Spicing Up Your Writing: Why Tones In Your Article Are A Super-Power
Of noodles, spices, robots, and how to make your writing tasty. With a step-by-step recipe!
As writers, we all have our individual wording and styles. It is like the unique brand of wine or coffee that you like. Your Starbucks order that never changes. Unless, sometimes it does. Because no one finds the same taste palatable forever, especially with a seasonally changing menu…
Until now, I have always advocated for “come as you are, write as you are”. While I still hold onto that value, especially in a world where being unique and authentic is key, I would like to extend this idea and specify some things.
This month, I have been on a scavenger hunt for the best inspiration tools, in my case a love(ly) obsession and perspective-taking, to sustain my motivation, inspiration, and desire to write. That box is ticked now.
This week’s article is based on another tool I have recently added to my toolbox: Tones in Writing. By that, I mean adjectives like narrative, humorous, critical, satirical, and others. Basically they are like little containers to fill your words into.
Are you a chef or Uncle Ben’s?
When I initially started publishing about “writing” in August, it was out of an urge to empower other writers, not to victimize themselves to numbers. I was under the impression that too many writers (even on Medium) produce for views only, resulting in some rather poor-quality content.
Furthermore, I was enraged by the terms “writer”, “author”, “poet” and “content creator” being mixed like a really bad Mai Tai. It seemed the bartender thought adding more of the “content creator”-coconut water would make up for the missing alcohol.
Without the drunken feeling of creativity in writing, however, your article will only ever be content. In my humble opinion, a piece of content is an article with information tailored to the reader in such a way, that the marketing value is bigger than the artistic expression. Essentially, inspiring written words should feel more like art than an artificial taste-amplifier.
The interesting finding I recently stumbled upon is: that I am not just one box of spices. I am not only chili. Not even one article is just one characteristic. Turns out, tones can be depicted very well on a percentile range. Meaning, an article has 20% cumin, 50% pepper, and only a pinch of chili.
Here is an example:
This is a screenshot taken from my new Instagram page, which I have recently launched in an attempt to create a stage for my poetry. I love and follow many Instagram poets and since Medium is NOT a good place for poetry (yes, I had to learn that one the hard way), I have now switched gears.
My taste-testing experience
What I want to illustrate with this example is how I created my personal taste wheel of my own “flavors”. Since my writing on Medium and Instagram are both coffee-themed (not coincidentally since 90% of my writing is done over a cup of coffee in a nice nearby café), I called it the “flavors of my brew”.
Basically, this is an attempt to provide readers on Instagram, who are interested in my Medium articles, with an overview of what my articles will “taste like”. Initially, this started with a fun idea from my friend, who helped me create my first poetry reels and asked me to “try to rate my writing”.
I was outraged: “What do you mean RATE MY OWN WRITING?” It will never EVER be anywhere close to accurate because the most biased person judging a piece is always the creator. But since I like to take crazy ideas and run, I decided I would give her idea my own spin.
What I ended up doing, was a mini-research project. I know what I like to read on Medium and I have some publications that I aspire to become a writer for. So, in an attempt to level up my writing, I started looking at what my dream-publications (besides the Writer’s Way of course :)) were asking for in terms of “style”.
Not surprisingly, I didn’t find much. Most publications on Medium are looking for certain topics rather than style. So I proceeded to Google different adjectives that could describe writing. The ones I picked are specific to me, to my taste, and to what I think my writing sounds like at its best.
After creating my list, I went on ChatGPT and asked it to create a radar chart for me. I asked it to rate my writing based on my identified categories and then I provided it with a previously written article. This was the result:
Since this is the first analysis, I think you can see a clear difference from the first analysis I provided you with. This is because over time, as I repeated this process about four times, the AI learned my style of writing and also graded it differently.
This illustrates that tone is not only one flavor, it is a mixture of multiple. To recognize individual tastes means to understand your writing. To develop a feeling for them when reviewing is to benefit from your writing. And to think ahead and decide on which spice to use to what extent, is the absolute chef’s kiss.
Your recipe — time to get spicey!
- If you are trying to replicate my little experiment, I would recommend you start off the same way: Look into publications that you might want to get into. These will serve as your goalposts. Then examine their style suggestions, which should tell you whether you are a possible fit for this publication.
