The "Geography" in a Book

[Ursa major]

It was the natural tool to use for me: I've produced thousands and thousands of PP slides over the years and, because I'm obsessive about how the diagrams in them looked ("because you don't want to put across the wrong message by mistake" - that's been my excuse), I was asked to jazz-up others' slides. Hence I've spent a lot of time with the application and have become used to it over many years.

As with all tools, knowing what it can do is half the job. Most drawing tools can produce excellent output if you know what you're doing and what they can do.


As to coast lines: don't just think of a handful of edit points and a few clever Bezier settings: add as many edit points as you need. And remember, I'm a bit obsessive with this, so there are lots of edit points on some of my maps. (Odlly enough, near me there is a place called Round Island, but it isn't that round; but in any case, I always start with the Curves tool, not a regualr shape.)

 

[Sonshu]

One nice tool in the ones I listed is it has all the symbols and information for making mountain ranges and all sorts of other things. With minimal effort things can look amazing and its all drag and drop, really that simple.

If your PP application has this you need to get it published....

 

[Ursa major]

It's just standard PowerPoint (with one, non-copyable, add-on: a half-crazed user obsessively tweaking lines here and there). Depending on the map, my mountains are either a shaded area with the name of the mountain range on it, or what a viewer can deduce from seeing a lot of contour lines and increasingly darker brown (or, in grey-scale, grey) shading. It doesn't have all the bells and whistle that, I imagine, come with the application you mentioned. For someone not already half-bonded to a particular drawing application, your suggestion may be just what they need to get started.


The most important things about map creation are to know what you want to depict and to have some inkling of what is possible and what is - even in a fantasy world - impossible on the ground (as it were). A few lines in pencil on a scrap of paper may be more than enough, depending on the needs of the writer and the text.

 

[mygoditsraining]

I must admit I've never paid much attention to the maps that come with most Fantasy books - I tend to just try and get a feel from the story where everything is. Possibly as a result, in my current works-in-progress the "maps" of places resemble a visual thesaurus more than anything else, being just a chain of place names and major landmarks...which, if you think about it, is what maps used to be like (kind of).

 

[Theleb K]

Hmmm.. there's clearly a danger in getting carried away with the whole map thing. Remember, you're a writer not a cartographer...​

 

[dreir]

But being a cartographer is sooo much fun!!

- Dreir -

 

[Ilvian]

My $.02
I sort of did it all backwards. A friend came to me with a map. Actually a planetary map. Complete with ocean currents and colored in full Köppen scale geographical notation for climate. About 30 hours of discussion later we had the whole thing populated, a working history, main cities, and an overarching story to tie it all together.
Im not advocating this approach, I'm just saying that maps can be a helluva inspiration.
Also, take a look at the map at the end of a Terry Goodkind book. Its so sparse, small, and inaccurate that it only barely relates to the story it seems. If your story is sound, a map is an addition, not a necessity. Hell, Tolkien built Mordor as a box canyon that would almost certainly not occur in nature, and then surrounded it with completely different and independant climate regions. Yay science! Then again he had ageless men in cloaks shooting fire at each other...
If you really are concerned with the locations in your book, look to history. How long would it take a large land war to progress across most of a continent? Look at the progression of Napoleon's campaigns, or WWI and II depending on the level of technology. Is your protagonist travelling alone through wilderness? How long did it take Lewis and Clark to traverse the wild US? There is at least a loose historical counterpart for everything, and it can help you gauge your own story's timeline.

 

[Boneman]

By Ilvian
How long did it take Lewis and Clark to traverse the wild US?

Roughly? Anybody know? And they wouldn't have made it if they weren't rescued by Native Americans who saved them from certain death. Probably the invasion by Europeans would have been delayed by a lot of years if they'd not been saved......aaah hindsight...

 

[Boneman]

I know..... 3 years... and it wasn't the whole of the USA, either....! And then Lewis committed suicide 3 years later. DO YOU SEE WHAT FIXATION WITH DRAWING MAPS CAN DO TO YOU????

 

[dreir]

I dunno.. That whole warning thing looks like a 'Do Not Fish' sign to me, so I'm just gonna ignore it like I always do.

