Book tone, what is it?

This is my only blog post about writing craft.

 

What is the tone of a book ?

After years of following agent blogs and then spidering out to writer’s blogs I kept  wondering what is tone.  Being a painter I should have understood.  Tones are light and dark.  They give contrast to your work and without tone a painting is flat. 

I grew up in the time before digital photography.  In my high school there was a dark room in the art department.  We used to go there, lock the door and smoke while we projected black and white negatives on paper then put the paper in a bath of chemicals.  It was magic to see the image appear.  It took skill to know just when to remove the photograph and put it in the bath of fixer.  To think we smoked when we did this!  It was only when they had to replace a ceiling lamp did they catch us, because the ashtray was the drop ceiling.  We put out the butts and shoved them up through one of the removable ceiling tiles.  Like the place didn’t reek. That was also life before safety-hysteria.  But that’s another story.

In photography there is a greyscale.  

A guide for the tones.  Typically twenty tones from black to white, but there are more.  A black and white photograph with no tone is either white or black.  Boring.  A well developed black and white photograph has a wide range of distinct tones.  Distinct is the key.

It didn’t hit me until yesterday what tone is in a book.

I have to experience things to understand them.  Just reading it doesn’t help, listening to others advice, well, *cough* I’m still learning.

Tone, in crafting fiction, was one big elusive word.   I’ve read the definition in many books on crafting fiction , but until yesterday didn’t understand. 

 David Hood  says : "Tone is also about the effect the writing has on the reader."  Yeah okay but what does it mean ?

What is tone? 

Currently I’m rewriting my manuscript entitled White Sky of Paris.  The rewrite was going well but there was something missing.  The stakes were flat.  Just a guy who needs to finish paintings. Finishing the paintings is the protagonist’s goal.  So what? Right.  We all have work to do, things to finish. The real story wasn’t making sense.

It hit me that I didn’t understand my villain’s motives, why he wants to destroy my hero.  I sat my butt in my chair, brainstormed my villain, considered giving him more word count.  When I finished blathering on the page, I reread.  A dark feeling enveloped me.  Like the whole manuscript shifted.  The sensation was overwhelming, like a cloak was drawn over me. I was also overwhelmed because I thought I had to write a whole different book.  I put my writing aside and painted all day, reflected and realized I didn’t have to give my villain more voice, subtext would do.  This was a relief.

This shifting sensation happens when I am painting, when one brushstroke, even a tiny one, can change the entire painting.  It’s like the painting flickers.  Visually.  And no, it is not a hallucination.  If you don’t believe me try staring at a Rothko 

or a Mondrian from his De Stijl period.

   

 If you don’t stare, you won’t understand.  It may take ten minutes of staring.  Focusing on one of these paintings has to be done in person.  Staring at a photograph of one of these artists’ works will not let you see what is there.

The first time one of my artworks flickered, it was when I sculpted portraits.  The eyes would blink.  But it took years of exercise to see the first time a brushstroke changed the entire painting.

Now that I understand what a book's tone is (though I may not have explained it well), it is clear that characters have tonal differences. The villain is blackest, the hero is lightest, but to be well rounded characters they should have nuances of grey.  Then there are minor characters or appearances who should have less variation on the grey scale.

Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and Gainsbourg's tomb

 

Friday I went to the drawing session at the Academie de La Grande Chaumiere   on rue de la Grande Chaumiere in the 6th arrondissement, near Montparnasse.  

Above is the scene.  The dust on the atelier walls looks like it's been there for one hundred years and the stools and grimy plank  floor are speckled with paint like millefleur.  

The model, who is an actress, was fantastic. She obviously knows what she's doing.

  

Here is the façade, a peice of authentic Paris.

A  scene in my story White Sky of Paris happens here.   

 This is Serge Gainsbourg's tomb at the

Montparnasse Cemetery

Also part of the story. 

Look at those metro tickets.  They must have cleaned up, 

usually there are more.

 

Outside the cemetery on Boulevard Edgar Quinet, a tagged truck caught my eye.

 

It's one of the better one's I've seen around Paris. 

