Before I get into today’s post, I want to let you know that we’re having a sale on the Go Teen Writers books to gear up for National Novel Writing Month. Both Write Your Novel and Edit Your Novel are on sale!

You can get them for $2.99 each on Kindle or $10 each in paperback through the GoTeenWriters.com store.

Paperback copies will be signed by all three of us and can be personalized. Please let us know when you order, and we will make that happen.

Geography for Worldbuilding

I’ve written a lot of posts about worldbuilding, but it turns out I sort of skipped the topic of geography. Since it’s such an important part of building a world, I decided it was time that I filled in that gap. So, I’m going to do a little series of posts on geography for worldbuilders. I hope you find it helpful.

My husband and I have been reading Magic Journey: My Fantastical Walt Disney Imagineering Career by Kevin P. Rafferty. At once point he says, “It has been said that science fiction is the improbable made possible and fantasy is the impossible made probable.” I love thinking about this quote. When we are worldbuilding as fantasy authors, we are setting out to take readers on a journey where the impossible becomes probable. In order to do that, we need to build a storyworld that is engaging, realistic, yet also fantastical.

You want it to be both realistic and fantastical. How do you do that?

As fantasy writers, we always have our work cut out for us trying to pull readers into an understanding of how all the fantastical things work in our stories. We don’t want to make them work hard to understand your geography as well. If we build our worlds from a strong undertstanding of geography, it will add that feeling that this world could really happen. It will help your world feel like a real place. Grounding your world in realistic geography will make it easier for readers to get drawn into your fantastical elements.

This doesn’t mean you can’t play with geography and astronomy and things like that. It could be those are the very parts of your story that are fantastical. Fantasy writers have the freedom to veer away from the scientific. Whether or not you are changing elements of geography or astronomy for your story, I want you to think about this topic the same way you think about the craft of writing. You must learn the writing “rules.” Once you learn them, you can break them on purpose. The same is true with worldbuilding the geography of a fantasy world. You need to learn the basics of geography—the “rules” of geography. Once you have that entry level understanding, then you can break those geography rules on purpose. But if you do, just be sure to come up with a fantastical explanation for why that bit of your world doesn’t follow the principals of geography.

The Shape of Your Landform

Authors, you should draw a map of your storyworld for your own reference, whether or not you are an artist or ever plan to show this map to another living human. Unless you are telling a story about a landlocked place, to do this, you’ll need to start with a shape for your continent. If you story takes place in a landlocked area, you can skip this part.

There are many ways to come up with that basic shape. You could just draw it freehand. You could fold a piece of paper and cut it as if you were making a paper snowflake. (You just don’t need to cut out the middle pieces.) You could toss rice onto a sheet of paper, see where it falls, then trace the outline. You could paint a shape in watercolor and let some of that water paint drift into an interesting shape.

You can study an atlas or Google Maps and copy, combine, or reverse shapes from different places on earth. (Google “Robin Hobb’s map of the Six Duchies” and notice how it is an upside down shape of Alaska.) You can also use a random continent generator like the one on www.rangen.co.uk.

The original shape of your continent doesn’t have to be the final shape of your continent. You can continue to work on adding interesting coastlines and other geographical features as you develop your map. Zooming in on different places on Google Maps or Google Earth can be inspirational in helping make your map more realistic. And sometimes you can research specifically what you need. For example, I am writing a story about a city built on the land where two major rivers converge. I spent some time researching where there were similar places on earth, and I discovered that in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River meet to form the Ohio River. Pittsburg was the perfect place for me to study old maps and coastlines for inspiration as I worked on drawing a map of my fictional city.

Plate Tectonics

Plate tectonics explain how the lithosphere of the earth is divided into plates that move over the malleable asthenosphere, and as a result, form the structure of the earth’s crust. A brief understanding of how plate tectonics work is important to creating a world because the movement of plate boundaries is what creates mountains. There are three types of tectonic plate boundaries: transform, convergent, and divergent.

