The First of Five Shifts in Narrative Mood

A story works best if it has roughly five major/recognisable mood shifts. These are shifts that relate broadly to what’s happening in the story. They provide alterations to the emotional perspective or angle on what is happening as the story develops. Your story will make sense to the reader on emotional terms if its events are cast in the light of these five key shifts in feeling. Today, I’m going to detail the elements that define the first stage–the situation.

Situation

The beginning of any novel is defined by the situation. How does the story open? And what’s the backstory leading up to this opening?

Backstory / Inciting Incident

The backstory in any novel is where the narrative tension starts to form. Backstory represents unresolved tension. Your story’s forward movement is typically a movement away from and/or towards the backstory.

For example, the backstory to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is that Christmas is a happy season celebrated by acts of generosity and by spending time with family. The forward thrust of the story begins from the position that the protagonist Scrooge is mean spirited and unwilling to celebrate Christmas. (Deeper into the backstory is the explanation for Scrooge’s misanthropy and his hatred of Christmas in particular–he has had a series of unhappy experiences at Christmas over the years, and has dealt with these by hardening his heart.)

It’s easy to depict the backstory of A Christmas Carol because Christmas is a well-known festival, and because the story of Scrooge’s past is woven into the forward movement of a tale in which the Spirit of Christmases Past reminds Scrooge of his past. So the backstory (Christmas) plays out in the forward momentum of the story (Scrooge changes his attitude towards Christmas by moving from loathing to loving it).

Weaving backstory into the forward movement of a story involves making use of dialogue, implied thought, and narrative, and doing so by touching upon objects and experiences in the present stages of the story (often in ways that entail looking upon their relevance to the past).

For example, a character might reach into their pocket and, on finding coins there, recall a moment earlier in the day when they received those coins after handing a fifty-dollar note to a cashier to purchase the rope they will use to tie up the person they plan to kidnap.

Once this memory from the immediate or near past is recalled, and the victim brought to mind, it’s easy enough to call that intended victim to mind in some other way–perhaps by shifting from the victim to the place where the assailant means to lie in wait for them. Various options (workplaces, apartments, stores, schools) provide further opportunities for detailing aspects of the enmity the assailant holds for their intended victim–i.e., their history together, which gives shape to the protagonist’s backstory.

In this way, objects in a narrative (in this case, coins, banknotes, buildings, places) provide opportunities to shift into past experiences in ways that bring these experiences briefly to life. Rather than fully-fledged flashbacks, such observations are less disruptive of narrative flow if they are given fleetingly in fragments that add up across the narrative to supply an overarching view of the backstory. I’ll try to demonstrate this below.

Using Foreshadowing and Backstory Together

At the same time that you are building the past into the narrative, you are foreshadowing what is to come. Imagine, for example, a guy standing in a queue at a store. This is one of those stores that sells all sorts of things–food, sporting goods, alcohol. Just about anything. There is one cashier, and just this long tail of a queue.

Our protagonist has a shopping basket laden with stuff. There’s the clink of glass as he sets his basket down. A woman up ahead looks back just as our protagonist is placing a newspaper into the basket on top of two bottles of bourbon. Our protagonist flinches.

He gets back into line, where he’s hemmed up against the wall because the line’s so long.

It’s 9AM on a Saturday morning. The guy ahead of him has a basket full of stuff, including a baseball bat, which keeps hitting our protagonist in the thigh as the guy adjusts his hold on the basket. It’s getting annoying. Our protagonist is sweating.

Then someone screams. A guy has walked into the store and is standing near the end of the line, but street-side of the service counters. Our protagonist can see a long gash across the man’s throat. He knows first aid, but he’s thinking there’s no way he’s gonna try to stabilise that wound.

The store manager comes out. He sees the guy’s throat and says, Hey, buddy, you alright? Can I call you an ambulance?

The guy with the gash just kinda stares at him, then he lunges and bites the manager in the face.

