we need a universal grocery classification system like the dewey decimal to aid in shelving, so i don’t have to figure out whether you think maple syrup goes with the sauces, breakfast foods, jams, or condiments
Creatures of the Dark/related entity expressions in the Neath would
be constantly held in check exclusively by Mr. Fires fucking around.
Was
that intended? Not really, but the LAST thing it wants is London to
fall prey to shadow monsters– who would light the lamps if everyone got
eaten? Who would buy coal? Sell it? A shadow being isn’t going to need
to keep themselves warm, their stoves lit, or their cellars full of
coal.
Not to mention i imagine it abhors the cold and the Dark is known to be both cold and wet.
Meanwhile
Hearts is making Neath Flesh manifest by itself. Weird machines
specifically for churning meat? Intense interest in butchery and animal
production? Yup and yep. The only thing missing is the industrial scale,
which could be happening on the Surface and Hearts is just doing its
part in the depths to be weird about it.
Stones is personally
offended whenever the Buried/its related manifestations has an incident
because that means its workers suddenly are too scared to leave their
lodgings, let alone MINE. Every new mineshaft gets a very blindingly
bold Correspondence inscription that smells oddly of ozone to keep the
workers feeling like there’s more space in the place than there is.
Speaking
of the Vast, i imagine a version of it probably held a lot of sway in
the High Wilderness– since Curators live in small groups and gather
occasionally, i could see the thin air stretching out forever and ever
making them… nervous. How are they supposed to follow the day customs
and do their trade if there’s nothing? How to find food if you’re
suddenly alone in the nothing?
Anyway i keep pondering TMA/FL and its all @clarionglass ’s fault.
I
know in their au specifically the powers manifest themselves in a
uniquely Neath-y way, but i ponder down rabbit trails and here i am.
tma/fallen london (delicious) friends! we now have a discord to collaboratively go nuts over the possibilities of this au, thanks to the delightful @belladonnafey ! please come join, the link is https://discord.gg/vhv6FjsN
IT’S TIME TO: 🌙 read a cosy, safe, queer story 🐈 hear what it’s like to grow old for two queer demihumans 🍓 make your wife happy with a cooking minigame
Grand-Nya is a short, cosy game about Aysu the moonlight vampire and Hinako her catgirl wife 🐈 Sit in a warm afternoon with them, reminisce about old stories, and help Aysu make the perfect snack that’s just what her wife is craving - it’s random every time you play! 🍓
So my problem with most ‘get to know your character’ questioneers is that they’re full of questions that just aren’t that important (what color eyes do they have) too hard to answer right away (what is their greatest fear) or are just impossible to answer (what is their favorite movie.) Like no one has one single favorite movie. And even if they do the answer changes.
If I’m doing this exercise, I want 7-10 questions to get the character feeling real in my head. So I thought I’d share the ones that get me (and my students) good results:
What is the character’s go-to drink order? (this one gets into how do they like to be publicly perceived, because there is always some level of theatricality to ordering drinks at a bar/resturant)
What is their grooming routine? (how do they treat themselves in private)
What was their most expensive purchase/where does their disposable income go? (Gets you thinking about socio-economic class, values, and how they spend their leisure time)
Do they have any scars or tattoos? (good way to get into literal backstory)
What was the last time they cried, and under what circumstances? (Good way to get some *emotional* backstory in.)
Are they an oldest, middle, youngest or only child? (This one might be a me thing, because I LOVE writing/reading about family dynamics, but knowing what kinds of things were ‘normal’ for them growing up is important.)
Describe the shoes they’re wearing. (This is a big catch all, gets into money, taste, practicality, level of wear, level of repair, literally what kind of shoes they require to live their life.)
Describe the place where they sleep. (ie what does their safe space look like. How much (or how little) care / decoration / personal touch goes into it.)
What is their favorite holiday? (How do they relate to their culture/outside world. Also fun is least favorite holiday.)
What objects do they always carry around with them? (What do they need for their normal, day-to-day routine? What does ‘normal’ even look like for them.)
One of my old fiction professors, Tom, used to always grab coffee with us students whenever our story had been workshopped.
We’d meet at the downtown coffee shop, where we fought the flocks of students for a table, pulled out a couple wrinkled copies of the story, and discussed feedback over bland coffee.
It was during one of these discussions that Tom pointed out something I’d stumbled into doing well. (He’s very good at that.)
“I think this is great, Mike,” he said, tapping my story on the table. “From the opening line, the question is whether these two will sleep together, and that grounds us. If my attention ever wavers, I can always fall back on, ‘Oh, well have they slept together yet? No, not yet? Okay, cool. I still know where we are, then, and where we’re headed.’ That makes the story easy to follow.”
This wasn’t, admittedly, a major focus of our conversation. We moved on to discuss more important things (like the story’s key flaws), but somehow that comment stuck with me over the years.
