jpskewedthrone | Writing Tips: Mapmaking

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Writing Tips: Mapmaking

In my last post with an update about the writing of the new book (in between working at the day job) I mentioned that I'd reached a point in the process where I needed a map. Someone asked me to expand on any thoughts I had on mapmaking and my process, so I thought I'd turn that into a general post.

Fantasy is known for maps. I know that one of the first things I end up looking at when I pick a new book off the shelf in the bookstore is the front matter in the books, because I want to know if there are other books by this author and if the book I hold in my hand is really part 5 of a series that I've missed up to this point . . . and becuase I want to see if there's a map. (I also read the author's note and acknowledgment pages because I want to know who the author's agent and editor are, but that's a professional thing, not a fan thing.) I think maps are cool and I find them invaluable when I'm writing my own work. You can also get a taste for the world the author has created by looking at the map. The names of places gives you a flavor of the cultures and gives you an idea of how indepth the author went in crating that world. If everything seems to have a name and place, then you know the author has spent some time there. If it's mostly blank with a few names and places, then perhaps they didn't get into the worldbuilding as much.

That said, there are no maps in front of my books. The inclusion of a map is really the publisher's decision, since they cost money, moreso than a print page. But in my books, the lack of maps is really because the books didn't need them. They're set for the most part in one or two cities, and not much happens outside of those cities that's relevant to the story. And including a city map never even crossed my mind (and I assume my editor's). My city maps are rather lame anyway. I can SEE the city in my head, but putting it down on paper . . . let's just say it doesn't translate well.

In any case, this brings me to my own mapmaking. When do I make a map? Why? What process do I use? Do I work small and let the map grow, or do I create the outlines of the world and then put in all the details later?

I start small. Usually I start writing long before a map pops into my head, and so when I finally do decide that a map is necessary, the first thing on the map is my main city, smack dab in the center. Usually the reason I need the map in the first place is because the story has grown enough that I've been forced to start including things outside of the city, things from the outside world, like where all these refugees are coming from, or how the trade materials are getting to the city, and why that person my main character just passed by in the street has a feather headdress on. Where did these people come from? In the process of fleshing out the city, I end up fleshing out the world as well. All these names and places get created, and some are north and some are south and some come from the eastern coastline that's miles and miles away . . . and suddenly I can't keep all of the names and places and locations straight in my head. There are too many of them to keep track of, even with a little notebook by my side, and I suddenly need to see the big picture.

That's what happened last week. I suddenly had Baronies, and Barons, and my main city was on the plains at the confluence of two rivers, and those rivers had to lead somewhere, and I'd already introduced one foreign culture from the south and if a few of the Baronies are to the south, this foreign culture had to be even FURTHER south and . . . AHHHHHHH!!!!! All this stuff needs to be organized!

So I sat down to create a map. I put the city in the center and drew a few rivers that converged there. But the rivers had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere had to be at a higher elevation (you can't just have rivers, they have to make geological sense) and I'd already mentioned mountains to the north and west so I drew in mountains. I knew my second main character came from a little place called Hollow to the west, so I put in Hollow. He's introduced when he's standing on top of a hill with his daughter looking east, so there had to be signficant hills at the base of the western mountains that lead down to the plains where the main city is. *draw draw draw* OK, now the Baronies. I'd only mentioned two of them, but knew there were more, oh and no land looks good unless it has a few lakes and such, so let's put this Barony there, on the edge of a lake (all cities should be near a significant water source or where a significant water source USED to be), and another down here and there should be a few more over here and here because that's generally how populations inhabit land masses, and what do I call these new Baronies? What about . . . Damn that's a cool name! And I can already see the bridges needed to get to the island and now I've got a sense of the city itself and how it feels and . . .

