SUPPORTING BROAD-FORMAT STORYTELLING WITH LANDFORM DOCUMENTATION

Storytellers publicly disseminate experience of and engagement with natural landscape, often in compelling ways. These informal educators merit geoscientists’ focused support via thoughtfully adapted resources. Such resources should serve not only the creation of authored works (written fiction, film), but also building of vehicles for shared storytelling (game modules and environments).

A newly available online catalog of distinctive landforms, ground4inspiration.net, performs this function for geomorphology content, giving directed support to those seeking to incorporate rich understanding of landscape into their creative works. My crafted template for natural scene description communicates contextual landform details that have particular narrative applications such as ease of movement, sensory conditions, inherent challenges, active surficial processes, and available resources. For such use, it is worthwhile to introduce a landform type in a specific site context, drawing on field notes and photography from one or more documentation visits. For tabletop game masters these fully integrated, specific settings provide convenient ‘drop-in’ scenes for role-playing game sessions. For fiction writers these scene descriptions show more generally how the landforms fit into a broader landscape setting, enriched with specifics of climate, lithology, hydrology, vegetation, and site layout. A section of example story uses for each scene highlights its value in building narrative variety, continuity, conflict, surprise, inspiration, metaphor, and theme. Users can search for landform scenes most fitting their intended uses by means of multiple menus categorizing by climate, process origin, relief setting, and experiential/metaphorical theme.

This approach has received positive reviews from the public including attendees of my natural landscape seminars at game and writing conventions, as well as students in my university courses on landscape science for creative applications. The website, with a continually building list of documented landforms, 35 currently, strongly supports priorities of storytellers, but also serves other areas of the arts, subject-bridging education, and scenery-focused tourism.