The mood of a story is the atmosphere that the writer creates in order to arouse a specific emotional response in the reader.
In order to achieve the desired atmosphere, authors resort to various combinations of elements such as setting -the description of the place and time in which the story takes place, for example- and tone -the author's attitude to his subject matter and characters.
Besides descriptive adjectives and suitable verbs, figures of speech play a most important part in conveying mood. You will find that the most effective are similes and metaphors.
