Why Place-Based Writing Heals Us in a Digital World

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time in the woods. Living in Western North Carolina, I've been exploring the mountain forests which are simply lush. There’s tons of rain and greenery and tree diversity and boulders to hop on. I get away from the computer and I breathe in fresh air, feel my muscles move as I hike the steep trails, and enjoy the views from the top.

The other day my husband and I hiked BearWallow Mountain and ended up at the top, which turned out to be a cattle pasture. We emerged from thick woods and poplars and conifers where black cohosh spires were going to seed, into a bare, grassy bald shrouded in mist. We wandered around in the fog avoiding spiky thistle and patches of datura, and eventually made out shapes of cows munching in the distance.

If the above description gave you a small sense of relief or relaxation, that's good. It's intentional. Describing a place can be as soulfully soothing as creating action or building a character. Place matters.

Sometimes, it’s not where you go that matters, but simply that you go somewhere. That you escape the screen and enter a realm that is completely foreign to you, or different, or challenging. Or beautiful, mysterious, or any other thing that is not “typical.” This is especially true for children and for our child hearts—to experience something new can be healing.

Once Upon a Place book of Mythic Settings for Writers

In stories, a change of location often signals a change in a character’s journey.

In The Odyssey, for example, changes happen frequently because the MC is on a quest, and quests inherently mean movement. Scenery happens. Obstacles lie in wait.

In my book Once Upon a Place, I describe many of these landscapes as the Mythic Settings of fantasy. They are the places where fairy tales and myths happen—without which, our MC would be sitting at a kitchen table trying to find epiphany under a light bulb.

And as writers, we know that’s not how it works.

The places in our stories, whether they're real or metaphorical, serve a very specific purpose. They take us away. They remind our minds that we are capable of change and full of potential.

When we write a story, we have the crucial chance to take readers away from their screens and immerse them in a life-changing landscape. Writers must lean into these landscapes for the challenges they provide as well as the healing they can bring—to both characters and readers. No writer wants to write a story where the MC grows into a hero by sitting in a chair with a cell phone in his hand.

The Writing Craft: Using Place-Based Writing to Build Characters

Again, take Homer’s Odyssey. The original authors utilized nearly all five locations I identify as Mythic Settings. Odysseus and his crew experience the Deep (the limitless ocean which can be traversed or descended); the Cavern (several times); the Forest (while the Mediterranean is arid, it still represents a forest-type landscape of chaos or void); and the Labyrinth (Odysseus's voyage from island to island is a maze through which he and his crew become lost).

The only Mythic Setting image I’m not sure I’ve read or seen in any Odyssey version is the Vessel. This is the cup or cauldron within which immortality can be brewed, or across the surface of which destinies can be read. Perhaps the horse that is used to invade Troy could be considered a vessel; the soldiers get inside it, and they are certainly stirred around quite a bit. But in this story the horse is more of a weapon rather than an opportunity for growth and understanding which is the true nature of the Vessel as a Mythic Setting, so I won’t go so far as to label it a Mythic Setting in this story.

Other Odyssey settings include mountaintops, chasms, whirlpools, and cliffsides… these places offer up extraordinary obstacles and are part-and-parcel of a successful quest story. The literature I reviewed for Once Upon a Place includes landscapes that prompt fear and worry in the reader, but of course the ones that are truly Mythic Settings are those that lead to character maturity and they usually include Descent and Resurrection.

Place-Based Settings and World-Building in Fantasy

Back to the digital world: we don’t need digital devices and screens, according to ancient lore. We don’t need laptops or cameras or artificial intelligence. In fact, if fantasy and quest stories teach us anything, it is this: what readers need in order to grow and understand the world around them is symbolism.

Metaphors can be a balm for the soul. Imagery soothes, because reading about real tragedies is harsh and painful. Literature is what it is because fiction embraces imagery; it references things that teach us about our reality without shining a light directly on it.

Symbols can be very simple: the colors red or black, the shape of a cauldron or a kitchen pasta pot, the image of a hole in the ground covered in vines and dark shapes which is surely where a dragon lives, where destiny hides.

Metaphors are what writers dream of, when we wake up in the middle of the night to scratch ideas on a notepad by the bed. In quests and epic journeys like the Odyssey, they’re relatively easy to create because most readers' minds understand this type of symbolism easily. We anticipate a catharsis or a healing journey will accompany the dire life-threatening obstacles, because we know quest and fantasy metaphors inside and out. These are our oldest stories, after all.

But what about landscapes in regular real-life stories? How does a writer bring a healing balm or a catharsis to a reader in literary, historical, YA, regional, or commercial fiction? Or even in memoir? Real life calls for different settings and a fresh take on Sense of Place. Instead of Mythic Settings, I call these Essential Settings. These are landscapes that non-fantasy writers must develop expertly when writing about real life, because they serve a very similar purpose.

Whichever type of writing you do, make sure you use the landscapes of your story to enhance it: enhance the challenge, increase the obstacles, AND increase the healing journey that your reader will experience. This is why immersive place-based writing is such a balm for the weary, digitally overwhelmed soul.

Join me in writer’s workshops to brainstorm and imagine Setting and Sense of Place for your own work, elevating the character’s obstacles while also enhancing the respite, escapism, or healing experience for your reader.