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Other locations

Here is something I've noticed, and maybe it's because I'm not widely read, but when it comes to fantasy settings we seem to use "earth like" but limit ourselves to Eurasian earth like or attempt to create wholly alien worlds. I find this disappointing.

Recently I was driving through and hiking some easy trails in the Needles District of canyonlands national park.

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And it got me thinking, why aren't there more fantasy settings like this. It's alien, majestic,and has potential for ambushes and fights and conflict galore. Personally I have two novels but panned where the climax will take place in settings like this. Including one chase sequence in slot canyons with a flash flood.

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And in case you want to investigate this more for your settings here are some more pics.

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What different settings do you like to use and why?
 

K.S. Crooks

Maester
In my current series I have the major action of the first novel take place in underground volcanic tunnels and cavern. In the second novel the action takes place in forests and castles. For the third I may chose something totally different.
You pictures are awesome.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
There are also extraordinary places right there in Europe. But I'm seeing plenty of fantasy set in other places. Not the majority, certainly. Then again, I would not be surprised to learn that Chinese fantasies are set mainly in China, Indian ones in India, and so on.
 

CupofJoe

Myth Weaver
Why more stories aren't set in places like that?
For Americans [and maybe anyone that sees American films] those landscapes are primarily recognised as Western/Wild West situations...
Maybe because winter is the passing season, but I've been planning a story set in a sandy desert like parts of Sahara or the Arabian peninsular. [There was a TV programme about The Empty Quarter...]
 
Honestly? Because most of those would be considered locations rather than settings. Anybody who writes uses both, but locations trend to be momentary and utilized as moments to get you from setting to setting. You won't find a story set in a location, because the location is by nature transitory.
 
There are the photos, like those you've provided, and there are the prose descriptions. The twain don't quite meet. How much of each of these scenes would be described in prose, enabling distinction sharp enough to evoke those scenes you've shown above? I've read of canyons sparse in foliage, with crags, and so forth. Dry wastelands. Narrow, steep mountain paths like your final photo. How would your third photo be described in prose within a story?

That last question is a trick question, because geological and geographical description is often like a finger pointing in a direction rather than the end-point. A general description, some few key words to give the idea of the place; but would we picture in our heads this kind of detail we see in the photos? Maybe, maybe not. Plus, three of these photos are distant shots, which is something we don't get with any great detail most of the time—the character thinks about "the barren wasteland of crags, rough stone formations" that won't provide many resources for food and water, needing to be traversed; i.e., thinks in broad, abstract terms—or perhaps a character might approach the scene from above...and then we'd have a broad, general description.

I do think a lot of scenes tend to be forests, hills, rivers of England or France, or else sometimes a type of savannah or broad grassland, or generic deserts.

Edit: My general point is that I may have read plenty of examples of these; or, not, heh. From the way things are generally described, I think I've encountered such locations.
 
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Honestly? Because most of those would be considered locations rather than settings. Anybody who writes uses both, but locations trend to be momentary and utilized as moments to get you from setting to setting. You won't find a story set in a location, because the location is by nature transitory.

So far as I can tell, setting deals with place, time, mood, and context. For the purposes of this discussion I elected to ignore time mood and context because these were somewhat irrelevant to discussing the place element. Further, I'm not saying to use these locations specifically, but to use locations like these. As in locations with red rocks, desert climate, steep drop offs, narrow slot canyons. The pictures were meant to provide easy context for the discussion.

So let me rephrase, why don't fantasy authors use locations like these?
 
So let me rephrase, why don't fantasy authors use locations like these?

Actually, a great many of us do, or at least have locations like those in mind when we write. The problem is description- more accurately the nearly purple prose required to force that same image into the mind of the reader who, at least in this literary climate, despises such prose. Back in Tolkien's time, it was de rigueur to take paragraphs and pages at a time to set the scene. Most readers now want the bare minimum of description, which means we get to focus on one or two pieces and let their minds fill in the rest. For example, in the next-to-last image you posted, we would probably take a single sentence to describe it. Probably something along the lines of "The stone arch carved across the purple sky." (That's a horrific sentence, but you get the drift.) It sets the basic scene- the arch is stone and the sky is purple, likely indicating night if the setting is Earth Like. But it also leaves almost everything up to the imagination. And it would be a single sentence in a longer paragraph, in a longer page, in a longer chapter...etc.
 
I actually have a region in my story that is similar to the pictures, although I haven't gotten to that point where the characters get there, so I haven't really fleshed it out as much as other regions. There's also a kingdom with a TON of volcanic activity, complete with obsidian-covered ground and a sea of lava. There are other regions that are much more like the traditional fantasy settings though. Just depends on what part of the world you find yourself in :p
 
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