9
Feb
You want a believable setting, don’t you? So steal it. No, not from some other author, from the world around you! Yes, the world outside the window. It’s a beautiful earth, and there’s lots of strange and fantastical places, and many of them haven’t been used as inspiration, even to this day.
Now, as a fantasy author, it’s always taken me a while to get the setting just right. For me, the first focus is usually magic and politics, because both will play an integral role in the plotting process, and because I’m a sucker for making magic systems. But the piece of the setting that always matters most to me is the physical geography. Where are the mountains, where are the rivers, the plains, the forest, the seas. They dictate the politics, and should reflect both that, and the character of the world.
In The Four Part Land, each of the kingdoms is tied to an element (Earth, Fire, Air, Water), and because of that, each one sits atop land that is the closest to their desired element (Mountains, Desert, Plains, Islands). But the geography that the characters walk through and live in is not just ‘mountains’. It has to leap off the page and exist in the reader’s mind.
Are they barren mountains of snow (Alps, Himalayas)? Dust and sand (Atacama Desert/Andes)? Green grasses but no trees (Lake District)? Wooded hills (Appalachians)? Each style of place that an author may use has an analogue here on Earth. Now, I’m not suggesting you simply copy, but rather use the real, physical terrain as a starting point for your writing.
As an example, the mountains around Tri-Hauwcerton in the TFPL look like the Lake District in England, except much larger and somewhat steeper, with far fewer passes between them, and a few more plateaus. They’re changed enough that people who have been to the Lake District don’t recognize the base, but do recognize that the world is plausible, that it feels real.
The way I do this (another technique might work better for you) is to build a top down map of the setting, with the kingdoms, the basic geography and features, and the most important trade routes. Once that’s sorted to your satisfaction, pick a terrain feature and jot down notes about it. Sandy desert or rocky desert? Storms or still air? Flood plains or not?
Once you have the basic idea of what you want the terrain to be, a little poking around on the internet can tell you what a similar place on Earth is. Do a little research, see if there’s techniques for living there that might spark ideas, or if that terrain suits what you want that area to do in the story. If it does, congratulations, you’ve just found the basis of your area.
Now you can play with the features. Is it a sandy desert with a massive stone ridge across it? Is the sand red because of iron in the silicate? At this point, it’s up to you to flesh everything out, but if you’re stuck, there’s always a place you can go research to try and spark ideas.
The next time you build a setting, even a small one, give this a try. It just might take the story in a new and exciting direction.