Power punch: use strong words to set mood!

Check out this opening paragraph from Anthony Doerr’s short story, “The Deep”:

Tom is born in 1914 in Detroit, a quarter mile from International Salt. His father is offstage,
unaccounted for. His mother operates a six-room, underinsulated boardinghouse populated with
locked doors, behind which drowse the grim possessions of itinerant salt workers: coats the color of
mice, tattered mucking boots, aquatints of undressed women, their breasts faded orange. Every six
months a miner is fired or drafted or dies and is replaced by another, so that very early in his life
Tom comes to see how the world continually drains itself of young men, leaving behind only objects
—empty tobacco pouches, bladeless jack- knives, salt-caked trousers—mute, incapable of memory.

Notice the words in bold…more than TWENTY words that have negative connotation to them. When you are setting up mood, do not go gently. Here, Doerr makes sure you pity a boy born during a world war year, near a salt mine, in a depressing environment to a single parent. Enough pathos for you? Revisit one of your story openings and see if some strong positive or negative words can pile up to carry the feeling you want to establish!