Congo Gum

This will be the last article in the Back to Basics series. Hopefully over the last few articles I’ve covered the basics of what many writers have to consider and given you an insight into the process of creating specific worlds in fictional writing. In this article I’m going to briefly take a look at Terrain and Weather, I might also take a look at some other things to consider. But I’ll see how things go.

Terrain

In short, Terrain considers everything to do with the lie of the land. This can range from things such as what type of land it is, what features are specific to any given area, what natural features are included and how they affect other areas. To break this down even further we can look at a few distinct sections;

Height
Soil Type
Distinctive Features

Hilly, Rough terrain with water - Howls Moving Castle

For example a certain region may have a generally flat landscape with no real major change in height, the soil might be made out of clay and there may be a river running through it. Now depending on what your story is and where it’s based you can move onto thinking about what buildings etc that you can place here. To put that in context for example San Francisco is built on an extremely hilly and rough terrain which is located in a bay. One distinctive feature is that it lies on an earthquake fault line. Now when you take all of these into context, if you have a terrain similar to this in your story you can’t then go and say it’s full of sky scrapers and massive buildings. If you look at San Francisco there’s hardly any big building at all, mainly because it’s too difficult to do so.

Hilly area with towns situated in the valley - Midori no Hibi

Obviously these change from story to story but it should be your number one priority to create something that is coherent. This section is one of the quicker and easier to do and look over, mainly because all it takes it a little common sense. But as the old saying goes, god is in the details, and you’ll find with any great piece of work that takes place over an expansive landscape seems to be relevant and well thought out. That is what you want your readers to think. The aim for any piece of work should be to enthrall the reader and make it believable.

Weather

Terrain and weather work hand in hand in real life. You may have two regions that are situated next to each other but the weather they get is completely different. Also depending on where your story is based and what mood you want it can also vary in severity and recurrence.

How Terrain and Weather work together to give off a certain feel - El Hazard

Again this is where it all ties in to what you’ve specified in your previous sections. Each weather system around the globe is unique and can vary. The summer in New York is different from the summer in California. The north of Japan gets more snow in the winter than the south yet both can be battered to pieces by Typhoons. Africa has mainly two seasons, wet season and dry season. You could literally point your finger at any country on a globe and be able to find a complete opposite somewhere else.

Barren, rough terrain with dark weather. Contrasts to the image above - Monster

Obviously if you’re writing a story, but basing it on a real city then it’s easiest to take the weather information from there and then modify it to suit your needs. For example if it was set in Tokyo you could include things such as the blistering heat and humidity, the drenching rain, monsoons, hailstones and the list can go on and on. It’s all down to you, so long as it’s coherent. Lets be honest, you wouldn’t exactly have a clear blue sky with hot sun in winter now would you.

Weather can also affect the mood that you want to set, people are weird and complex things but the general rule of thumb for weather and emotions is;

Rain – Sadness, unrest
Sun – Happiness, fun, relaxing, romantic (sunset)
Fog – Frightening, scary, cautious
Snow – Danger, fun
Thunder and Lightning – confusion, fear

You get the idea.

Using a sunset to give of a romantic mood - Midori no Hibi

Obviously these depend on what happens in the story, but they are all worth thinking about and I bet 9 times out of 10 an Anime or Manga will always employ one of the above at some point in the story.

That wraps it up for the Back to Basics series, hopefully this has setup the foundation to help you build and refine your work. Possibly even see just how much work goes into those things that most people take for granted. I have left out things such as Architecture and People but I’ll pick that up at a later date as there is a lot to write about on those two categories alone.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Environments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.