The "Geography" in a Book

[KESpires]

For the pun

 

[Runya]

Oh... *blushes*

 

[Esioul]

Sapheron, that's a labour of love. But it must make the world a lot more believable. If I ever had to create a world, I would probably find doing that helped me to visualise it.

 

[Ilvian]

That whole process is fairly similar to what my co-creator and I have done. The tectonics were added as an afterthought, but besides that minor detail we followed your process fairly accurately. Now he's trying to figure out the vagaries of seasons in a binary system while I'm writing what we already know.

Kes, I see your point about the potential for a map to make a writer more lazy in a sort of "refer to figure A for reference" sense. But as a tool for writing the story, I've found it invaluable in the process of creating an accurate description of our world. Mainly due to the accuracy of the work we've put into it, I can glance at a chart and know what season it is, how much light an area gets at what latitude, what color the light is (2 different colored stars) and therefore what color the plants would tend to be.

Which all helps when my protagonist is trekking across the southern wilds during a season of pure daylight due to the way the stars rotate in relation to the planet. The fact that one star is blue also means that my characters encounter reddish plants and can rub leaves on themselves to borrow some evolved UV protection from a chemical the plant secretes.

Also, 'grats on being published, Kes.

 

[Sapheron]

Binary system? Urgh.

Do the two stars rotate around each other at the same time, or is one smaller and orbit the other? If that's the case, does the planet orbit inside or outside the smaller star? I wrote a short story based in a binary system once. By the way it worked, every hundred years the planet went in between them, causing massive flooding and earthquakes and all manner of problems (not to mention giving everyone one hell of a suntan). It was quite fun in a never-endingly-complicated kind of way.

Another fun one was trying to work out an world where everyone was on the inside of a sphere (dyson style). I assumed gravity was pulling outwards through a magical source (a god trapped in the sun), but it was all otherwise natural processes. Eventually I gave up on that one. It wasn't especially difficult, I don't think, but pretty much everything was just the other way around, and it hurt my head in the end.

 

[KESpires]

That whole process is fairly similar to what my co-creator and I have done. The tectonics were added as an afterthought, but besides that minor detail we followed your process fairly accurately. Now he's trying to figure out the vagaries of seasons in a binary system while I'm writing what we already know.

Kes, I see your point about the potential for a map to make a writer more lazy in a sort of "refer to figure A for reference" sense. But as a tool for writing the story, I've found it invaluable in the process of creating an accurate description of our world. Mainly due to the accuracy of the work we've put into it, I can glance at a chart and know what season it is, how much light an area gets at what latitude, what color the light is (2 different colored stars) and therefore what color the plants would tend to be.

Which all helps when my protagonist is trekking across the southern wilds during a season of pure daylight due to the way the stars rotate in relation to the planet. The fact that one star is blue also means that my characters encounter reddish plants and can rub leaves on themselves to borrow some evolved UV protection from a chemical the plant secretes.

Also, 'grats on being published, Kes.

Thanks.

I totally agree with you about using it as a tool to help move characters along. I just don't see myself ever including one at the front of a book. Using one to aid in the writing, as you say, is probably a smart thing to do.