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World building 101: creating the the landscape of your fictional world

Marine biomes on the other hand are a lot more interesting, because they encompass the world's oceans. With ocean biomes, you can have vast stretches of open water, shallow water with choral reefs, deeper stretches of water with rock formations and bottom-dwelling marine life, or massive underwater mountains and trenches. When working with ocean-like biomes, it's good to keep in mind that the ocean is just like the land, with mountains and valleys and all that, the only difference is that everything is covered in water, and light isn't able to reach some parts of the ocean. Also, water is heavy, and the pressure on objects in the water increases the farther down you go. For this, I would keep in mind (or even at hand if you like actively using references) charts of the ocean's levels of depth. It begins with the sunlight zone, where most of the light is, and the water has regular pressure. Beneath that is the twilight zone, which is much darker and the pressure is slightly increased. There is not a lot of light, and visibility is very dim. Next is the midnight zone, where light is non-existent from this point on, and the pressure increases significantly. This is also the biggest ocean zone outside of the trenches. In between the trenches and the midnight zone is the abyss, where most of the bottom of the ocean is. the pressure here doesn't increase much, but it is a lot warmer in some places due to hydrothermal vents and underwater volcanoes. And then of course are the trenches, which have little to no life in them because of how extreme the water pressure is. These will also be a bit warmer in places because of proximity to the bottom of the earth's crust. You don't have to use that particular fact if you don't want to, but it's there.

—Tundra—

Thalassophobia aside, let's talk about tundras! Once again, there are two kinds; alpine and arctic. Arctic tundra is very similar to and even borders some cold deserts, the only difference is that the arctic tundra branches out into the frozen north arctic wastelands made up of ice and snow, and the arctic tundra can support coniferous forests as well as what is called a permafrost. The permafrost is a layer of frozen subsoil that stays frozen for most of the year. Alpine tundra is different because it only exists on mountains, and is unable to support trees. Alpine tundra is significantly rockier than the arctic tundra due to the terrain, and most of the vegetation is sagebrush.

—Caves—

Caves are a bit weird because they are technically classified as any large and hollow pocket in the ground, which can be created by any number of natural phenomena, most of which really are just holes in the ground that don't really support life. So, for the sake of simplicity, I'll just discuss the most common and recognizable kind of cave, called a solution cave ( if you want to go and do your own research about caves, more power to ya, have fun :D ). these caves are formed when rainwater drains into the ground and erodes at softer rocks like limestone, marble, or gypsum. this process takes thousands to millions of years, and will create a habitat for all kinds of rock and crystalline formations to grow, especially stalagmites and stalactites, which are formed by sediment filled water drips from the cave ceiling or other water sources building up the sediments they contain over time (PLEASE do NOT drink cave water, this very process is the reason why cave water is unsafe to drink. again, the water is loaded with all kinds of rock sediments and chemicals that will harm you if they are consumed). You can really play around a lot with cave systems because of all the different shapes they come in, I would recommend looking for reference pictures and maybe also watching some documentaries.

—Forest—

There are three kinds of forests; tropical, temperate, and boreal/taiga. Tropical forests are exactly what you would expect them to be, rainforests full to bursting with life. They get to be this way because of warm weather and excessive rainfall. Temperate forests are the typical ones that most people think of when they hear forest; mostly deciduous trees that change based on the four seasons. Finally, boreal forests, or taiga, are the coniferous pine forests up in the north, usually situated in the least cold parts of tundra biomes. These are the forests that live almost constantly in snow and freezing temperatures.

—TOPOGRAPHY AND TECTONICS—

Now that you have your biomes, it's time to decide where to put them. Once again, it doesn't really matter what kind of fantasy setting you have, the topography and plate tectonics will remain consistent. For those who are unsure what I'm talking about, topography is the study of the physical features of the earth, such as where mountain ranges, lakes, and rivers are located and how to put them on maps. Plate tectonics is the study of how the different sections of the earth's crust moves. The first is directly effected by the other, and both can help you decide where to put your environments, especially if you plan on drawing a map of your fictional land for the readers to reference (which is very helpful! I don't have any particular advice for the map drawing, but I know a youtuber who does, I'll link his channel in the comments ;) ).

Basically, the outer crust of any rocky planet (if your fictional world is on a gas planet somehow idk what to tell you) is broken up into different sections, called tectonic plates. Earth has 15-20 of these plates, how many your world has it up to you. Since these sit on a massive layer of molten magma, they constantly move around and collide with each other. Different types of collisions cause different things to appear. When two plates spread apart - not like creating a crack in the earth, the magma just pushes up beneath the crust and spreads it apart until it thins - valleys are created. When two plates collide with each other, the weaker oceanic plate will get pushed under the continental plate and create trenches. And then sometimes two plates will meet and grate against each other, both going opposite directions, like if you took two wood blocks, put them next to each other on the long sides and pushed one up and the other down; this creates mountain ranges, because both plates are pushing up against each other instead of sinking or getting pushed down. 

So, with that in mind, the first thing to do is decide where your mountains, valleys, and ocean trenches will be (some of you might be wondering if canyons are made the same way as trenches, the answer is no for the most part because canyons are made by erosion, not plate tectonics). It is important to note that there will always be valleys within and next to mountain ranges, because while one part of the tectonic plate is being pushed up, the rest of it is curving down in a concave shape, like the shapes that occur in wrinkled fabric. You should also keep in mind that the far north and south ends of the planet your world resides on will be much colder because these are the points farthest away from sunlight, whereas the middle of your planet will be warmer and a much more constant temperature because it gets constant sunlight. if your fictional land has many mountains, then it would be more appropriate to use mostly deserts, grasslands, and forests, the forests being on one side and inside of the mountain range and deserts and grasslands on the other side. the reason for this is that when storms pass over mountain ranges, a lot of wind and momentum is lost because mountains are excellent wind blockers. Because of this, one side of the mountains will usually be very fertile and wet because the rainfall is unhindered, and the other side will be dry and less hospitable because the rain usually peters out by the time it gets over the mountains.

once you figure out mountains, you can put down lakes and rivers. It's very important to choose the direction the rivers go and what their source is. Sometimes their source will be lakes, sometimes it's the ocean. Sometimes they flow uphill, other times they flow downhill. Sometimes there are only rivers when snow melts off of the mountains in the warmer seasons, sometimes rivers end in deltas that branch out & flow into the ocean, creating vast marsh lands. 

Once you've done that, you can add more niche landmarks like volcanoes, mesas, geysers, glaciers, and canyons, or, you can begin populating  your world with cities and people. 

That's all I have, I hope you have fun creating your beautiful new worlds!  

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