WRITING SHORT FICTION: TALES FROM MY STREET: AVOIDING ONE’S DEFAULT TONE

 “What’s up, Tel? You look like you could do with some mental prune juice, or lager as they call it here in the Jolly Farmers.”

Nige and I are in one of our locals, closing in on last orders. Outside the back door, past the resonant smell of the Gents loo, actual evening sunlight is slicing great yellow slabs across the pub’s garden. ‘Garden’ is a little optimistic a description, however, for a patch of concrete covered by a few benches, but it helps the smokers feel as if their night is just a bit healthier and at least in shouting distance of Mother Nature.

“I’ve been working on my blog about writing short fiction,” I say. “It’s very different to working with my students who I can help with specifics directed to their needs. But when you’re writing to people you can’t even see or know much about, it’s harder somehow to explain what works in a way that they, whoever they are, can fully understand.”

 It’s the same with apprentices,” he says. “You need to see them working at close hand to know what’s going to help them best sort their shit.”

I begin to get a feeling-idea from what Nige says. This happens sometimes, when a word or a picture or a piece of music triggers a few separated ideas I have, bringing them together.

“Did you know I once blagged my way into a job as a signwriter,” I say.

“You’ve told me about it but never mentioned the blagging bit.”

 “The council’s signwriter was retiring and they needed a replacement. I guess real signwriters were short on the ground so they believed me when I told them how going to art college and working in props in the opera had given me a good eye.”

 “Hang on: didn’t an apprenticeship for signwriting used to last seven years?”

 “Yes, and with good reason. Every sign in the council at that time was produced with paint and brush. And if I’d tried to do that the way I thought signwriting was done, I’d never have finished a thing and it would all have been crap. Fortunately, the real signwriter who was retiring stayed on for a few months to show me the basics.”

I can tell Nige is engrossed because his half pint of lager has remained unswallowed for the past five minutes.

 “It took me a long time just to learn how to mark up the guidelines on a board,” I say.

 “You don’t just use a ruler and pencil?”

 “No, you coat a long piece of string with chalk, wrap one end around your left little finger; stretch the other end tight, then with your first two fingers, twang the string so it leaves a nice, light, even and dead straight marker line.”

 “Neat, and not the kind of thing you’d work out for yourself.”

 “Exactly, and neither is the way you paint a letter. First you need a mahl stick which has a cushioned end. You hold this against the board with your left hand then balance your right wrist on top of your left; that way, your painting hand has complete freedom of movement, which is not possible when you simply put your painting wrist directly on to the board. Next, you take the right kind of brush; load it up with paint then produce pretty much an entire letter in one sweep of the hand. You start with the edge of the brush, to produce the serif, then you flatten it out as you sweep down, which means the two outside lines of the brush ensure the letter width is right and there are no jagged bits to it.”

 Now he finishes off his pint and orders two more.

 “All very interesting, Tel, but I ain’t sure you can apply the same kind of principles to writing.”

“Not exactly but I think there’s a similarity between putting something you’ve been taught about writing into practice and just having to take on that letter in one smooth movement, not ruin it with lots of baby steps. Take just one element, like tone selection. I mean, how do you explain to someone how to do that?”

 “I was always getting in trouble with my ex due to poor tone selection, as it happens,” he says. “My default tone, apparently, was over-jovial and largely avoiding of the point, especially upon returning from this place.”

 “Default tone, yes,” I say. “Almost every writer has one but is usually unaware of it. For years, for instance, I used to always put humour into my characters’ dialogue, even if the mood was deadly serious.”

 “Frustrated sitcom writer?”

 “I don’t know but an editor once told me that humour and dialogue were two of my strengths, so forever after I was determined to squeeze them in to every story. Default tone is another reason I try to get my writers to produce short fiction, not just novels. They need to try lots of different tones, characters, tenses, genres, so they become skilful in a whole range of tones; then the story will select the right one for them.”

 “I should have asked my missus to select the right tone for me. She could read me like a book anyway.”

“The problem is,” I say. “I’m trying to train people to be craftsman who can produce any kind of story but the reality is that most writers only want to create one kind of story; the one that sells.”

I pick up my glass, realising I’m nearly a pint behind Nige and I don’t possess the mystical open throat. But it’s okay. He’s just finished his last and ordered another two, no doubt remembering it’s Monday and that means Music Night in the Jolly Farmers with an extended bar. In fact, I now notice that the have been here all evening, sitting in a loose circle at one end, grinding out old Beatles and Dylan hits along with the odd sea shanty that sounds like Davy Jones with heartburn, and not the lead singer with the Monkees.

“You know what, Tel?” says Nige. “Sod ’em. If some half-arsed scribbler wants to just knock out derivative crap over and over again, let him. But you need to keep trying to teach the best, to the best. I don’t read much fiction these days, not with all that conspiracy theory stuff it’s my destiny to keep up with. But the novels I really remember are the ones where the writer cared about what he wrote; had something to say; and bleedin’ well said it as good as he could. Like Herman Hesse. Boy, he had a knack of using magical prose to nail down those rare feelings we all get but can’t always articulate. Like meeting some stranger and knowing straight away that they’re part of your spiritual family. Not the flesh and blood one; but the family that’s spread all over the globe, in different races and countries but where every member feels exactly the same thing about the universe, so when you meet one, you just know.”

I say nothing to this, just marvel for a few moments at the articulacy that sometimes results from the right mixture of lager, philosophy, and nostalgia for one’s ex, even if she did render one’s collection of unmarked conspiracy theory videos impotent by stealing the only index book.

And with that, I decided to carry on with these blogs, for whoever may need them now or some time later.


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