Well, you get the idea. What happens in the course of drawing my map is that I transition over from adding the things I've already created in the story into things that I haven't mentioned yet. I start filling in the details because suddenly I can see the surrounding world and I can see the details that are missing, which I can't see while living in one of the character's heads as easily. I can see what the characters sees and know to fill in what's missing from that perspective, but the world outside that character also needs details even if I never make it to that city or that river or that lake during the course of the story.

During the course of writing, I may have to change some of the map due to plot issues and stuff. For example, later on I may need my characters to get to a certain place by a certain time, and looking at the map, that would be impossible because I've drawn the place WAY too far away for that to happen. So I may move the place closer . . . or I may come up with some fancy magical way the characters make it to the place on time. Creative ways around problems are always good for books (but sometimes they make things TOO complicated, hence the moving of mountains and cities when necessary).

Now that I have a map, I feel as if the world is much more real, because I know things. I know more things than the characters in general. I have names of places those characters will likely never see. This is one way in which you can get that all important feeling across that the author knows what's right around the corner even if the characters never make that turn. It's also a creative outlet for yourself. I find that working on the map frees up my mind and allows me to throw out ideas onto the blank space to see if they stick or not. I can't do this during the course of writing because I'm focused on the character, on their situation. For the map, I can do whatever I want, because I'm NOT focused. I randomly place things here and there and ask myself whether that would work in the real world and if not what's my explanation for why it works in my world and if there is no ready explanation then I erase it and try something else. That's the idea anyway.

And that's why I start creating a map, and how that map gets created. It's also how the maps help me create the story, and how the two end up feeding into each other. The same process happens on the smaller scale when I'm creating a city map. Certain districts have to be upriver of others, and certain buildings are better suited to certain locations, etc. But the idea of building the city is more or less the same.

So that's how I do it. How about you? Anyone else want to share their mapmaking strategy and what works for them? Because my method certainly won't work for everyone.

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I'm a geographer with a great fondness for historical cartography. I've drawn a *very* elaborate map for the Five Kingdoms where several of my stories take place; haven't done the same yet for other worlds.

I find much the same as you - in creating geography, in looking at spatial relationships and individual traits of places a lot of plot (and subplot( suggests itself.

I start with coastlines, freehand. The Five Kingdoms were set around an inland sea, with two major islands - and then I doodled until it felt right. It's a dialogue between the things I know from the plot - cities, rivers, roads, mountain ranges, and things that the map suggests. Sometimes the plot calls for an obstacle, or for a trade route, sometimes you need a certain kind of landscape. With chalk uplands goes a lack of rivers, and the likelyhood of an inland cliff somewhere.

The Map (http://www.flickr.com/photos/valendon/179880782/in/set-1158695/)

I *love* Freehand. The ability to layer information and to prettify is and to move things around and label them and annotate them with, say, travel times: priceless.

This is one way in which you can get that all important feeling across that the author knows what's right around the corner even if the characters never make that turn.

That is such an important thing for me. Also, having the map helps you to remain consistent even in small details, and if you need an obscure place for a character to come from, you have one at hand.

Wow! That map is cool. Mine are nothing like that, just scribbles on a sheet of scratch paper to keep myself organized. I usually get to the coastlines later, unless the city is set on the coast.

You, sir, are keeping me up past my bed time. The only reason I haven't finish the new book yet is because I keep falling asleep and I HAVE to put it down. I'm starting to resent my schedule for exhausting me too much to keep reading. :D

Love the book. :D

So which book is the one keeping you up at night? And I can't say I'm feeling all that upset about the sleeplessness in general. This is the kind of reaction writers LOVE. *grin*

Ahhh, here is where I am cheating. Sort of. Since I'm writing urban fantasy, I'm using modern-day maps. Thus: I suck.

However, in the past, when I needed a map, I actually found various version of old maps and futzed with them in photoshop until I got the shape I wanted.

Again! Cheat! *hides*

Well, yes, you do have an advantage in that you have modern day maps for the urban stuff. I'll agree there.

