Can you help me creat 'mood' in my story? And make it better?

Question

can you help me creat more 'mood' in my story. And help me make it better in general:

A Canadian tourist worked hard over the course of two years to raise money for a trip to Europe. When the time arrived, he took three weeks of vacation and flew to Paris where he stayed ten days; he then traveled to Germany where he spent the remaining of his wonderful vacation.

While waiting in the boarding room at the Frankfurt airport, on his way back to Canada, he ate a sandwich and put an apple in his hand bag for later.

When he was on the airplane, just before landing, the steward handed him a customs declaration, which contained many questions, all of which were answered 'no.' He was simply a tourist, carrying no weapons, no drugs, or anything else of interest.

After landing at the Montreal airport, he was randomly chosen for the baggage search. During the baggage check, the agent found the forgotten apple in his bag.

“Sir, what is this?” the agent asked.

“An apple, I guess,” the man replied.

“You have declared on your card no fruit!”

”I'm sorry, I must have forgotten I placed it there.”

“You forgot?” she said with a mocking voice, “$ 400.00 then!”

“$ 400.00. For what?”

“$ 400.00 as a fine for a wrong declaration.”

“Madam, I told you before that I had forgotten it”

“Sorry, these are the rules”

“Madam, I have a solution. I will throw the apple in the garbage and next time I will be more attentive”

“Sorry, you have to pay”

Then the tourist smiled. He ate the apple and told the agent, “Prove to me that I had an apple.”

The agent was embarrassed, and understood that she made a vast deal over a problem that might end by a simple warning. Especially since the man had admitted and apologized multiple times that he had forgotten about the apple. Finally, to not look stupid, the agent smiled and let him go out.

*thanks to everyone that helped me correct before

Answer 1

You want to 'create mood', but what kind of mood do you want to create? We could slant this story so it was sinister, anecdotal, humorous, or in a number of other directions.

I would suggest first of all that you make sure all your technical features are correct. Grammar and tense are critical. I think you slip out of past tense a couple times and a few of your sentances are a little difficult to read. I recommend reading your story out loud, as if you were telling it to another person (or better yet, get another person to tell it to). You will often notice that something is hard to SAY... such things are usually also hard to read.

I also recommend that you make the story a little more gritty, so to speak. In other words, put yourself INTO the tourist. Don't just say, "he ate a sandwich and put an apple in his hand bag for later." Tell us HOW he ate the sandwich, where it came from, and maybe even what else was in his bag. Details like this can make all the difference. For example:
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He found himself at the end of his vacation in the Frankfurt airport, tired from walking past the many sights and sleeping in strange beds, but sustained by his many new memories and the idea of arriving in his familiar home. With all his luggage checked, he stopped and bought a lunch special at the airport deli. He wasn't really hungry, but it was certainly better than the prospect of airplane food and gave him something to do as he watched the planes take off and land and waited for the one that would be his. When the annoucement came over the intercom, he quickly sucked down the last of his soda, tossed an uneaten apple into his handbag, and hurried off to the gate.
___

I hope you see what I mean... not only do we get to sympathize with and understand the tourist a little more, his oversight is a lot more understandable. You can do this with a lot of your paragraphs... write it more like the tourist would be experiencing it. Another good example would be the customs form. Don't describe the form in a third-person sort of sense - go through it as he might:
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He looked over the form, and saw that much of it didn't apply to him. He quickly checked his answers on the fold-out table. No weapons. No drugs. No animals. No. No. No.
___

There are a few other touches. I wouldn't refer to the tourist as such in the first paragraph, because he ISN'T one yet. You can call him the 'would-be tourist' or just 'the Canadian'.

Likewise, I'm a bit surprised that the agent at the end is so mocking in the beginning and so easily embarassed in the end. You can alleviate some of this by just not telling us how she feels and letting us draw our own conclusions from her actions. Instead of saying she's embarassed, have her ACT embarassed. Instead of saying she's mocking, have the text of her speech seem mocking. You might want to change the apple to something smaller too, or at least expand the interaction a bit... it takes me more than a second to eat an apple, and I have trouble imagining the agent standing there blankly all the time. And did the tourist eat the core, too? I don't know many people who do that.

One more thing about dialogue. You know you've written good dialogue when you don't have to identify any of the speakers. You don't have many tags to the speech, but even some of those are probably unnecessary. It would be nice too if it was obvious HOW people were saying things instead of you telling us. Think about how you can change the text so we understand the same thing.

For example, the tourist says, "An apple, I guess." By which I infer that he hadn't even been thinking about it. You should also take all the numbers and symbols out of the speech. People talk with WORDS! Well, mostly words. You can add sort-of words people use. For example, we can turn, "Sorry, these are the rules." to "Hmph. Rules are rules. Sorry." from which we might better understand that the agent ISN'T sorry and maybe doesn't even believe the tourist.

Hope that helps. Have fun!

Answer 2

The beginning where it explains that he was from Canada and where he went made it hard for me to get into the story. You could begin simply by saying "A Canadian tourist waiting at the Frankfurt airport to catch his plane home purchases a ready-made lunch. After eating the sandwich, he put the apple in his pocket..." or something like that. That way, you get right into the meat of the story and the interest of the reader is captured. Too many details can kill a story as easily as too few.

One way to create more mood, is to describe your character better, use more adjectives. He's very clever, really, and I would say so in the story. You might say that he absent-mindedly answered 'no' on the card, which indicate to the reader that there may be a problem. This would help readers who have never gone outside their country and wouldn't know that on the declaration there may be a spot for fruit.