What does the author’s choice of words affect in a literary piece?

The author’s choice of words significantly impacts the tone and mood of a literary piece. Tone refers to the author’s attitude toward the subject or audience, conveyed through word selection and style. For instance, using formal or sophisticated vocabulary can establish a serious or somber tone, while colloquial language might create a more casual or humorous tone.

Mood, on the other hand, is the atmosphere that a reader experiences through the text, influenced by the author’s word choices. Descriptive and evocative language can evoke particular emotions, making the reader feel excitement, sadness, tension, or comfort, thus immersing them deeper into the narrative.

Though choices related to character development, pacing and plot, and theme and message are essential elements of storytelling, they are not as directly tied to the specific impact of word choice as tone and mood. For example, while word choice can contribute to character development by revealing personality through dialogue, the immediate effect on how the reader feels about the story is rooted in tone and mood. Similarly, pacing and plot can be influenced by sentence structure and length, but primarily through the lens of the emotions evoked from the author's choices in diction, tone, and mood are created.