Scenery: A How-To-Guide

[Arcadia]

Scenery is a staple of typical worldbuilding. Wherever your character is, in order to fully design your world, you will have to design what the character sees around them, the scenery of the location. However, genre plays a part in understanding scenery. If it's modern, you'll want to describe your location, for example, if you're in a city, describe the buildings or lack of that the character can see. If they're in the countryside, you could describe the wildlife, the flowers, hills or whatever there should be in their location. However, here's a short list of what you should include in order to fully expand the scenery of your environment, and what you should include!

The Five Senses:

Sight: What can your character see around them? Rolling hills? A dirty, derelict street with abandoned cars? A meadow? A mecha manufacturing factory?
Smell: What can the character smell in their location? Oil? Decay? Dust? Pollen? Blood? Smoke? Fire? Droppings?
Hearing: What can the character hear in their location? Crying? Dogs Barking? The chatter of people? Moaning (Zombies, as an example)? Yelling? Whispering? Creaking?
Taste: (Not one you may have to use very often, but it can lead into the other five senses in particular environments, such as derelict buildings) What can the character taste in their location? Dust? Mildew? Detrital Decay?
Touch: What can your character feel in the environment around them? Is the feeling coarse? Rough? Slippery? Wet? Fuzzy? Gritty? Hairy? Hard? Hot? Icy? Oily? Stony?

ADVICE IN APPLICATION
​

The sight before him was something he had grown used to in this, the fifth year after the war that had had ended modern civilisation. Derelict buildings, vines of ivy like snakes, crawling from the windows and cracked stone of metropolitan buildings that used to house functions such as banking, policing and general business. Abandoned cars, filled with rust, the last survivors of a pre-war era that did not decide that the idea of the automobile needed to be eradicated. He looked up, taking a deep breath in, the smells of the apocalypse filling his less-than-eager nostrils. Detrital decay, rust and dust clung to the air like a vile ringworm, leeching out the last breaths of purity and replacing that hope for peace with a demonic and dark sense of despair. The dead and dying spread almost in uninform around the street, the flesh sagging from their bones as if the meat itself had given up hope of staying attached by sinew to it's perished host. The yips and squeaks of malnourished hounds resonated throughout the empty street; the last animal scavengers to survive in such a definitively final era of mankind. He was alone with his thoughts, slowly losing himself to the depth of the loneliness before him. He was immersed in the silence until his eyes opened, his tongue rippling in horror as his taste buds caught the foul flavour of sulphur in the air, making his eyes water and his tongue recoil back into the fleshy shield behind his now closed lips. He sat on the round, his hand grazing that of the stone road underneath his feet. A welcome feeling to all the insanity of a post-apocalyptic world. He needed to take a break and experience some normality. Once in a while.

@☆Luna☆​

 

[unanun]

Dead cars lined the streets. The incandescent atomic light had scorched the colour from the world, leaving behind only the earth and her tones. The air was sterile. Off in the distance dogs and birds fought over carrion. His footsteps kicked up a fine, choking dust, radioactive and comprising mostly people.

 

[Kingofheart]

I normally used to enjoy writing the scenary when playing in more dynamic roleplays where the exchange is quick. However it always resulted kind of strange to me, because you might actually return to the same location later on and maybe with another roleplayer to see what you have to write. In which case, do you happen to know a way to convey a similar scenary view without it becoming dull to write or oversaturate from typing it time and time again? Or in an opposite fashion would you advice against writing another Scenary description of the location?