Transform Boundaries occur when two plates slide against each other. Earthquakes are common along such boundaries. An example is where the North American Plate meets the Pacific Plate, which is also known as the San Andreas Fault.

Convergent Boundaries occur when two plates collide against each other. This could result in one or both plates pushing up (called a continental collision) to form a mountain range, or one of the plates could sink down beneath the other (called a subduction zone), creating a trench in the ocean’s floor. Earthquakes are frequent along such boundaries, as are parallel chains of volcanoes. An example of this type of plate boundary is the Pacific Plate.

Divergent Boundaries occur when two plates move apart from each other. In oceans, this causes mid-ocean ridges which produce a new seafloor. An example is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. In continents, this causes geological rifts, an example of which is the African Rift Valley.

If you draw imaginary plates along with the shape of your continent, they can inspire ideas for coastal geography. Is there a section of the coast where two plates touch? If so, choose what type of plates they are, then determine what geographic feature such plates would produce.

Keeping plate tectonics in mind as you design your world will keep you from simply drawing random geographical features. You’ll start to consider what make sense before you put it on paper.

Mountains

There are many types of mountains. Most mountains are formed by plate tectonics, but others are formed by volcanic activity or erosion. Drawing random mountains might look okay, but you would be wise to at least consider geography and plate tectonics in regards to where to put those mountains. Below is a list of the different types of mountains you could add to your storyworld.

Mountain Chains

The majority of mountains should be formed in ridges. These could either be fold mountains or block mountains. Fold mountains are formed when two or more tectonic plates are pushed together. These types of mountains don’t form in straight lines, but run staggered in chains that sometimes curve (the Rocky Mountains and the Himalayas are two examples). Block mountains are caused when tectonic plates pull apart and cracks form in the crust. Some of the land is pushed up while other parts of the land collapse (the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Rhodope Mountains are examples).

Rain Shadows

Rain shadows might be one of the most important aspects of geography for fantasy worldbuilders to understand, so pay close attention. Oftentimes when you have a mountain range, the side of the range that faces the coast is lush and green with lots of rivers while the other side of the range is a desert with very little rain. This is because the weather usually comes in from the ocean and brings rain along the land until those clouds reach the top of the mountain range. There the clouds break up against the high peaks and are unable to carry the weather over to the other side of the range. On the lush side of the range, the weather also helps to create healthy rivers, which carry the moisture back down to the ocean where the water cycle begins all over again.

So, when you are designing the biomes of your world, keep in mind how rain shadows work with coastal mountain ranges so that you can accurately place your forest and desert regions. (We will talk about biomes, forests, and deserts next time.)

Lonely Mountains

Generally speaking, mountains do not exist by themselves unless they are near hot spots of volcanic activity. Volcanoes and dome mountains are formed from molten rock pushing its way up toward the crust. In the Pacific Northwest where I live, we have the Cascade Volcanic Arc, which includes twenty volcanic mountains. These all appear as lone peaks, though if you look at them on a map all together, they also happen to run parallel to the Pacific Plate. While many volcanoes run in lines like this, there are others that stand alone. If you are wanting a mountain like the Lonely Mountain in The Hobbit, it should probably be volcanic.

Residual Mountains

If you are looking for an in-between, you might get away with is using residual mountains. These are remnants of former mountains or elevated areas that have been reshaped by erosion due to rivers, glaciers, wind, rain, and/or frost. Examples are the Aravalli Mountain range and the Scottish Highlands.

Plateaus

Plateaus are high areas of flat land that have been caused by erosion. Some plateaus have eroded to the point of being smaller, outlier plateaus. An example of a plateau is the Columbia Plateau.

The next post in this series is Geography for World-Building, Part Two: Climate, Weather, and Biomes.

Try It

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms, and the author of several young adult fantasy novels including the Blood of Kings trilogy. She loves teaching about writing. She blogs at goteenwriters.com and also posts writing videos on her YouTube channel and on Instagram. Jill is a Whovian, a Photoshop addict, and a recovering fashion design assistant. She grew up in Alaska without running water or electricity and now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two kids. Find Jill online at jillwilliamson.com or on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.