- Then Google descriptors for writing. When creating your personal list of 3–6 adjectives, make sure they are not just broad, but also a style you would like to read and write. Now you can double-check if your publications really fit you.
- If the words on your Google list and the description of the publication don’t match: Don’t try to bend your writing until it fits. Forcing your writing will only make you sound fake, and trust me, I learned that lesson too.
- Then ask an AI to generate taste wheels for you, ask friends to rate an article if you can and start rating it yourself. It is all about creating awareness, not reaching perfection!
Why let a robot be the judge of your meal?
Now you might say: You want me to ask an AI to grade my articles? You can’t be serious…
I am, and the reason is simple: Because at the start YOU definitely can’t. No matter how bad the AI is, it is likely no worse than you. Sorry for that sour truth.
If you have a friend to check the AI radar chart with: Great. If you have a brutally honest friend who will kick your butt in such an analysis: Even better!
The key factor here is to collect your radar charts or taste wheels and look at if and how they reflect your personal taste in this article. Because in actual matter of fact, it is less about whether the AI, your friend, or you yourself are right. It is about developing a feeling for your tone.
Now, I also have a simple Google Sheet with adaptable numbers, which generates a taste wheel for me, according to my preference. I will first input the numbers, then generate the graph, and finally, compare it to the AI version.
Again, there is no need for the AI and your rating to match, but it is an exercise of your perceptive muscle. Here is my most recent self-drawn taste-wheel:
The main point was never, to have a perfectly accurate graph. But it has achieved that I am now aware of the spices on my wrack.
Using my new ingredients for better outcomes
When writing a draft, I still usually just start typing out my thoughts in a rush before they disappear. But when reformulating, editing, and cutting each article, I tend to consider which tone I want this article to have.
In this way, I can make my own writing more compelling, without having to neglect my own style. My ideas and the thought process are still the same, but I can play around with the toppings however I like.
This, for instance, is a conversational article, with side-notes of narration and a pinch of humor. That is because if I read this article, I would find that the information delivered is most important. After that comes a clear structure and third is a pinch of entertainment.
See what I did there? I am creating my own recipe with my personal writing ingredients! And I love it so much. It has sparked my interest in writing by focusing more on the craft than the product.
In this process, I have also become more consciously aware of how I like to achieve my “styles”. Please don’t take the following as advice, but view it as an example of how you might recognize your styles (your points will be vastly different either way):
- I personally am, by default, very conversational in writing. The more amicable I am, as is evident, the more apostrophes — or dashes or whatever — I like to insert. I have to keep a low profile though, because it might interfere with readability.
- The more critical I get, the more f***s might slip through my keys. This means that sentences come out more short and pointy. Like a knife. For words to pierce, they need to carry emphasis! And that also means exclamation points?!
- If I write in a narrative style, the tone of my writing transforms into somewhat of a prosaic description of the happenings and objects around me, often including a sort of listing to capture “the atmosphere”. Again, I have a tendency to get wordy, but that is editable and in narration more palatable than elsewhere. Oh, and I use fancier, more rosy wording…
- Poetic sentences are short but like a veil of blue. Knitted together by a loose concept of grammar and double meanings. Other favorites of mine are rhymes, double negations, and descriptive metaphors. Nothing is sweeter than the honey dripping from a good contrast!
- Finally, to be humorous, I love metaphors. Like in this article, where I use metaphors for food A LOT. Honestly, I don’t know why I do it, it literally just happens. Also, I like to be a little more spikey, and add more swear words and comparisons. And. Dots. Because. It’s. Funny. Sometimes. Or. Maybe. Not... I. Tried.
I still firmly believe that I will never become a ghostwriter or want to mold myself into some preferred way of wording. I love writing as a creative artsy type of outlet too much to want to jynx that.
Writers are also still fundamentally artists to me, rather than content creators. At least that is what I am leaning towards. But the art comes from being able to use our ingredients to their fullest potential.
Yes, adapt your ingredients to taste more Italian, but don’t become a Tagliatelle because you are more marketing-friendly that way. Stay the funky rock-solid ramen noodle you are!
I hope you had a nice and individualized brand of drip coffee with this article because I certainly have! I send a warm hug from my mug to yours, and I’ll see you next time!
Yours, Hug in a Mug :)