But even the fantasy writers out there do what you've done with their own made-up worlds. Some take a portion of our world map and just rearrange it (flip it upside down, etc) or tweak the general layout to make it fit their own world better. I think Robin Hobb did that with the Assassin/Fool series (if I remember correctly, it's just Alaska turned upside down) and Guy Gavriel Kay just uses the map as it is and changes the names.

Maps are definitely not my strong point, and I like to put them off for as long as I can. I've been working on and off in the current WIP world for almost two years, and I still haven't made a map. I doubt I'll actually put one on paper unless this book sells and they want to put a map in the book, honestly.Partly because my art skills are so bad that a paper map would probably only confuse me if I actually tried to use it as a reference, and partly because I'm the build-as-you-go type. I know where everything I need so far is, but I can't imagine filling up the parts of the map that I'm less clear on (because I haven't worked on any of the sections that might be set there--I'm a pantser when it comes to plotting as well) because I don't know what I might need when I get there.

I found it interesting that you said a map made your world feel more real to you. For me it's always been that if I try to lay things down too far in advance things start feeling less and less real.

Like I said, some things work for one writer and not another. Maps set my mind free in some way. Apparently they don't do the same thing for you. But you find your own process.

And I have yet to have a publisher ask me if I had a map, let alone demand that I produce one. So at this stage it's just there for organization/inspiration purposes.

Sometimes you find that if you just alter your route a bit you get there faster.

Such as using local transit to get to a place on the other side of town. You have a look at a route map, and at a street map, and you learn that the route comes within two blocks of your destination, but the second route you need to get off right at the front door connects with the first route about 3 miles later.

Fantasy worlds don't tend to have the "local transit" idea. *grin* But I know what you're saying. Instead of traveling by road you can always try the river, etc.

(I also read the author's note and acknowledgment pages because I want to know who the author's agent and editor are, but that's a professional thing, not a fan thing.)

Hee. I do that too. Can it be because we share a birthday? (I also want to know who their friends are, not just their pro contacts; it's my equivalent of the celebrity gossip magazines...)

Maps? I love maps. I have had maps, when the publisher asked for them. I find that I don't really use them, though, when I'm working; and I never ever refer to them in other people's books. I don't even have Tolkien's geography straight in my head, despite how many times I've read LotR (yes, and looked at the map). I'd always rather build my own notion of how the journey works, just from the words.

Hmm . . . I never really look at the map while I'm reading the book either, once I've started. Unless something doesn't quite jive with timing or whatever, and I check to see if I'm missing something or the writer screwed up. But I certainly use my own map quite a lot to keep locations straight while I'm writing my own stuff.

And I certainly take note of friends and whatnot while reading the acknowledgments as well.

That is fascinating.

I always think of Michigan as flat and it has a lot of rivers (and lakes), but I guess there is something like a 500ft elevation change across most of the lower peninsula. Mountains just make so much more sense to me.

As a reader I also look for maps at the beginning of a book. Once I start reading, however, I rarely refer back to the map unless I feel like the characters have traveled too fast between two points.

I don't refer back to the maps much while reading either, which is interesting. So maps in books I read are really rather useless to me. Unless I'm just getting totally lost, which is a sign of bad writing, not that the map is necessary.

I love maps enough that if a book has one, I will look at it and examine it. It tells me a lot about the writer's worldbuilding skills. Terry Brooks failed that test: Northland, Eastland, Southland, Westland; no thanks.

Love maps.

I won;t bore on about my method unless someone asks, but here's a quick and useful tip: beachballs make great globes. I bought a beach ball for my globe when I was 19 and 2-d maps just weren't doing it (I needed time zones). Beachballs are inflatable and easy to carry, and the colored bits are automatic time zones!

My globe was made in 1970, so it's fragile, but hey. It works.

