How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

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  • How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

    i came across a couple of articles that are short and simplify explanations on tone and voice.

    https://writerswrite.co.za/155-words...-authors-tone/

    https://examples.yourdictionary.com/...n-a-story.html

    i've excerpted a section from (the article above) Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and bolded specific words as examples of how word choice determines tone, which is your attitude toward your story or subject matter. it's a fantastic example.


    In the following excerpt from Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," notice the many adjectives and verbs that imply insane, nervous, and guilty tones.

    It was A LOW, DULL, QUICK SOUND -- MUCH SUCH A SOUND AS A WATCH MAKES WHEN ENVELOPED IN COTTON. I gasped for breath, and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly, more vehemently but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why WOULD they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men, but the noise steadily increased. O God! What COULD I do? I foamed -- I raved -- I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder -- louder -- louder!
    not a screenplay but a good example, i think. one can easily imagine writing this same scene with a calm and composed manner-- but that was not the "tone" the writer was expressing. this is what makes a great writer, imo. understanding there is a way to elicit emotion with the written word.

    Voice is the second element [with tone] that determines a writer's style. voice is when you express your personality through your writing.

    https://writerswrite.co.za/what-is-your-literary-style/

    these are short articles that can help clear up confusion about what style is and how to develop and apply it to your writing.

    yes, i am easily distracted. procrastinating, i know, but i agree with these articles.

    another great resource that helped me to develop my writing style is Karl Iglesias' "writing for emotional impact."

    a while ago i took an online professional writing course now called Screenwriter U (originally called the Pro Series). i won't get into the whole program but there was a section of the program where the work focused on writing scenes from a specific point of view, which i felt was, and still is, fascinating.

    you have a scene. you have an emotional word that you want to express in that scene. for example dread and you write the entire scene from that point of view. if there is more than one character one character's words and expressions can apply "dread" and the other can contrast "dread." this technique can amplify the emotion, heighten the experience.

    it taught you how to communicate a feeling, mood, and emotions through word choice and sentence structure to create fear, dread, tension, suspense, surprise, rising action, etc. and the beauty of it, is that once you understand how to do this, you just always do it. it becomes a part of your style.

    sometimes i'll read a writer's work and cannot believe the monotone at which the scene and the entire script is written. there is no ebb and flow. no attitude. no voice. the entire narrative lacks any kind of emotional rollercoaster that we go to movies to experience.

    we want to FEEL something. we want to be slapped in the face with surprise. we want to choke on our own tears of despair. we want to feel our heart pounding in our chest with fear until we can't stand it any more. we want to soar with elation as our hero makes the final sacrifice, earning the reward he seeks.

    there are times when you need to s l o w d o w n a moment and build the tension and suspense in order to take the audience on an emotional ride. this isn't about overwriting. it's about how you communicate that moment. how you draw out emotion to heighten the experience.

    there are other moments, like in intense action sequences where shorter, quick sentences or even single words can amp up the urgency and tension and keep a relentless pace that rises and rises to the final crescendo that the audience expects you to deliver.

    consider the lightening strike scene in "War of the Worlds" where Tom Cruise is in the back yard with his daughter. he's fascinated at first, then his daughter's fear begins to build, he uses humor to try to calm her, then the unexpected happens, lighting strikes the same spot again. then a series of lightening strikes hit the same spot. faster and faster they come until his own fear explodes as he realizes there is something unknown and threatening in the lightening-- something menacing. something alien.

    i still remember sitting next to this woman in the theater and saying out loud to her, "man, that was so intense." i mean, i was physically affected by the suspense that was slowly built over the course of a few minutes. my entire body was tense.

    that's our job as writers-- to affect the audience's emotions and challenge their expectations. your writing can create that sense of total exhaustion from watching or reading a scene or sequence, all with the words you choose and the way you choose to say it.

    i think i'm done procrastinating. haha.
    "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy b/c you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowden

  • #2
    Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

    Thanks for that.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

      Originally posted by finalact4 View Post
      i've excerpted a section from (the article above) Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and bolded specific words as examples of how word choice determines tone, which is your attitude toward your story or subject matter. it's a fantastic example.

      Voice is the second element [with tone] that determines a writer's style. voice is when you express your personality through your writing.
      finalact4, in the writerswrite link the authored stated the following:

      "Don't confuse tone with voice. Tone = Attitude. Voice = Personality."

      finalact4, do you agree with the author of that article that one should not consider a writer's "tone" (attitude) as being part of his voice?

