Why is Mood Important?īecause mood evokes emotional responses in readers, it helps to establish an emotional connection between a piece of literature and its audience. Every word carries a positive, negative, or neutral connotation, so authors must choose their words carefully to create their intended atmosphere. The attitude of the speaker will likely influence the way they tell the story, which in turn influences how readers feel while reading it.ĭiction (an author’s word choice) can also help to create the mood and atmosphere in a piece of literature. Tone is important when it comes to creating mood. Tone reflects the speaker’s feelings or attitude toward the subject, whereas mood is the feeling experienced by the reader. However, it’s usually easy to identify a predominant mood that is present in most of the story. There can be several moods present within one piece of writing, since different scenes might contain different moods. What images or feelings come to mind? Do you feel frightened, hopeful, reflective? Most words that can be used to describe emotions can also be used to describe the mood of a story. One of the best ways to determine the mood of a piece is to ask yourself how it makes you feel as you read it. Identifying MoodĮvery piece of writing has a mood, whether it’s a 500-page novel or a short poem. In scenes like these, the author uses tone and diction to establish the creepy setting makes me, the reader, sense the eerie mood. (If you haven’t read the book, just watch Apocalypse Now to see what I mean).
As the narrator slowly approaches a compound bordered by human heads on stakes, it’s safe to say that the atmosphere created is similar to that of a horror film. Take Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, for example. Have you ever read a story that sent chills down your spine, or just felt eerie? It’s also referred to as the “atmosphere” of a piece. In literature, mood is a device that evokes certain feelings for readers through a work’s setting, tone, theme, and diction. What was the last story to make you cry? Laugh? Feel nostalgic, optimistic, or frightened? You can thank the story’s mood in large part for evoking those feelings for you. It’s pretty easy to tell when you’re in a good mood, bad mood, need-more-food mood… but even your favorite stories have moods, too, and they impact how you feel while reading.
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