Girl in Landscape

who's seeing the worlds you describe?

The word landscape implies not just a place but the seer of that place, perhaps a visitor, a resident, or an artist who has portrayed the world with a certain eye, style, tone, mood, or message. And so landscapes inevitably imply as much about people as place. A dark forest might turn menacing when perceived by a fearful wanderer ill at ease in the wild, but seem tranquil to a resident Druid. The verdant fields of an antebellum southern plantation would appear very different as seen by an enslaved person than by their enslaver.

When Agnes Smedley's Marie first arrives in the harsh Arizona desert on her journey to find a life she deems worth living, she sees the sinister daytime terrain of rock, dust and ravines populated by rattlesnakes and gila monsters, but the nights are different, gorgeous and freeing: "the deep sky flaunted untold myriads of stars, hard and brilliant...and countless giant cacti stood like grim sentinels against the sky, their spiked arms flung up and outward." (Daughter of Earth, p. 135)

So, when you tackle setting in your work, don't forget the great outdoors, whether its a city-, sea- or landscape, and make your descriptions do meaningful work that reveals your characters' perspectives and attitudes about the spaces they inhabit.