      I would think a writer's "voice tones," i.e., dark, humorous, whimsical, etc. would be important to his writing and be considered part of his overall "voice." Not just the "personality" aspect alone.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

        Originally posted by JoeNYC View Post
        finalact4, in the writerswrite link the authored stated the following:

        "Don't confuse tone with voice. Tone = Attitude. Voice = Personality."

        finalact4, do you agree with the author of that article that one should not consider a writer's "tone" (attitude) as being part of his voice?

        I would think a writer's "voice tones," i.e., dark, humorous, whimsical, etc. would be important to his writing and be considered part of his overall "voice." Not just the "personality" aspect alone.
        i think that tone can change from story to story but your personality doesn't change. i can write a story that has a very dark tone. i can write a romantic comedy and you can still pick out my voice in both, but the tone between the two is different. it's not my personality that has changed, but my attitude toward the story.

        i think a lot of people say that voice encompasses everything that the writer is, and i'm not saying that's right or wrong. for me, i guess, i do feel they are two parts of the whole.
        "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy b/c you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowden

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

          you have dialog for this

          conceive the idea of a soliloquy and how it plays out for an audience
          Ricky Slade: Listen to me, I intentionally make this gun look that way because I am smart.

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

            Originally posted by Julysses View Post
            you have dialog for this

            conceive the idea of a soliloquy and how it plays out for an audience
            It is not just the dialogue. The dialogue inevitably reflects the personality of the various characters, which inevitably differ according to the characters themselves.

            The script itself, has its own tone, and its own personality -- and that is yours, not the personality of the characters contained therein, though of course, the characters that you create inevitably reflect in some way your own.

            The tone and personality of a script resides in the larger context of the scene, the action, and the sequence. How you describe the unfolding of the events.

            When a reader or a producer reads a scary movie, they should be scared. When they read a funny movie, they should laugh. When they read an action movie, they should be excited -- in the same way they would be if they were reading a book in the same genre.

            That obviously can't just reside in the dialogue, although dialogue is a part of it.

            NMS

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            • #7
              Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

              Originally posted by nmstevens View Post
              It is not just the dialogue. The dialogue inevitably reflects the personality of the various characters, which inevitably differ according to the characters themselves.

              The script itself, has its own tone, and its own personality -- and that is yours, not the personality of the characters contained therein, though of course, the characters that you create inevitably reflect in some way your own.

              The tone and personality of a script resides in the larger context of the scene, the action, and the sequence. How you describe the unfolding of the events.

              When a reader or a producer reads a scary movie, they should be scared. When they read a funny movie, they should laugh. When they read an action movie, they should be excited -- in the same way they would be if they were reading a book in the same genre.

              That obviously can't just reside in the dialogue, although dialogue is a part of it.

              NMS
              very nice, NMS.
              "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy b/c you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowden

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

                Stevens, so you're saying the prose should reflect the tone of the story?

                from my experience the prose has to do with the writer, not their actual screenplay

                as to the original example of EAP, I'm sure his style changes to fit the scene, as it's for the reader, as is dialog for an audience of a movie or play

                the screenwriter might change style to fit the action onto the page correctly, but I don't want to refer to that as tone... maybe you mother******s are writing some shakespeare ****

                ...shakespeare, dialogue, prose
                Ricky Slade: Listen to me, I intentionally make this gun look that way because I am smart.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

                  Originally posted by Julysses View Post
                  Stevens, so you're saying the prose should reflect the tone of the story?

                  from my experience the prose has to do with the writer, not their actual screenplay

                  as to the original example of EAP, I'm sure his style changes to fit the scene, as it's for the reader, as is dialog for an audience of a movie or play

                  the screenwriter might change style to fit the action onto the page correctly, but I don't want to refer to that as tone... maybe you mother******s are writing some shakespeare ****

                  ...shakespeare, dialogue, prose
                  I think that we're speaking at cross purposes.

                  The content of particular scenes inevitably varies throughout any given movie.

                  An action movie, for instance, may have funny scenes or scary scenes or moving scenes so, obviously, you want those funny scenes to, well, be funny and the scary scenes to be scary, etc., etc., etc.

                  But apart from the obvious, which I've just said, there is an *overall* tone to the piece.

                  There can be scares in a comedy, or an action movie or, obviously, a horror movie -- but you've made a decision what the overall tone is - and once you know that, you know (or should know) what kinds of scares work or don't work in the scope of the larger piece and thus know (or should know) how to write them appropriately.

                  That is, you know the proper tone of the scare, or the joke, or whatever, in terms "not" just of the particular scene, but of the overall tone of the piece that you're writing.