I've never considered using a 3D globe as a map, probably because none of my stories so far have extended into different time zones or anything like that. Even the new one probably won't, since I intend to take the huge world view and destroy it. *grin*

I find maps very reassuring. For my book I had unearthed two historical city maps of Munich dating 1865 and 1858. Went to the city archive to get details. Of course, the way the story is going, nobody would have noticed if had made things up. But I felt happy with every corner accounted for. Makes it more real.

It is nice to know what's around the corner even if you don't get there.

When I write an earth-base story, I use existing maps. For instance, I once wrote a scene -- never published -- in what was then Leningrad. I had a map of the city next to me the whole time. Can't be moving Nevsky Prospekt, can we?

When I write in a world I create myself, I write a map for self-reference. And I do keep in mind things like "rivers come from somewhere," and for that matter, the effects of barrier islands or the lack thereof on shaping the coastline. Most importantly, to me, is just like you can't move Nevsky Prospekt (go ahead, I dare you to try), once you've set the City of Sneed east of the Plains of Pog and north of Lake Lublock, you can hardly then have it south of said lake.

I'm certain I'd use an existing map for something set in our world, even if it did have something magical involved in it. I've only written one novel like that (set in 1965), but I'd visited the town it was set in often, so didn't really need the map of the area.

But yeah, mostly I use the map to keep myself organized.

No, you can't move the real world (unless you have a really good reason to) but what a lot of contemporary authors do in other genres is to add to reality - having a whole new street, or landmark building, or city quarter, that you can shape however you want without stepping on anyone's toes. Having all the rest taken from the real world lends your book authenticity. There's nothing worse than someone getting easily researchable details wrong.

That only works in certain settings. I've seen writers try to do it in small towns in Upstate NY, where any local will just be laughing too hard to hold the book... things like putting a large mall in some town that anyone within 100 miles knows has a population of about 600. Or referring to the "nearby Army Base" that's really 200 miles away. In a large city, you might get away with having a new street... and you might get away with creating your small town wholesale, a'la Lake Woebegone. The thing is, of course, whether you're adding a Little Korea to a city that has no distinct Korean neighborhood, or sticking another small town into the Adirondacks, the rest of your geography does, as you said, have to be correct.

I've seen some doozies on the "easily researchable" front. And on the less so, of course.

Oh, it's got to be plausible all the way through. Otherwise the reader's suspension of disbelief will break. Your small town needs to have small-town-appropriate additions, or a believable alternate history (something that happened to another, previously small, town a hundred miles away). The army base would be perfectly fine for me - not shrinking the real world, but building a new one, if that's what the story needs.

Right now, for instance, I've elevated Machynlleth to the capital of Wales. This was a distinct possibility, and the Mach of today - which is a small and sleepy (and very ecologically aware) town - has expanded accordingly without becoming Cardiff transposed to the north. But the poing about Cardiff is that it's close to England and easy to reach, which Mach - for all the central government and university facilities I place there - will never be, so there's got to be a balance.

I always think that the more trustworthy a writer is overall - and the same goes on the character front, I want them to be well-rounded and acting like human beings - the easier it is to buy into a couple of odd things.

I'm currently writing in an alternate Britain, and the amount of research that needs is scary. Usually I can trust my historical/geographical skills to make things up wholesale and have them interesting and coherent. Meshing fiction with reality is a much harder job.

Thanks for the long response! I tend to draw maps only if I need them (because I'm a build-as-you-go type, too, and I get afraid of forgetting my landscape) and it's good to be reminded of how the maps must make geological sense in the "real" world. I remember one of the first maps I drew for a WIP, I just randomly added in rivers and never really thought about what that meant, for example.

I think it does help to have maps when writing, because it not only helps as reference but it forces you to come up with at least the bare minimum of cultural differences of the peoples that live in different areas. Like you said, a map gives the impression that the author has done a lot of world-building and knows a lot about his or her world, even if you as a reader don't get to see everything in that particular story.

