Creating Mood and Tone with Karin Lowachee

Mood and tone add depth and resonance to your story. Whether you're crafting a dystopian epic, a haunting ghost story, or an epic fantasy, the right mood and tone can transform your storytelling into an immersive experience. But how do you cultivate these elements deliberately?

In this workshop, we’ll explore techniques to evoke a specific emotional atmosphere and narrative voice tailored to your genre and story goals. 

Through focused discussion, we’ll cover:  

- Word choice and its subconscious impact on readers  

- The role of imagery, motifs, and recurring themes  

- How dialogue and characterization can reinforce tone  

- Layering techniques to maintain mood across the length of a story  

Participants will engage in hands-on exercises using their own writing, experimenting with these techniques in breakout rooms before reconvening for group discussion and feedback. Whether you’re refining a draft or starting a new project, this class will equip you with strategies to make your fiction more vivid, textured, and unforgettable.

Let your words do more than tell a story—let them transport, captivate, and linger. Join us for this deep dive into mood and tone! 

This class is a lecture-based generative space, and attendees will be asked to participate via chat, voice, and/or video.

This class meets once online in a two-and-a-half-hour session on March 1 from 1-3:30 pm.

What to Bring: One page of your own writing for workshop exercises.  

About the Instructor: 

Karin was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. She has been a creative writing instructor, adult education teacher, and volunteer in a maximum security prison. Her novels have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese, and her short stories have been published in numerous anthologies, best-of collections, and magazines. 

Website

This event will be held in Zoom. By registering for this class, you agree to follow the Clarion West Code of Conduct and Zoom policies. 

Limited Free Seating: 

We offer a percentage of seats in every class to People of the Global Majority (Asian, Black, African, Latina/o/x, Middle Eastern, Indigenous, Pacific Islander, and/or have been racialized as 'ethnic minorities') for free, regardless of financial need. 

Eligible folks should complete this form to enter the lottery for free seats.  If a seat is available, we will email you 7-10 days before the class begins. For more information, see our equity and inclusion policies.

Sliding Scale Pricing:

The Supporting Tuition rate is shown for each class or workshop for folks who can pay it. Paying the Supporting Tuition rate enables us to continue to pay our staff and instructors equitably, as well as support access to classes for others who may be in a different situation. 

The Helping Hands rate is available to folks under more limited economic circumstances, no matter your background.

For more information, see our financial aid policies.

Our Refund Policy:

Clarion West will refund all class fees if the request is made 30 days before the class date. Refund requests made within 30 days of the class will be honored if we can fill the seat.

Any exceptions are subject to approval by our workshop staff.