Entry # 93 - "On Landscape in Fiction"

Photo Credit - Alex Ketley - Aug. 2012

So - how important is landscape?   By that, I mean the physical environment of a setting in fiction? That’s something I’ve been thinking about over the summer. Writers must make decisions about the physical setting and those decisions are important to other decisions that help in the ‘building’ of an organic story.

Photo Credit - Alex Dunn - Aug. 2012

Is the story set in an urban center, like Paris or LA, or is it more like NYC; these places are very different, even if they are urban areas. Maybe the setting for a story is suburban, like outside Chicago or Atlanta or DC or Baltimore. 

But clearly these areas are different not only in culture and community, but also in the ‘built environment’ – by that I mean – housing,  streets, traffic – as well as weather conditions, climate, flora and fauna.

Maybe the landscape is in a rural setting, like the hills of Virginia, mountains of Maryland or in the wilds of a national park? How does the landscape of a fictional place look? Well, if readers are to believe in the magic of the story, the physical environment needs to be a believable place that they can imagine or connect to in some way in their own real world experiences.    

Even if the setting is rural West Virginia or a place carried in the memory of a past inhabitant of  “Zog-19” [a nod to Pinckney Benedict’s story in Miracle Boy and other stories] – it needs to have landscape of some sort.

Photo Credit - Alex Dunn - Florida 2012

What impact does the terrain, climate, plants and animals have on the formation of a work of fiction? Writers must give this some thought.What kinds of animals and plants are common to the landscape? Is water plentiful or scarce? Or is the availability of water not an issue? Are lakes, oceans, rivers a part of the place? Is it out in the natural beauty of a national park or is the setting uninviting and hostile to visitors?

Photo Credit - Alex Ketley - 2012

I was struck by some of the newest Mars photographs and the newer digitally enhanced Moon photographs and how much they both look like parts of California, Arizona, or the American Southwest areas in Texas or Utah. 

This Photo by Alex Ketley - While hiking in California - August  2012

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Jan Bowman’s work has appeared in Roanoke Review, Big Muddy, Broadkill Review, Trajectory, Third Wednesday, Minimus, Buffalo Spree (97), Folio, The Potomac Review, Musings, Potato Eyes, and others. She won the 2012 Roanoke Review Prize for Fiction. Her stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories and a story was a finalist in the “So To Speak” Fiction Contest. She is working on two collections of short stories and currently shopping for a publisher for a completed story collection. She has nonfiction work pending publication in Spring 2013 Issues of Trajectory and Pen-in-Hand. She writes a weekly blog of “Reflections” on the writing life and posts regular interviews with writers and publishers.   Learn more at:

Website – www.janbowmanwriter.com

Blogsite – http://janbowmanwriter.blogspot.com