So, Ursa, how did you say I should drag those edit points again? I'm up to the 23rd little inlet on this inch-long coastline on my A2-paper map, so I'm doing great. Just thought up of a nice name for it, too.. made it sort of similar sounding to the last five (but still quite unique) as it's within the southern reaches of the same kingdom, but I should note somewhere that the 'e' is kinda dragged out a bit near these parts, as the region's got a mix of Kyrondians and Lemourians due to that Lemourian invasion two thousand years ago, and everyone knows the Lemourians drag their 'e's. Anyway, I've been trying to shift this edit point by a pixel over the last 4 hours and it's just not working out. I'm gonna keep at it for a little while more, though. Oops, is it sunrise already?

- Dreir -

 

[Sonshu]

I did the map for my books when I was running the RPG so it cost me zero time when writing the book as it was done.

The tool I used took me about 1-2 hours for a totally excellent map and it helped a lit but if there is no map in a book nobody can question your travel timeline.....

It did help though giving a quick glance made me think, that’s 2 days travel to get through that wood etc and it added just that tiny bit more to the realisim and that is what I have aimed for in the combat, feel etc.

 

[Ursa major]

So, Ursa, how did you say I should drag those edit points again? I'm up to the 23rd little inlet on this inch-long coastline on my A2-paper map, so I'm doing great. Just thought up of a nice name for it, too.. made it sort of similar sounding to the last five (but still quite unique) as it's within the southern reaches of the same kingdom, but I should note somewhere that the 'e' is kinda dragged out a bit near these parts, as the region's got a mix of Kyrondians and Lemourians due to that Lemourian invasion two thousand years ago, and everyone knows the Lemourians drag their 'e's. Anyway, I've been trying to shift this edit point by a pixel over the last 4 hours and it's just not working out. I'm gonna keep at it for a little while more, though. Oops, is it sunrise already?

- Dreir -

I take it you've got "Snap Objects to Grid" switched off, and Zoom set to 400%....

Oh, and you're leaving the unimportant fiddly bits - as opposed to the important ones - to the end (after, even, you've written the text, to keep Theleb K happy** ).




** - With over 625,000 words*** written (a figure that is decreasing with editing), I'm allowed to play with the maps every now and then, aren't I?


*** - Spread over three and a bit books of a quartet, in case anyone thinks it's another example of unnecessary gigantism....

 

[Esioul]

There are some open source GIS packages out there, maybe one of those would do the job.

 

[Blackrook]

Steve Jackson didn't let the geography of Middle Earth get in the way. In the Two Towers, he had elves from Lorien appearing at Helm's Deep just a few days after the Fellowship heroes arrived. Teleportation is the only possible explanation.

 

[KESpires]

I don't bother looking at maps at the beginning of books. If a book is so vague or confusing that I need to refer to the map, then the author is already well on the way to losing me as a reader.

If Dan Simmons can write Ilium without the reader needing to refer to maps, history books, classical texts, and take a college course, then it proves that it's all in the writing

Dan Simmons rocks. Seriously.

I do draw maps though. They're fun. But I never end up sticking to stories I have maps for. Just like I never end up sticking to stories I have outlines for. Something dies in the story for me if I do excessive preplanning.

That's just me.

 

[Esioul]

Yeah I know what you mean. I can get very engrossed in making a map.

 

[Sapheron]

Making maps is great fun. The whole world building process is. In fact, quite often that's as far as I get with a story...

Having said that, as far as the geography making sense goes, I'm a geologist. Either as a result of this or due to simple madness when I build a world map I start at the real beginning by laying down the tectonics. Then, if you assign the type of plate (sial or sima (oceanic or continental to everyone else)) you know the land masses. Then, if you assign directions of movement you can work out where the mountain ranges will be. With mountains down, you can slap on the equator and polar regions and it's quite simple then to work out roughly what rainfall regions get. From that, you can see the rainforests and deserts, as well as the rough amount, size, and direction of rivers. From there on, the rest falls into place quite easily.

 

[Runya]

That was really interesting...

So once you know the basic things about Earth, you can get to know all the rest?

 

[Ursa major]

Sounds as if once you know all that, the rest is handed to you on a plate.









Sorry.

 

[Runya]

Sorry about what?