                  I'll give you an example, and unfortunately it's from a movie that's bad in any number of ways, but that's the way things go.

                  the movie is Jupiter Ascending which, if you're had the misfortune of wasting two hours of your life watching it, you'll remember a particularly odd "comic" scene in which Jupiter, played by Mila Kunis, goes through this odd bureaucratic process of being inducted into the royal family.

                  Now, this scene is a direct rip-off of Brazil, and even has Terry Gilliam in it.

                  The problem is, it is wildly at odds with the rest of the movie. Even given how bad the rest of the movie is, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Whatever the justification might be -- it doesn't belong in the film because it doesn't belong in the larger world of the movie.

                  It would be like a piece of Airplane-style comedy suddenly popping up in the middle of Annie Hall.

                  This is what I'm talking about when I talk about consistency of tone - that consistency across scenes irrespective of whether they are exciting or funny or scary or movie -- even within the same movie.

                  And that's something that has to be done in the writing.

                  You don't have to be Shakespeare. You just have to know how to write a screenplay.

                  NMS

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

                    one could consider the tone differences in two films about the same event.

                    Armageddon and Deep Impact

                    both movies are about and extinction level event caused by an asteroid hurtling on an impact course with Earth.

                    Armageddon: is an action adventure that uses a lot of comedy, Michael Bay explosions, uplifting music you can sing and dance to, and focuses on the main theme of hope for the future. this is a story about heroes and family connection with a love story at the center and a father who sacrifices his life to save everyone on the planet and his remaining teammates. the future here is bright.

                    Deep Impact: is a drama. it focuses on government conspiracies and secrets which includes their plans for the demise of humanity. it focuses on estranged family relationship, betrayal, suicide, hopelessness and despair. the film is filled with dread and the future of humanity is bleak.

                    to further test the tone differences, you could never have "Leaving on a Jet Plane," play in the middle of Deep Impact because it would completely **** up the tone, but it fits well into the silliness of Armageddon.

                    Deep Impact has only instrumental music while Armageddon has an album on songs played during the movie that encourage the audience to sing along.

                    exact same story situation. very similar plots. completely different tones.

                    the words you choose and the manner in which you string them together creates the tone of your film.

                    the director takes those words and transforms them into visual expressions.

                    the attitudes and personalities of your characters simply reinforce your tone, but also contribute to opposing views, attitudes and conflict to enhance the narrative and tone.
                    "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy b/c you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowden

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

                      I'm just having fun on here...

                      action lines should be easy to understand and contrive to the usual format

                      dialog and characterization is going to be where you can have a 'voice'

                      True, but you're more talking about scene building and conception of story

                      do you wanna break down the nuts and bolts of ...how you build tension in scene play? or sexual attraction? or fear?

                      (you should start with act 1 and the set up)
                      Ricky Slade: Listen to me, I intentionally make this gun look that way because I am smart.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

                        Originally posted by Julysses View Post
                        I'm just having fun on here...

                        action lines should be easy to understand and contrive to the usual format

                        dialog and characterization is going to be where you can have a 'voice'

                        True, but you're more talking about scene building and conception of story

                        do you wanna break down the nuts and bolts of ...how you build tension in scene play? or sexual attraction? or fear?

                        (you should start with act 1 and the set up)
                        I don't know what you mean by having fun.

                        And you can keep on saying the above and, sorry about this -- you can just plain keep being dead wrong.

                        A screenwriter has a voice in every word of the screenplay.

                        Yes, every word. Even slug lines -- because every word you write is a choice you make that informs the tone of your work.

                        I've written slug lines like these:

                        EXT. A REALM OF FIRE AND DARKNESS

                        EXT. NOWHERE - NIGHT

                        EXT. THE DEPTHS OF SPACE - LATE AFTERNOON

                        You read these slug lines and, before you read a single word of the action or a single word of dialogue and you've already been given a sense of the tone of what's going to follow.

                        I don't know what you mean by "contrive to the usual format."

                        Really, it just has nothing to do with how real screenwriters right real screenplays.

                        Formatting has to do with margins and what gets capitalized and scene headings and things like that.

                        There are more general rules that relate to readability and clarity but the broadest and most central "rule" is to engage the reader and write scenes that are memorable -- and that doesn't just mean writing dialogue that is memorable.

                        If you don't want to believe this -- that's up to you.

                        NMS

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

                          Originally posted by nmstevens View Post
                          I don't know what you mean by having fun.

                          And you can keep on saying the above and, sorry about this -- you can just plain keep being dead wrong.

                          A screenwriter has a voice in every word of the screenplay.

                          Yes, every word. Even slug lines -- because every word you write is a choice you make that informs the tone of your work.