If there's a map in a book I'm reading, I tend to refer to it as I read the story, just because I know it's there. In a novel where the world-building is very complicated, I think a map helps tremendously, especially if the author writes as if you are immersed in the world and therefore doesn't explain where everything is in relation to everything else (I'm reading one right now where I have to keep turning to the map to figure out what the hell is going on). In a novel that takes place mostly in one city, I think it's not as necessary, though I confess I love city maps more then whole world ones because they can be so detailed.

Hmm, see, when I'm reading a book with a map I almost never look back at the map while reading. Unless something doesn't make sense (like they traveled to the city too quickly or something), when I'll look back to make certain I remember things correctly. But that doesn't happen often.

Glad the post was interesting!

I'm friending you because I'm in the process of re-mapping my Iyinskii and Dannagran Dram, and this is an incredible inspiration. I do hope you friend me back because I despise uneven numbers, and you're really very groovy.

Friended, and I hope I continue to remain groovy. *grin* Good luck with the mapmaking!

I think when writing fantasy maps are an essential tool, whether you include them in the final book or not. If you don't know where the hell your characters are, then an audience is likely to be wandering aimlessly as well. I don't know how people write fantasy without using a map. THe world is as vital as character biographies, or the histories. Readers are a shrewd bunch and are the first to pick out holes.

THanks for sharing how you approach world-building. It was really interesting to see how you go about it.

I recall reading an interview with Anne McCaffrey years ago where she pointed out the scene in Dragonsinger where Robinton opens a drawer in the organizer on his desk, takes out a two mark piece and hands to to Menolly. She reminded readers that Robinton never opens any of the other drawers, in that book or any other, but *she* knows what's in them. If the author doesn't know her world, there's no way the reader can.

I certainly believe that a writer needs to create maps and other things to help write a story. Whether or not they end up in the published work is another topic, one no doubt decided by the publisher.

As my stories tend to move back and forth between the real world of some 200 years ago and the world found when sailing BEYOND THE OCEAN'S EDGE, I need to be knowledgable with regards to two worlds. It is very easy to find maps and other information about this world, but for the other I have to rely upon my imagination. The best reason I can give for having a map of that world is to allow for consistency. Truth be told, I don't have an actual map yet, but I do have a general idea of it tucked away in the recesses of my brain. I do have a basic map of STONE ISLAND itself, taped to the wall next to the computer.

I've also found that as I write ship vs. ship battle scenes, I tend to diagram them. Especially when dealing with wind powered vessels, it is very important to know the relative positions of each at every point of the fray. It's also important to know the restrictions placed on each, and the options allowed to each because of the wind's direction and location. I'd hate to have some sharp-eyed reader point out that ship "A" could not possibly have made the move it did, because it would have had to have sailed for six miles directly into the teeth of a 50 knot gale. The truth of the matter is that once I've written the scene, I rarely go back and reconstruct the diagram based on what I've written. Nor do I attempt to do that when reading similar scenes in other folks' work.

Lastly, I find it helpful to generate and keep a list of characters. It helps to prevent reusing the same names and serves to identify those who may have dropped from sight but who will return at a later date in the story. Such a list is also good to maintain consistency in spelling of character names, particularly when the spelling is unique or unusual.
Dave

I have drawn at least eight different maps for this stupid novel. Ugh. I love mapmaking. I hate re-mapmaking.

Hi! You just friended me, so I came over to see who you were. This post caught my eye.

A map is an essential part of my process too. I made an 'overall' map of my island on Photoshop using an island in Malaysia as a base. I redrew the coastline a bit, adding and subtracting but keeping the natural lines, so it wouldn't be recognizable to anyone familiar with the island. I think determining the scale is the most difficult part because the math of time and distance must make sense. I'm adding details to my island: transportation routes and landmarks, as well as homes and businesses of the main character and her peers. I'm still fiddling and will likely continue until all is said and done.

*friends back*

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Writing Tips: Mapmaking

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