Sous-street art in Paris

The city of lights has a dark side, the catacombs of course.  Not only are crews of taggers and graffiti artists painting walls up high above the roof tops like this round lettered throw up in Place Italie

look at that white sky, shall I say achromic?

and trucks you can see almost anywhere

 

but they go underground hauling their materials down man holes and through metro tunnels to paint images like the Hokusai wave in a room called the Beach.

 

photo:  Gakuranman

Here is a blogpost by GAKURANMAN whose photo I borrowed.  

National Graphic printed a special issue in Febrary 2011 about the underground art scene in Paris. Here is a video on vimeo about sous-street art in Paris.  Don Duncan did a story in 2010 for  The Wall Street Journal.

I think I'll take their word for granted and just stay above the tarmac.

Grafrank, Jef Aerosol and Invader

One of my favorite street artists in Paris is Jef Aerosol.  Here's a montage of Gainsbourg pochoirs that inhabit Butte aux Cailles a hood in the 13th arrondissement.

 

photo courtesy of web

But check out Grafrank  (redacted: this website was active but no longer is available, too bad. It was cool.) It's a global graffiti ranking site.  Looks like Invader is more popular than Jef.

French Election street art

The workshop and pitch session organised by Tioka from SCWBI France was awesome.  What a treat  to speak one on one with amazing Jessica Regel.  So elegant a woman.

She gave me great insight and has inspired me deeply...  I'm not sure how much I should tell about my project. 


Here is a photo from place Saint Medard.  The nationwide adminsitrative elections will be decided today.  As you can see any occasion is worthy to tag, especially these official election affiche plastering a construction site wall.

The ten month hiatus from my main writing project brought a clarity of mind that I didn't have before.  I guess I can thank all those events that blocked me from pushing the project, like chewing on a Carambar that sticks your teeth together. I hate Carambar.

But check out this: Good Luck Carambar

Marketing madness, what dorky jokes. I guess the French accent makes the deal.

31 bis, rue Campagne Première -

photo courtesy of wikipedia

André Arfvidson designed the studios where my main character passes his Parisian residency in the story Parisian sky.   The facade of 31 bis, rue Campagne Première  is covered with polychrome tiles.  The tiles, not flat, are various shades of ochre and reflect warmth from the Parisian Sky.   

How can the Parisian sky ever be warm, it's grey, like 320 shades of grey, the other 32 days may be various blues, especially when the north wind is whipping.

Arfvidson, (what kind of name is that?)  won a city contest for decorating facades.  Originally the building held twenty ateliers for lucky artists like Man Ray.

Here is a video:

Kiki et Man Ray

Stealing Time Magazine

Back on track writing the first draft of White Sky of Paris.

Today I reached 124 pages and it feels good, I've got the next chapter, it feels good.  Writing time comes in bits and pieces between cooking for my kid after a ten hour day at the studio. Often I have to stop painting and jot down the story. Usually it takes me away.  I know where I'm going, finally after leaving 4 manuscripts at 150+ because I didn't know what I was doing.  Now the story is coming out, leading the writing.

After finishing Stephen King's On Writing I feel like I can consider myself a writer because I like writing, I am doing it for myself.  King mentions many writers who wrote when they had time and not as full time jobs. That's my profile as a parent and full time artist.  I am stealing time, like the amazing women that have put together Stealing Time magazine.  Here is their website, you should read their awesome CVs. Stealing Time .  The preview issue was a nutshell of emotions, I cried and laughed so hard.

I found them through Duotrope, they pay.

Tags in Paris

Tagging in Paris plays a big role in my contemporary urban manuscript, White Sky of Paris.

Trucks are tagged and metallic security gates are tagged and the high parts of buildings are tagged.   There are different types of tags in Paris.  What you see on this truck has a NY influence but pochoirs are Parisian.  Here is a pochoir (stencil) from the artist NEMO.  See an article about him HERE where I got this picture

Keith Harring became famous for his underground graffitti like many Parisian pochoir artists,  MISSTIC and Blek the Rat.

The protagonist, Jake, in White Sky of Paris falls into night-time tagging raids throughout Paris.