Forever ago, I posted about how to build a world and how to create new plants and animals. While creating is fun, some real life climates don’t hurt. Actual landscapes bring the reader into the story and give them a frame of reference for the scenery. But every landscape has different traits. Maybe you have an environment that lacks water, or a forest teeming with life and danger. With a little research, I’ve gathered terminology to help color your world in a descriptive landscape.
All the bold words are terms I discovered in my travels through the web and dictionary. You can skim the bold as a word list or dive deeper into the landscapes that relate to your story. I understand the reading can be daunting, I just couldn’t help myself. There’s so much to explore and even more when you check out the citations below and research on your own.
Deserts
Deserts are known for being dry, hot wastelands. Areas that are purely rock and pebbles fitted together are known as desert pavement (also gibber plain, serir, reg). Sand dunes take a variety of shapes: seifs are long stretches also known as swords, stars look the way they sound thanks to wind patterns, transverse dunes look like ridged ocean waves, whalebacks are tall and long, and barchan dunes are crescent shaped. Badlands are barren areas of eroded clay that create loose rocks and uneven plains which are difficult to travel on (nps.gov).
It’s not all heat and sand though. Inselbergs, short mountains, and mesas, flat-topped or sheer rock mountains, are types of eroded formations found in the desert. Sometimes deserts experience a phantom rain where the hot air evaporates the droplets before they hit the ground. Other times they experience flash floods that change the landscape from flat to rugged (nationalgeographic.org). These refer to regular deserts which are hot during the day and drop to below freezing at night. This differs from a cold climate desert which is usually found on the leeward side of mountains (worldatlas.com). These sides are also known as rain shadows because they receive little or no precipitation.
Valleys, Meadows, and Rivers
Valleys and meadows vary greatly in how they appear. Dells are forested valleys while dales are broad and open. Glens and vales are valleys with rivers, though glens are narrow with steep sides. And then drowned valleys are… well, it’s in the title. They’re completely submerged. Heaths, prairies, and steppes are your traditional grassy meadows that stretch across the plains. Moors, elevated fields that feature bracken and marsh, are also considered meadows. Tundras can be marshy as well, but like velds, they are void of trees. Wind has more impact on treeless flat plains. Similarly to deserts, direct sunlight creates warmer temperatures, but not as extensively as the arid landscape. Rolling hills and flat grounds make it easier to travel than deserts as well.
Rivers and lakes usually get paired with these landscapes. Silt, gravel, and rock debris deposited by rivers (alluvium) can either deposit in fanlike ridges along the foot of a mountain as alluvial fans or become a traingular island of sediment near an inlet known as a delta. In regards to water movement, cataract is another word for waterfall while chutes are steep and narrow paths for waterflow. Rivers can divide into braided streams, noose-shaped oxbow loops that divert to ponds, and tongues that fish between obstructions. While most lakes are constantly fed by an inlet such as a bayou, some are formed by volcanic activity (caldera) or basins within the mountains (cirque).
Bogs, marshes, and swamps are shallower than lakes but have copious amounts of water. Deep mud and wet ground like mires, morasses, and quagmire cover these landscapes. Hammocks, or tree islands, are a nice feature to any swamp while foxfire, fungi-infested wood that has luminescent properties, can brighten the evening. Vegetation can float in these landscapes as a quaking bog. Swamp gas is a reality as decaying plant life creates methane, which pulls bottom material upward in a process literally called blowup. Hopefully it’s obvious, but a region with large bodies of water is going to be very moist and very buggy.
Forests and Jungles
Forests are perhaps my favorite landscape because I love trees. There’s a great variety of trees that I won’t bore you with, but the flaky birch barks (scurf), evergreen foliage (conifers), and others have unique symbiotic and parasitic relations. Plants categorized as epiphytes and cauliflorous take root in cracks in tree trunks and branches. Orchids are examples of epiphytes. Knots and gnarls add to the character of tree bark as they mark previous branches or are formed by old gnarled branches. Galls, however, are tumors crafted by insects to give them a home in the tree. Root systems also vary, from thin aerial roots to above-ground buttress and prop root systems for jungles.