And now, looking back, I realize it was the first time I started thinking about something I’d eventually call “narrative anchors.”
What’s a narrative anchor?
It’s something I made up. But trust me, it’s helpful.
In short, I consider narrative anchors to be the craft elements you include in a story to ground your reader. On the one hand, they can help you craft a story that rings with simple, crystal clarity, and on the other hand, they can empower you to challenge readers with fresh, creative storytelling, without ever losing them at sea.
I put narrative anchors into three categories:
Plot Anchors
Character Anchors
Style Anchors
Plot Anchors
Plot anchors are a clearly defined situation, goal, or destination for a story. Tom (above) pointed out a situational plot anchor in my story, but you’ll find plot anchors everywhere. For example, in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang needs to master the four elements and defeat Fire Lord Ozai. We know from the beginning that defeating Ozai is the end-goal, so we feel grounded at every stage of the story, knowing where we’re going.
Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, is another great example. Ahab is hellbent on hunting down the White Whale, and we never lose sight of that goal, even as the narrative stretches across hundreds of pages.
That’s the point of a plot anchor: to give your reader a clear direction, so they always know where they’re going.
Character Anchors
These anchors are the clear motivations and arcs you give your characters. Disney does this well in their musicals, always using an “I want song” (more about those here) to clearly declare what their main characters want: Mulan wants to express her true self, Hercules wants to find where he belongs, and so on. The rest of the story then circles around that character’s pursuit of their “want.”
When readers have a strong understanding of your character’s motivation and journey, they have a much easier time following the story as a whole.
Style Anchors
Style anchors are my handy little catch-all for every other craft choice you make to bring clarity and simplicity to your work. Style anchors can include: short chapters or paragraphs; simple and accessible language; straightforward writing forms; clarity of description; engagement with the five senses; using a smaller cast of characters; sticking to a single POV; and so on.
Cool. So when (and how) do I use these narrative anchors?
Tip 1: Don’t start with anchors. Start with the story. Take your idea, begin developing the characters and plot, and start writing.
Tip 2: As you write and revise, start thinking about anchors. Ask yourself what kinds of anchors you already have in place, what others may be helpful to add, and whether or not you’re doing enough to ground your readers in the story.
Tip 3: Consider your audience. Readers of popular fiction will want to be reasonably grounded, so you should try to always use at least a few anchors. But if your audience likes super artsy, experimental fiction, you may be able to get away with fewer tethers.
Tip 4: That being said, don’t be afraid to challenge your readers, whoever they are. If you want to get creative, go for it. If you want to experiment with form, language, plot, character arcs, or whatever, PLEASE do!
Tip 5: But when you challenge readers one way, try to compensate by grounding them in other ways. For example, maybe your story lacks a clear plot anchor, but you include a character with a clear arc and motivation. Or maybe your story is incredibly challenging on a stylistic level, but you give readers a clear character motive and plot (this was my experience reading Moby-Dick).
Tip 6: If big anchors don’t fit, consider smaller ones. For example, if your story lacks a BIG plot anchor like defeating Fire Lord Ozai, maybe use smaller plot anchors to drive individual sections of the book. Or maybe instead of a BIG declaration of your character’s motive at the beginning, include little anchors for your narrator that act like breadcrumbs for their motives and development.
Tip 7: Mix and match anchors as necessary, because there is no magic formula.
Long story short?
Write the story you want to write — then use narrative anchors to keep your readers reading, wherever your story takes them.
Tom may not have said that all in so many words, but if I bought him a coffee, I bet he’d agree.
Good luck, everybody, and good writing!
— — —
Your stories are worth telling. For tips on how to craft meaning, build character-driven plots, and grow as a writer, follow my blog.
enjoyers of both tma and fallen london i know you’re out there
i’m having ideas about this crossover again and i want to Chat
(hngk apologies to anyone who saw the first, half-finished version of this! ctrl+enter instead of shift+enter gets me again goddammit)
okay so this has got a Lot more traction than i was expecting!! i’m going to drop a tag list so nobody who reblogged or replied gets missed (and if i did miss you, my biggest apologies and please let me know): @belladonnafey @mr-veils @awellboiledicicle @esteemed-excellency @insubstantialways @i-looktothe-stars @bizarrebazaar13 hello!! i love you all!! please imagine i am giving you a gentle kiss on the forehead!! all of you. simultaneously. wherever you are. through the red science all things are possible
so! some of you may have seen my previous post about tma/fl crossover stuff…. and i am updating that slightly. before i was superimposing the tma framework onto the neath setting, but i have now decided that that should be more of a two-way street, and indeed the neath setting changes everything from the surface, so why should it not change this as well? without further ado, let me present:
the characters There wasn’t even a proper note left behind when Gertrude Robinson disappeared. Just a scramble of papers: charts, maps, and letters in ciphers her young protegee had no hope of breaking. But the maps, ah. The maps were useful. They all pointed down. And so he had followed, and in following, had lost almost everything of himself he could remember.
