Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Subduct THIS!

My very good friend Rachael wrote an article for Clarion called "Spec Tech: Making Mountains".  It's all about how horribly impractical many mountain ranges are in fantasy novels, the most notorious being Lord of the Rings and it's magical right-angle mountain ranges like the ones that surround mordor.  She finishes her story with a great line, "Nature often curves in interesting ways, but rarely does it work at right angles."


Go take a gander at the whole article.  It's a great read that does a fantastic job of explaining how mountain formations should look compared to how fantasy writers think they should look.

2 comments:

  1. Of course, as soon as I submitted the piece with the last line about right angles, I was all, "Wait, what about the atomic structure of crystals?" XD

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haha, yeah, but that's the microscopic world. The smaller you get, the more likely you are to get legitimate geometric shapes forming. So I think you're safe there. ;)

    ReplyDelete