That sets everyone racing. Our protagonist is pushed against the wall by someone fleeing. The bourbon crashes to the floor, spilling booze all over the place. The guy ahead of our protagonist has dropped his basket and dashed for the exit behind the scene where the manager is still being devoured, but he’s felled by another zombie entering from the street.

Our protagonist grabs the baseball bat and swats his way through.

…

In this passage I’ve woven the typical markers used to identify a certain type of character often used in narratives about individuals who need to somehow redeem themselves following some kind of trauma. You know the kind–they’re typically good people at heart, but they’re suffering. They’ve had a fall from grace and climbing back out of that hole isn’t easy. One common trope is the war veteran suffering from PTSD, drinking his way through his trauma.

Everything in this story suggests just this kind of person. I haven’t mentioned the war. That may come up later on. But I have mentioned the booze, the sweating, the early hour of the day (who buys liquor at that time?), and the fact that this guy knows first aid. These are all qualities consistent with the experiences of someone fitting our protagonist’s situation.

Did you notice that the backstory isn’t obvious–at least, not until you go looking for it? It’s there in the things that are around this guy, and in the way he reacts to what’s happening. Its role as backstory will gradually become apparent to the reader as more of the details unfold. (Often, for example, there’ll be a photograph of war buddies, or the military past will be referenced in some other way.)

What’s more, by layering in details of backstory, I’ve also foreshadowed what lies ahead. I made sure to mention the baseball bat which the protagonist will use to fight his way free. And the breaking of the bourbon bottles is symbolic, of course, and not accidental at all. Most readers will notice it. And even if they don’t put two and two together, it will prime the reader for the inevitable uplift of the narrative’s trajectory, which requires that our hero ditches the booze and learns how to live again.

Inciting Incident and Backstory

It’s tempting to call the zombie-guy coming into the store the inciting incident. And, it is, I suppose. But writers need to be careful here. Inciting incidents are concentrated moments triggering unresolved tension in the backstory. Anything might serve to trigger our protagonist’s urge to survive–because that’s what the backstory represents: our protagonist, having experienced trauma, has lost the will to live on some level. This is evident in his implied alcoholism. (Alcohol is a poison that will kill you, eventually, if you have too much of it.) The zombie awakens our protagonist’s will to live and he escapes. But he doesn’t necessarily stop drinking. To achieve this result in any meaningful sense, we need something more than the rapacious appetites of the undead.

The problem with inciting incidents is that too much attention on them can divert a writer’s focus from the importance of backstory. This can lead to situations where the inciting incident becomes the main source of tension. What happens then is that tension eventually falls off because the incident only offers one dimension of meaning–in this case, immediate survival.

The inciting incident is really only a vehicle for igniting the tension at play between the backstory and the forward thrust of the story. And both aspects of story are about survival in some sense. Backstories represent slow deaths–often in emotional terms, where people feel shattered and broken, or otherwise numb to life because of their past experiences. The backstory to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is the slow death of an unhappy marriage. The forward thrust of the narrative is towards a happy (and prosperous) marriage. The backstory belongs to the protagonist’s parents, admittedly, but Lizzie Bennet inherits it because it places her in jeopardy (she could very well wind up homeless because this loveless marriage has failed to inspire her father to put away money for the future wellbeing of his wife and offspring).

Survival, as a motivation, is comprehensible enough. And many inciting incidents lean into it for this reason–the stakes are high when your life is on the line. But sustaining reader interest in a protagonist’s survival requires more angles than this. We need more nuanced reasons.

Because, in the face of an unrelenting zombie attack, at some point we might wonder why go on? After the initial terror and the adrenaline rush, if there’s no good reason to live (if your character is slowly killing himself already) why should he keep on fighting in the face of so much blood and horror? Surely, the next chance he gets, he’ll revert to slowly killing himself again by drinking heavily. (And then, of course, a zombie will get him.)

