Use Familiar Surroundings To Write Reality Into Fantasy

Cook’s Forest PA is a beautiful state park about two hours from my home here in Northeast Ohio. My family and I often spend our summer vacations camping there, as it’s an affordable and fun location. I love hiking beneath the deep green canopy of the Appalachian foothills, surrounded by the endless chattering of birds and scurrying of small forest animals. Thieving raccoons provide nightly entertainment as they forage for leftover food, a plentiful item at our campground. We don’t usually clean up until late, opting rather to play Euchre until past midnight, and the coons come out much earlier than that!
Although relaxation and fun reside at the core of my camping trips to Cook’s Forest, the trips also provide me with another resource; visual fodder for my Christian fantasy novels. Fantasy novels rely heavily on world building, since fantasy authors are typically creating a realm outside of earth, although, usually heavily influenced by it. My world, Arvalast, was inspired greatly by Cook’s Forest and other wooded campsites dotting the Midwest.
Honestly, having never been out west, I’d have trouble writing about the desert, or even large mountains such as the Rockies, with as much detail as the forest. Sure, I’ve seen pictures, and could likely make do just fine if I were to need to write a scene with a mountainous or dessert backdrop. But there’s an element of reality and vibrancy added to the story when the author knows the scenery, and has experienced not only the sights, but the sounds and smells, associated with it.
For me, it’s also fun to use familiar locations in my writing because it’s both nostalgic and exciting to add adventure to areas I’ve already seen and experienced. For instance, there’s a fire tower in Cook’s forest that I always love to climb. It stands tall at the top of a hill, supported by a large, rusting metal frame. From the top, a visitor stands a few stories above the tree-line, and can see the forest canopy for miles in any direction. It’s quite terrifying for a person who doesn’t care for heights, like myself, but it’s also too exhilarating to avoid. Transporting the feelings of fear and awe from that real world tower into the forests of Arvalast was equally as exhilarating. Throw in some monsters prowling around the bottom while the protagonists, also afraid of heights, hide at the top, make it an exciting element to my story.
Fantasy writers should always be looking for real life places and objects to transport into their story. Fusing these locations with imagined adventures can make for a realistic and inspiring scene. These will be the scenes that even you, as the author, will read over and over again, because they will feel real, because in part, they were real, if only in your imagination.
So next time you gaze in wonder at a tall Mountain peak from the streets of Denver, or listen to the waves crash against the North Carolina beach at the Outer Banks, let your imagination run wild. Then capture that thought, take a mental picture of the scenery, and you’ve the tools to create an amazing story.