Bringing Scotland Home: What My Dream Trip Taught Me About Worldbuilding

I've been home from Scotland for a few days now, but my mind is still fully enmeshed in the misty mountains and ruined castles.

This trip has been a dream of mine for years. And when I started worldbuilding the Rainlands for The Stormbound Heir, the Nordic countries naturally became the places I looked to for inspiration.

Scotland's mountains, lochs, castles, moody weather... the general sense that I might turn a corner and accidentally stumble into an ancient curse. It was the perfect inspiration for my current fantasy landscape!

But there's a huge difference between looking at pictures and actually standing inside it.

After spending a week traveling through the Highlands, the Isle of Skye, Inverness, Edinburgh, and all the incredible places between, I came home with something much more useful than a folder full of pretty reference photos. I came home understanding atmosphere differently, and I have a feeling the Rainlands are going to be better because of it.

Landscape Isn't Just Something Characters Look At

Before Scotland, I treated setting primarily as something visual. What the castle looked like, the color of the mountains, the density of the forest, etc. Those things matter, obviously, but being physically present in Scotland reminded me that landscape is something you experience with your whole body.

It's wind pushing against you, damp air and wet stone, mud beneath your boots. It's the way clouds can swallow the top of a mountain until you can't tell where the land ends and the sky begins.

The Rainlands have always been stormy and wild in my imagination, but now I have a much stronger sensory vocabulary for what that actually feels like. I don't just want my main character Nova to see the rain. I want her clothes clinging to her skin, wet hair sticking to her face, cold fingers and slippery stone and the smell of damp earth. I want the weather to affect how people move, what they wear, where they gather, how buildings are constructed, and how far they're willing to travel.

All of these are details I plan to add into my worldbuilding vocabulary, to really enmesh my readers in this land cursed with never-ending rain.

I Understand Scale Differently Now

Scotland reminded me how effectively a landscape can make a person feel very, very small. There were places, especially in the Highlands and on Skye, where I couldn't stop staring. I live in Utah, surrounded by mountains every day, but the Highland mountains tower differently. They're green and rocky, with dozens of waterfalls cascading down their jagged cliffs, their peaks wreathed in constantly changing mist.

And the valleys... roads winding through enormous stretches of land filled with rivers and lochs deeper than many parts of the North Sea.

All of this made me realize what I've been trying to capture in the Rainlands. Like Scotland, the Rainlands are full of ruins, old roads, and ancient places. Stories people have forgotten or deliberately rewritten. I want that history to feel physically present in every aspect of my world... from the tallest peaks to the crumbling ruins below.

Old Places Don't Feel Like Museums

One of my favorite things about Scotland is that history is EVERYWHERE. Castles aren't tucked away in some separate historical bubble. I saw ancient stone structures sitting on the side of the road, or towering on small isles in the lochs. I walked through Edinburgh and felt centuries stacked on top of one another. Old and new existing together.

The past plays an important role in The Stormbound Heir. An event from 600 years ago, to be precise. A kingdom fell, but the truth of its destruction was rewritten. Now, when the story takes place six centuries later, nobody remembers.

And even though nobody remembers, there are hints of that ancient kingdom everywhere. In traditions that have been warped over time but still hold important details from their origination. In crumbling ruins that once housed mighty royal houses. In stories that have been passed down from generation to generation, each version losing a little part of the truth that began it all.

I saw the same thing in Scotland, especially in Edinburgh. So many layers of history, with hints of how life used to be for the people who lived in the walled, protected city. Now, centuries later, we can only guess at what life was like back then, even though many ruins from that time still stand today.

I want that same feeling for Nova and my other characters in The Stormbound Heir.

Weather Is a Character

Listen. I knew Scotland had weather. I was prepared for it. But there is something very different about experiencing a place where the weather can completely transform the landscape around you.

Sunlight breaks through and suddenly everything is green and enormous and beautiful. Minutes later, the clouds roll in, the wind picks up, and rain sweeps across the hills. Suddenly, the exact same place feels ancient and dangerous.

As someone currently writing a book called The Stormbound Heir, you can imagine how normal and restrained I was about this.

Hint: I was not.

The Rainlands already revolve heavily around storms (one giant Storm, actually--one that the people literally worship as a deity), but Scotland reminded me that weather doesn't only exist during dramatic scenes. It's part of daily life for the people who live there.

And because Nova's magic is so closely tied to storms, I think there's an opportunity in this rewrite to make weather even more deeply woven into the rhythm of her world. Not just as something ominous happening in the background, but as something truly alive.

Inspiration Isn't the Same as Replication

I don't want the Rainlands to become Fantasy Scotland. That's not the goal. Aevyra has its own history, religions, cultures, political conflicts, mythology, and magic, but traveling through Scotland gave me textures I can bring into that world.

The feeling of standing inside a ruined castle. The way mist moves through mountains. The sound of water against stone. The sudden warmth of stepping inside after being cold and wet. The contrast between a crowded old city and miles of empty Highlands. The strange combination of beauty and severity.

Those are things I couldn't fully understand through Pinterest. I had to feel them myself.

Bringing Scotland Home

I took an embarrassing number of photos on this trip. Some are beautiful, and some are blurry pictures taken through a car window because I saw a waterfall cascading down a mountain and literally cried because it was so beautiful.

But the things I'm most excited to bring home aren't really the photographs. They're the feelings attached to them. That's what I want to carry into the rest of my Stormbound rewrite.

I've spent months taking this book apart and figuring out what I want the new version to become. And somehow, right as I'm beginning to put it back together, I got to spend a week walking through landscapes that reminded me why I wanted to write the Rainlands in the first place.

So yes, Scotland was a vacation. It was my dream trip. It was also, apparently, extremely elaborate book research.

I came home inspired. Now it's time to take everything Scotland gave me and turn it into something entirely my own.

Back to the Rainlands! ⚡