesn’t want to read that much description. Instead, bring their attention to a handful of small details that speak volumes and let them fill in the rest of the scene in their own mind—a broken teacup, creaking branches, the warmth of the sun on a character’s face. What your character notices is important. In addition to contributing to atmosphere, what a character notices speaks to their emotional state and helps convey those emotions—the underlying, often unannounced emotions—to readers. Do they notice that the flowers are chrysanthemums or that they’re wilted? That small detail tells us something about the atmosphere, certainly, but it also gives us those important emotional cues.
When thinking of description, be sure to tap into all five senses. Sight and sound are often the defaults, but exploring the other three senses—taste, touch, smell—through a character’s eyes creates a richer experience for readers.
If a person awakes alone in an unfamiliar cabin after being lost in the woods, is it to the sound of a fire popping across the room, the firelight dancing on the worn wood-paneled walls, the warm weight of blankets atop them, and the smell of something sweet and fruity coming from the bubbling pot on the fire? Or do they awake to the suffocating press of blankets on them, the wool itchy against their skin as shadows lurch across the scratched, peeling wood-paneled walls, the smell of something rancid and burnt coming from the pot spitting from atop the hissing coals of the fire?
Though I’m describing the same situation—and intentionally going overboard with both—one is obviously more comforting than the other, but both create a full, rich picture for the reader. You don’t have to hit every sense in a single description—and you really shouldn’t try to—but think about hitting all of them throughout the narrative, especially in scenes you want to come alive. Immerse yourself in the scene as you see it in your head and pull out those evocative bits that create a full, well-rounded setting for readers. Imagery is crucial. Give readers the full experience.
Tip: Make playlists for your novel specific to characters or scenes to help you create an inspiring mood while you’re writing. Writing something creepy and suspenseful? Try listening to dark, dramatic classical music. Let some of the story seep out of your mind and into the real world to help you get it down on the page.
Details of Description—Word Choice Matters
The success of your atmospheric writing is whether it lands with readers. Though tone, mood, and atmosphere have their differences, they work together and impact each other. All of them need to combine to reach the emotions of readers. You want readers to care, to be invested, to feel on edge during that especially tense scene you wrote. For that reason, word choice is imperative.
Be intentional with word choice. Skip the boring words that weigh descriptions down in favor of powerful words that bring your writing to life. By “powerful,” I mean evocative, expressive words. Get specific. Why say moss hung from the trees when you could say the Spanish moss dripped from the twisted branches overhead? It may seem like a small change, but it makes all the difference.
Don’t just think of this tip in terms of description–apply it to action words as well. Why say a character walked when they could’ve skulked, stomped, or bounded? You want to create the strongest version of the image and emotion you’re trying to convey to readers and you only have so much time to do it within a scene. Don’t waste a word.
Writers need to think of the connotations of words as well. Take the sunlight example I used above. The words “gleam” and “glinting” tend to be interpreted with a positive connotation and, therefore, are inappropriate if you’re trying to convey irritation or other negative emotions. Look at the cabin example again, too. Notice how vastly different the descriptions of the same scene are all because I used different words. I hit on all the same points in both—the sound of the fire, the weight of the blankets, the smell and sound of food cooking in a pot, the walls, the firelight—but changed the entire atmosphere of the scene by using evocative words with appropriate connotations. I pointed out shadows instead of firelight for the more unsettling version and used words like “lurch” and “hissing” instead of “dancing” and “bubbling.” It adds up to create very different atmospheres. Keep your language in line with the emotion.
Characters
Keep your characters in line with the emotion, too. Unless you’re trying to make a point of the stark difference between a character’s attitude and the general atmosphere, you want them to work together. As I said above, what your character notices and how they characterize it matters. It also matters how they react to it. While you know where you’re trying to take the scene and what your characters are going to do, make sure their small expressions match the atmosphere. Does a character who is thrilled about something sigh and roll their eyes? Usually, no. Think of your characters as a whole. Appearance, body language, dialogue and tone, personality. How can you use their specific characteristics to enhance the atmosphere? This goes for dialogue as well. Be sure everything you’re including within a scene matches the atmosphere you want it to have.
And again, be aware of what your characters notice. These can reflect on a character—that emotional state again—and you want it to be consistent with the overall scene and atmosphere. If a character is exhausted and irritated, are they going to notice the gleam of the sun glinting off the lake water, or are they going to think the sunlight is harsh and glaring, making their head pound? Keep it consistent.
Subtleties
As much as atmosphere depends on overt elements like description and word choice, there are more subtle elements that also have an effect on the reader, whether they realize it or not.
A way to contribute to atmosphere is thinking in terms of theme or motif. Is there an element of your story that is an underlying constant throughout it, something with symbolic or conceptual meaning? Consider using analogies and descriptions that tie back to it.
An example of this that I personally enjoyed is Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield. The river is a constant throughout the story; it ties the characters together and represents larger themes of life and death and storytelling. Setterfield keeps the river ever present in readers’ minds and ties the prose back to it by using water-related analogies and descriptions throughout the narrative. It’s subtle, not over the top or overt, but brilliant.
Color is a great way to use this technique. Consider the color palette of your story—think it up now if you’ve never considered this before. What emotions and themes are most prevalent within your story and what colors do you associate with them? What is the location of story and how does the weather or landscape play a role in the story? What colors do you associate with that? Now use your answers—subtly, of course—throughout your narrative. Bring them to mind through analogies, descriptions, or by bringing a scene to a new location to better match that emotion.
Another subtle element within your writing to consider is rhythm. Writing should have flow and rhythm within sentence variation. When writing to convey specific emotions, don’t underestimate the importance of manipulating this rhythm to effect the reader. We all know the classic tip of writing short, punchy sentences for action scenes, but you can also lull a reader by writing longer sentences. Consider using longer, winding sentences when describing something calm or beautiful, but also as a way to mirror what could be happening within a scene. If a character is lost in the woods and growing increasingly unsure of where they are, you could use longer sentences to mirror the sense of winding back and forth that the character feels. Perhaps as the character gets closer and closer to some climactic point, you could shorten some sentences up and bring more tension to the scene. Play around with syntax and unusual word choice to create confusion or unease. Don’t be afraid to experiment.
Mirror the Themes Within Plot
A more obvious—although sometimes subtle—way to create atmosphere within a story is to take a bigger, overall theme within the story and mirror it within sections of the book. This is bigger than a sentence-level detail, and it can do wonders. If isolation or feeling alone or abandoned is an overall theme within your book, consider mirroring that with setting but also by truly isolating a character for a period of time. When doable and appropriate within your plot, boiling down overall themes to their most obvious effects and putting your characters in that situation can be very effective. I recommend doing this with more subtle themes and emotions, like the isolation/loneliness example. It doesn’t work with everything, but it’s something to consider when thinking of creating atmosphere.
Creating atmosphere requires being mindful of several different elements of your story and prose while you’re in the moment. It can be difficult. Though I think all of these techniques are helpful and a great way to create the atmosphere we want, it’s important to not overdo any one element. Try to find a balance that works for you and your story and I’m sure these writing techniques will be useful to you.
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