jon: watchful main. he’s just entered the neath (pov character = player character, right?). suffering from neath-typical memory fog around his surface life, is very confused about his new surroundings, and is angy about both of these things. what he does know is why he’s here: chasing gertrude robinson, his former employer, who mysteriously vanished. look as soon as cha boi finds out about the correspondence and the discordance he’s gonna throw himself into that So Hard, but for now he has to work his way through the tier 0, 1, and 2 professions and like. actually do some detective legwork. there will of course be no negative consequences to this course of action.
martin (the melancholy poet): persuasive main. minor poet. been down in the neath for a while, probably to get away from his shocking home life on the surface. potentially tied to the bohemians?
tim (title tbc): persuasive main. author. high zeefaring. researcher at benthic. has an incident in his past relating to a snuffer wearing his brother’s face.
sasha (title tbc): shadowy main (change from the original post!). also a researcher at benthic with tim. has explored the forgotten quarter, distrusts anything irrigo. former urchin, now a longshanks.
melanie (title tbc): dangerous main. revolutionary (of course). this relates to a thing further down but if the judgements have eye tendencies…. juicy.
daisy (title tbc): dangerous main. monster hunter for the department of menace eradication. tied to the constables.
basira (the stoic constable): watchful main. constable (ofc). member of the dilmun club, with the implacable detective as a sponsor.
gertrude: whatever she ostensibly was on the surface, it pales in comparison to the fact that she’s a major player in the great game, and is a member of the calendar council.
elias (title tbc, but he’ll be a his amused lordship standin): the founder of the dilmun club. a player of the marvellous. his body looks young but his eyes are old. somehow manages to become jon’s patron.
the title thing is because it is crucially important to me that these characters are referred to by fallen london titles before jon gets to know them well enough to know their actual names! i’m having a strug with some of these so any input will be gratefully received :)
i was going to put the fears in here but this is already massively long so hold onto your hats for part 2, coming soon to a dashboard near you
[shuffles papers]
Interesting! Very interesting! Is it modern times or still 1899? I suppose this mostly matters re: Jonah Magnus feeling Like That because the Neath’s effects let him delve deeper into the Eye without going the way of Von Closen/Klosen [i can’t spell it, forgive me] and sprouting eyes internally. Oh Jonah would absolutely know his way around society, even without the institute as a cover for “i’m looking at these things for totally academic reasons, of course”, so amassing wealth and status would definitely give him the ability to serve as a patron to a newly arrived citizen of the Neath. His Academic Lordship?
I imagine Elias and the Reliables have several run-ins a week because Pages KNOWS he has something in his townhouse [or what have you] other than the library the Masters are aware of. It knows it.
Could Tim’s title possibly be something like Erstwhile Editor, since he worked in a publishing house in canon and quit after Danny was killed? I imagine in the au he edited and wrote but unofficially quit to study into nonhumans after the snuffer incident?
Humbly submitting “Bold Researcher” for Sasha, since she has the habit of boldly getting into things in the name of knowing what’s going on– such as exploring the forgotten quarter.
I’m not as versed in FL as I am in TMA so i can’t contribute as much on that front, but i’ve listened to tma dozens of times at this point and i am deeply excited about this au idea.
in answer to your questions: it’s still 1899! the victorian-ness of fallen london is very dear to me, so i’m keeping that :D i think jonah is actually from an older city than the fifth, but bodyhops for reasons of immortality and blending in, so he looks like the perfect Society Fellow. he may have won the marvellous to achieve this ability, as the fears are somewhat different in the neath? (more on this shortly) but i am undecided and shit yes elias and mr pages are At Odds also, all the proposed titles are fantastic and i am adding them to the doc right now!
now, as to what i mean by the fears being different:
the seven neathly fears
“There are forces that shape the Neath and drive the Bazaar. Love is one of them, of course. Anyone who knows these forces exist knows of love. But there are others, too. Sharper, more secretive. More primordial.”
of course there are seven of them. was there any other number i could have chosen?
this was the biggest change from my original conception–rather than the fears shaping the neath, i’m pretty sure the neath would actually shape the fears. everything is different down there, including fear, and including the weird and wonderful types of life you get down there. because i’m that sort of person, each fear is linked to one or two advanced skills and a neathbow colour :)
this is very notably the first draft, and again, i’m very open to input!
OH! warning! this is riddled with lore from fallen london endgame content, so handle with care. i personally am a massive spoilerphile so would dive right in, but i know that isn’t the case for everyone! let’s actually put this under a cut, now i think about it.