                          I've written slug lines like these:

                          EXT. A REALM OF FIRE AND DARKNESS

                          EXT. NOWHERE - NIGHT

                          EXT. THE DEPTHS OF SPACE - LATE AFTERNOON

                          You read these slug lines and, before you read a single word of the action or a single word of dialogue and you've already been given a sense of the tone of what's going to follow.

                          I don't know what you mean by "contrive to the usual format."

                          Really, it just has nothing to do with how real screenwriters right real screenplays.

                          Formatting has to do with margins and what gets capitalized and scene headings and things like that.

                          There are more general rules that relate to readability and clarity but the broadest and most central "rule" is to engage the reader and write scenes that are memorable -- and that doesn't just mean writing dialogue that is memorable.

                          If you don't want to believe this -- that's up to you.

                          NMS
                          100% agree
                          "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy b/c you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowden

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

                            Originally posted by Julysses View Post
                            I'm just having fun on here...

                            action lines should be easy to understand and contrive to the usual format

                            dialog and characterization is going to be where you can have a 'voice'

                            True, but you're more talking about scene building and conception of story

                            do you wanna break down the nuts and bolts of ...how you build tension in scene play? or sexual attraction? or fear?

                            (you should start with act 1 and the set up)
                            Here's some more Poe -- no dialog. Do you notice any shifts of tone? Why do you suppose he does that?

                            The Bells
                            Edgar Allan Poe - 1809-1849

                            I.

                            Hear the sledges with the bells-
                            Silver bells!
                            What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
                            How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
                            In the icy air of night!
                            While the stars that oversprinkle
                            All the heavens, seem to twinkle
                            With a crystalline delight;
                            Keeping time, time, time,
                            In a sort of Runic rhyme,
                            To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
                            From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
                            Bells, bells, bells-
                            From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

                            II.

                            Hear the mellow wedding bells,
                            Golden bells!
                            What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
                            Through the balmy air of night
                            How they ring out their delight!
                            From the molten-golden notes,
                            And all in tune,
                            What a liquid ditty floats
                            To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
                            On the moon!
                            Oh, from out the sounding cells,
                            What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
                            How it swells!
                            How it dwells
                            On the Future! how it tells
                            Of the rapture that impels
                            To the swinging and the ringing
                            Of the bells, bells, bells,
                            Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
                            Bells, bells, bells-
                            To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

                            III.

                            Hear the loud alarum bells-
                            Brazen bells!
                            What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
                            In the startled ear of night
                            How they scream out their affright!
                            Too much horrified to speak,
                            They can only shriek, shriek,
                            Out of tune,
                            In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
                            In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
                            Leaping higher, higher, higher,
                            With a desperate desire,
                            And a resolute endeavor
                            Now-now to sit or never,
                            By the side of the pale-faced moon.
                            Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
                            What a tale their terror tells
                            Of Despair!
                            How they clang, and clash, and roar!
                            What a horror they outpour
                            On the bosom of the palpitating air!
                            Yet the ear it fully knows,
                            By the twanging,
                            And the clanging,
                            How the danger ebbs and flows;
                            Yet the ear distinctly tells,
                            In the jangling,
                            And the wrangling.
                            How the danger sinks and swells,
                            By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells-
                            Of the bells-
                            Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
                            Bells, bells, bells-
                            In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

                            IV.

                            Hear the tolling of the bells-
                            Iron bells!
                            What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
                            In the silence of the night,
                            How we shiver with affright
                            At the melancholy menace of their tone!
                            For every sound that floats
                            From the rust within their throats
                            Is a groan.
                            And the people-ah, the people-
                            They that dwell up in the steeple,
                            All alone,
                            And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
                            In that muffled monotone,
                            Feel a glory in so rolling
                            On the human heart a stone-
                            They are neither man nor woman-
                            They are neither brute nor human-
                            They are Ghouls:
                            And their king it is who tolls;
                            And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
                            Rolls
                            A pæan from the bells!
                            And his merry bosom swells
                            With the pæan of the bells!
                            And he dances, and he yells;
                            Keeping time, time, time,
                            In a sort of Runic rhyme,
                            To the pæan of the bells-
                            Of the bells:
                            Keeping time, time, time,
                            In a sort of Runic rhyme,
                            To the throbbing of the bells-
                            Of the bells, bells, bells-
                            To the sobbing of the bells;
                            Keeping time, time, time,
                            As he knells, knells, knells,
                            In a happy Runic rhyme,
                            To the rolling of the bells-
                            Of the bells, bells, bells-
                            To the tolling of the bells,
                            Of the bells, bells, bells, bells-
                            Bells, bells, bells-
                            To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
                            "I just couldn't live in a world without me."