The story would be over too quickly, in that case. And it would be unsatisfying for the reader.

Backstory to the rescue

The backstory holds the key to establishing bases for greater depth to this issue of survival–because every story is, at heart, about survival. Even romantic comedies are about human survival in a social world. After all, social failures can feel catastrophic (and Lizzie’s social failure were she not to find a suitor could be the end of her in the long run). Continued social failure can lead to ostracism and alienation. As much as other people can annoy us, we need them on so many levels.

Our survival in emotional and material terms depends upon our sociability as a species. And so, we need others if we are to push our urge to survive beyond the immediate dangers that life throws before us (in the form of zombies, plane crashes, etc., and social failures like getting a “no” on that marriage proposal–ouch!).

Beyond fight and flight, there are steps we might take to enhance our survival prospects. Beyond fleeing the scene of an embarrassing (failed) marriage proposal, or tearing off down the street with a horde of zombies behind you, you will need to sit with your feelings. Once you’ve escaped the immediate danger, your feelings will insist that you review the situation, because you need to identify other avenues for survival. I mean, let’s face it, it’s typically because protagonists like the one I’ve described want to avoid facing their feelings that they turn to alcohol in the first place.

It can happen in life too. That’s why these stories resonate. There are many ways that we might distract ourselves from our feelings and avoid facing up to the unresolved tension of our own backstories. That’s why leaning into the all-too-human experience of having unresolved longing will help you create a story your readers can connect with.

Mood and Feeling

The mood or feeling that describes your novel’s opening pages really depends upon its destination. Scrooge’s hatred of Christmas creates a mood of impending peril because he is at odds with the rest of society. The story begins on this footing because doing so gives Dickens a greater range in the emotional transformation of his protagonist. The story ends in a joyous and excited mood because Scrooge survives and is reconciled with society and family. That’s a huge leap: from misanthrope to life of the party.

We might say that the bigger the change, the greater the satisfaction level for the characters involved and, ultimately for the reader. But that’s not necessarily the case. Even novels that end where they started can take the reader on emotionally satisfying journeys by offering shifts in mood that make sense against the events of the story and the protagonist’s journey overall.

So, to gain a sense of how your story might begin in terms of mood, consider where it’s going. You don’t have to reverse the mood, as Dickens does. All you have to do is answer the following question/s:

How does my story’s beginning relate to its end?

What is the point of it all?

What does it mean for my protagonist/s to move from this situation to that outcome?

I’ll give you an example–from a film, rather than a novel, because it’s easy for me to summarise here. The Grey (Dir. Joe Carnahan 2011), starring Liam Neeson, begins with the protagonist, John Otway, in despair and contemplating suicide. Then a plane crash sees him fighting to survive while being hunted by a pack of timber wolves. He survives, of course.

To answer the questions I have posed, Otway’s desire to die is ultimately quashed by his unrelenting struggle to survive the immediate threat of the wolves. His slow death from despair is superseded by the efforts he must make to survive an imminent threat of death. The mood therefore moves from the slow pace and muted atmosphere of despair and helplessness to an energetic, focused determination to live. It dips briefly back into despair near the end, but in doing so it brings clarity on the backstory for the reader, making Otway’s resurgence of determination comprehensible when it rears up in the final scene.

I suggest you watch the film to get the most out of the insights offered here. And once you’ve watched it, watch it again. The penny will drop more easily when your attention is off the immersive details of the story and on the structural components. If you stream the film, it’s easy enough to locate the middle section, where the whole “what’s this all about?” scenario is usually condensed into a symbolic act or series of actions. In novels, it’s often relayed through reflective moments within or upon recent actions. But it’s much easier to spot these things in films, which take under two hours to survey, as opposed to novels, which take between 6 and 16 hours to read and days and weeks to analyse.

I hope you’ve found this helpful. Next week, we’ll look at the second major mood shift as defined by the crisis that typically arises in the early phases of the story.

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