There’s more to a forest than trees though. Glades are grassy clearings within a forest while chaparrals are shrubby trees collected in a thicket. Wet mountain forests shrouded in mist have been dubbed cloud forests. Which brings us to the various climates of forests. Temperate forests change seasonally and maintain an abundant amount of precipitation that feeds berried bushes and deer (nationalgeographic.org). With higher temperatures and a wider range of plant and wildlife, tropical forests are more exotic (nationalgeographic.org). Boreal forests maintain freezing temperatures and feature needle-leaf plants and moose (nationalgeographic.org). Number one thing to realize is that the taller the trees, the more diverse the climate will be as you go up due to where sunlight, rainfall, and wind hit.
Beach and Ocean
Despite being a Floridian, beaches are a bit of a mystery to me. One thing I know is that some beaches are more shells than sand. Then there are shingle beaches that are composed of flat stone and steep slopes that drop into the water. The tide reveals and conceals the shoreline depending on the time of day, the foreshore being the section that’s revealed by the ebb tide. Sandbars are parallel to the beach and provide a shallow space to stand in deep water. Barrier reefs, on the other hand, are underwater formations of rock or coral that tweak the depth of the ocean. Dunes are built up on beaches thanks to the tide: barchan has a crescent shape, cusps are curved mounds at intervals, and parabolic forms a U facing the water. It can’t be forgotten that decaying plants and rocks wash onto shore (detritus).
Water doesn’t always cross over a beach though. Bluffs are steep embankments created by the erosion of the ocean. Headlands, or promontories, are high points of land that stretch into the ocean. While an embayment, or cove, can have a pocket beach of sand, a jetty is rock built into the water in order to protect beaches from erosion. Sand and land can extend into the ocean to connect masses together with a narrow bridge. These are tombolos and isthmuses, respectively.
Oceans are their own landscape. Depending on the current, an eddy will occur, creating a swirling current that opposes the primary. Hurricanes are formed by currents of tropical water. The heated water rises quickly, cools in the clouds, and falls in order to rise once more thanks to the low pressure (oceanservice.noaa.gov). While the surface can be calm or choppy, underneath the waves is anything but flat. Submerged flat-topped mountains called guyots call the ocean home alongside coral reefs, underwater volcanoes, and other formations. Different depths are home to different wildlife that add color and life to the seemingly flat waters.
Mountains, Volcanoes, Ice, and Caves
Mountains and volcanoes are great obstacles in a landscape. Steep-sided mountains with level tops are known as buttes while hogbacks are specific sides with sharp ridges and steep slopes. Cordillera is a group of parallel mountains, though it shouldn’t be confused with a massif which is one mountain with multiple peaks. Shield volcanoes are the largest, but they won’t have a violent eruption (paroxysm) because of a lack of silica. While the crater is the main exit point, the blowhole vents hot gas. Volcanoes produce pumice (light porous stone), obsidian (volcanic glass), and basalt (igneous rock). Both mountains and volcanoes deal with rarefied, which refers to the thin air at high elevations. The bottom can have a skirt of trees, though it will be affected by any loose rocks (scree) or lava that decide to tumble down.
Ice and caves provide new dangers. Glaciers are tightly packed snow turned to ice that can alter mountains and landscapes by breaking away from rock (calving) or carving valleys on its way to the ocean (fjord). While pack ice and floe are long slabs of ice chunks pieced together, permafrost is permanently frozen ground. Snow bridges can form over fractures in glaciers (crevasses). With a frigid and dry climate, cold continents like Antarctica have consistent snow and few critters (nationalgeographic.org). Glacieres are caves in glaciers while canyons are cave passages that have a height twice their width. Dripstones cover all formations created by dripping water and minerals. Caves are networks of cavities connected by passages known as crawls and crouchways. If your characcters are gonna go spelunking in a cave, be sure to add texture, tight spaces, hidden cavities, and more.
Final Thoughts: Mix and Match
One thing I’ve realized from traveling to multiple states in America is that the climate and landscape changes. An entire continent isn’t just desert or just valleys. There’s varying temperatures, humidities, and elevation. And with these changes come changes in foliage, wildlife, and dangers.
Take what you find here, do a little more research on the ones you like, throw some imagination into the mix, and let your landscape morph and change as your characters ride off on their quest. I also suggest using the terrain filter in Goggle Maps. The bird’s eye view made it easier to see how each landscape shifted into another which helped my visual learning side.