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. (more…)

Topography has different meanings depending on what part of the globe you are in. For example in America they take it to mean the study of contours in line with a landscapes relief. Compare that to say, Europe, where it is still concerned as the study of not only relief and vegetation but also man made features, local history and even culture. For this article we will take it the latter sense.

Moving on from there we can see topography as the study of an area as a whole. The easiest way to imagine this is say for your character or story; you want to have them go for a walk around the town. But what will they come across on their way? What is going to have to be described or drawn to seem believable? We’ll split this into two sections and take a little look into what might be included in the topography for any setting.

What buildings will this helicopter pass on its way? Appleseed

Man Made Features

History and Culture

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In this article I’ll be taking a look into Location and also taking a look into the reasons behind each section and what to take into consideration.

Most stories will take place in a variety of settings, depending on the genre of the story and the author has decided what the characters will be doing. For example in a Romantic Anime the characters may only live and move around in one town so the area that needs to be covered considerably smaller than say a Action Anime that revolves around the characters moving through different parts of the world. The biggest and most time consuming genre to create would have to be the Fantasy genre. Most of the time everything will have to be created from scratch and this isn’t a short process by any means.

Location

Once an author has decided on what genre and story they will be writing they can then decide on where to locate their characters. Now as I said before it is totally dependant on what type of story and where the author wants it to be placed. In many genres it’s a lot easier to take examples from real life situations. You can study maps, ready up on the location and what type of terrain is involved and then either modify it or use it in your story.

Now what I’m going to do is take an example and skim the top of what you should consider. Just for simplicity I’m going to take a look into a Romantic Comedy Anime set in the suburbs of Tokyo, Japan.

Example of a town with features such as hills, river/ocean - Samurai Champloo

So even in that first sentence we can break it down and look at what we need to cover under location. If you’re story is set in a suburb of a mega-city such as Tokyo there is no point in taking inspiration from, say, an American city or something in Eastern Europe unless the genre allows for it. (more…)

The first main couple of articles are going to be based around the basics of any fictional world. I may reference certain shows here but more in depth looks at certain anime will come a bit later. It may not seem clear at the moment, but this is all very important to the show and how things can and usually do happen on screen.

The main topics to look at and consider when you’re creating a fictional world are as follows;

Location and Topography

Landscape and Terrain

Weather Systems

Other (more…)