World Building - Question 3 - Environment

3) What is the physical environment of the story like?

This is important because if you are writing a story in the middle of the desert you don't want to be describing the colors of falling autumn leaves unless your heroine from Maine is having a flashback or hallucination.

Even more important is if your story covers multiple landscapes from forests, to mountains, to the sea.

Important questions to ask yourself when considering landscape are:

1) What kind of environment are my characters starting in?

2) Will my story cover multiple environments?

3) What time of year is it?

4) What is the weather like?

5) How are my characters traveling? (This is important if you decide that it's raining and have to describe the mud sucking on your character's boots with each step.)

It's also a good idea to do a little research on the types of environment you're going to be using.  Knowing which types of plants and animals occur in the environment is vital.  You don't want to put a pine tree in a desert.  XD

I recommend this be where you start to draw your map for question 4. If your capitol city is in the center of a forest and your villain's hideout is in the mountains, then you know you need two landscapes on the map, forest and mountains, and you can mark the city and hideout now or later.