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                            • #15
                              Re: How Tone and Voice = Writer's Style (attitude and personality)

                              Of course Poe didn't just write morbid stuff. He wrote funny stuff too.

                              The Businessman

                              ...I turned my attention, therefore, to Mud-Dabbling, and continued it for some years.

                              The worst of this occupation is, that too many people take a fancy to it, and the competition is in consequence excessive. Every ignoramus of a fellow who finds that he hasn't brains in sufficient quantity to make his way as a walking advertiser, or an eye-sore prig, or a salt-and-batter man, thinks, of course, that he'll answer very well as a dabbler of mud. But there never was entertained a more erroneous idea than that it requires no brains to mud-dabble. Especially, there is nothing to be made in this way without method. I did only a retail business myself, but my old habits of system carried me swimmingly along. I selected my street-crossing, in the first place, with great deliberation, and I never put down a broom in any part of the town but that. I took care, too, to have a nice little puddle at hand, which I could get at in a minute. By these means I got to be well known as a man to be trusted; and this is one-half the battle, let me tell you, in trade. Nobody ever failed to pitch me a copper, and got over my crossing with a clean pair of pantaloons. And, as my business habits, in this respect, were sufficiently understood, I never met with any attempt at imposition. I wouldn't have put up with it, if I had. Never imposing upon any one myself, I suffered no one to play the possum with me. The frauds of the banks of course I couldn't help. Their suspension put me to ruinous inconvenience. These, however, are not individuals, but corporations; and corporations, it is very well known, have neither bodies to be kicked nor souls to be damned.

                              I was making money at this business when, in an evil moment, I was induced to merge it in the Cur-Spattering - a somewhat analogous, but, by no means, so respectable a profession. My location, to be sure, was an excellent one, being central, and I had capital blacking and brushes. My little dog, too, was quite fat and up to all varieties of snuff. He had been in the trade a long time, and, I may say, understood it. Our general routine was this:- Pompey, having rolled himself well in the mud, sat upon end at the shop door, until he observed a dandy approaching in bright boots. He then proceeded to meet him, and gave the Wellingtons a rub or two with his wool. Then the dandy swore very much, and looked about for a boot-black. There I was, full in his view, with blacking and brushes. It was only a minute's work, and then came a sixpence. This did moderately well for a time; - in fact, I was not avaricious, but my dog was. I allowed him a third of the profit, but he was advised to insist upon half. This I couldn't stand - so we quarrelled and parted.

                              I next tried my hand at the Organ-Grinding for a while, and may say that I made out pretty well. It is a plain, straightforward business, and requires no particular abilities. You can get a music-mill for a mere song, and to put it in order, you have but to open the works, and give them three or four smart raps with a hammer. It improves the tone of the thing, for business purposes, more than you can imagine. This done, you have only to stroll along, with the mill on your back, until you see tanbark in the street, and a knocker wrapped up in buckskin. Then you stop and grind; looking as if you meant to stop and grind till doomsday. Presently a window opens, and somebody pitches you a sixpence, with a request to "Hush up and go on,- etc. I am aware that some grinders have actually afforded to "go on- for this sum; but for my part, I found the necessary outlay of capital too great to permit of my "going on- under a shilling.

                              At this occupation I did a good deal; but, somehow, I was not quite satisfied, and so finally abandoned it. The truth is, I labored under the disadvantage of having no monkey - and American streets are so muddy, and a Democratic rabble is so obstrusive, and so full of demnition mischievous little boys.

                              I was now out of employment for some months, but at length succeeded, by dint of great interest, in procuring a situation in the Sham-Post. The duties, here, are simple, and not altogether unprofitable. For example:- very early in the morning I had to make up my packet of sham letters. Upon the inside of each of these I had to scrawl a few lines on any subject which occurred to me as sufficiently mysterious - signing all the epistles Tom Dobson, or Bobby Tompkins, or anything in that way. Having folded and sealed all, and stamped them with sham postmarks - New Orleans, Bengal, Botany Bay, or any other place a great way off - I set out, forthwith, upon my daily route, as if in a very great hurry. I always called at the big houses to deliver the letters, and receive the postage. Nobody hesitates at paying for a letter - especially for a double one - people are such fools - and it was no trouble to get round a corner before there was time to open the epistles. The worst of this profession was, that I had to walk so much and so fast; and so frequently to vary my route. Besides, I had serious scruples of conscience. I can't bear to hear innocent individuals abused - and the way the whole town took to cursing Tom Dobson and Bobby Tompkins was really awful to hear. I washed my hands of the matter in disgust.
                              "I just couldn't live in a world without me."

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