World building - how to be geographically authentic?

[Fitzchiv]

Hi all,

So i've bought myself a nice clean snazzy drawing pad, and my other half dug some pencils out of her stationary hoard for me - and I'm now ready to start creating what I hope will be a compelling and detailed region to base my work in.

This is something I did a lot as a youngster, back in the days of Warhammer, Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. I even had (and still do infact, buried in a box somewhere) the maps of the Discworld and Anke-Morpork on my wall. Chuck in an A-Level in Geography and you'd think this would be second nature and an exciting challenge for me.

Well, it isn't! For whatever reason I'm finding myself terrified of lack of authenticity, worried about glacial features, believeable river basins etc. All very anal and almost certainly a diversionary tactic.

My question to you fine folks is can you recommend any good resources for world building, map-wise? I remember reading an authors blog a while back and someone had mentioned a very good website for authentic geographical mapping but I can't for the life of me remember what it is.

I have been enjoying looking through an evolving medievil atlas of europe i picked up of Amazon for a couple of quid though, it's quite good seeing how empires rose/fell and how it tracked with geographical features.

Anyway, yeh, on some pretty hefty painkillers so i'm rambling a bit! But if anyone can recommend good resources for mapping i'm all ears (eyes)

 

[Glen]

Do you need a map? I alway's like a book with a good map in it, for sure, but I don't think they are always necessary. Perhaps you can get away with just describing a few random features on the periphery of your story?

Anyway, that's not what you wanted to hear, so I found this. I can't vouch for any of these sites as I've never used them, but it looks impressive to me.

http://www.oneofus.co.uk/index.php/how_to/how_to_create_fantasy_worlds/

 

[Nik]

IMHO, the first question you should ask is 'How Real'. Used to be that worlds had mountains, volcanoes, rivers etc just scattered on the map for the greatest inconvenience of the protagonists. Then Plate Tectonics came along, and each land mass became a palimpsest telling of deep-layered history...

Without plate tectonics, you get the two extremes-- 'Mars analogs' with a super-volcano / multi-vented volcanic centre, active, dormant or extinct, possibly an island chain, or 'Venus analogs' where flood basalts are the major expression. Best be else-where when their over-turn erupts. FWIW, that could be a major drive for population movements etc....

 

[Fantastyfan]

I looked up creating fantasy worlds a week ago and found this article.

http://www.wherethemapends.com/writerstools/writers_tools_pages/world_builders.htm

He suggested some awesome world building programs. One of them called was Fractal Terrains which looked very interesting. If I had the money, I'd buy a few of the programs.

 

[TheTomG]

There are quite a few programs out there that can help build landscapes and / or worlds.

As for realism, well, depends on whether you want that. After all, "realistic" geography just means what we know of here on Earth. Yet look at all the weird and wonderful worlds we have in our solar system alone! Especially moons, which show an enormous variety of forms, influenced by an enormous variety of factors. Hotter or colder than the Earth; gravitational pulls; odd chemical compositions; liquid oceans below, frozen up top; worlds shattered then reformed (even a possibility that the Earth is such a world.)

There is no reason why other worlds could not be shaped by forces very different from here on Earth, based on known-universe physics alone.

But wait! What if we add magic? Or super-science? Or technology? Or forces we are not aware of yet in the universe, since our science is not complete? The way the world looks could really be anything, and no-one could say it is not "realistic."

Frankly, if someone who buys your book wants to spend time pouring over your map and taking offence with how "that just wouldn't be possible with what we know of geology!" then maybe you shouldn't be worried about trying to please them as a reader, and should focus on the other 999,999 people who will read your book and not even stop to think twice about your map other than the question of "Is it cool and interesting?"

Sorry to try and pop your procrastinating bubble Go ahead, make the world you want and above all ENJOY the process of making it, and make something you love in the end so that you are compelled to populate it and bring it to life for all your readers!

 

[Christopher Lee]

There are quite a few programs out there that can help build landscapes and / or worlds.

As for realism, well, depends on whether you want that. After all, "realistic" geography just means what we know of here on Earth. Yet look at all the weird and wonderful worlds we have in our solar system alone! Especially moons, which show an enormous variety of forms, influenced by an enormous variety of factors. Hotter or colder than the Earth; gravitational pulls; odd chemical compositions; liquid oceans below, frozen up top; worlds shattered then reformed (even a possibility that the Earth is such a world.)

There is no reason why other worlds could not be shaped by forces very different from here on Earth, based on known-universe physics alone.

But wait! What if we add magic? Or super-science? Or technology? Or forces we are not aware of yet in the universe, since our science is not complete? The way the world looks could really be anything, and no-one could say it is not "realistic."

Frankly, if someone who buys your book wants to spend time pouring over your map and taking offence with how "that just wouldn't be possible with what we know of geology!" then maybe you shouldn't be worried about trying to please them as a reader, and should focus on the other 999,999 people who will read your book and not even stop to think twice about your map other than the question of "Is it cool and interesting?"

Sorry to try and pop your procrastinating bubble Go ahead, make the world you want and above all ENJOY the process of making it, and make something you love in the end so that you are compelled to populate it and bring it to life for all your readers!

I must agree with Tom. Personally, when I am reading a book that is based in a fantasy world that has a map provided of the landscape to revert to during your reading, I don't think in the least bit about how true or false it could be.

On a good guess, I would have to say that 90% of your readers would probably have the same geological intelligence as myself. Which, when comparing details so minor, is very little.

Go wild with your world, it's the story we want. Not geological proofs.

 

[StirlingNewberry]

As with any task, if it is a block, then do something else. Just write for a while, and then go back and start sketching things out. There's a window where geography will matter a great deal to characters, and also be available. However, at either end, it is different, in that in early eras, they will not have good maps or good information, and in later ones, they will probably have access to transportation that makes most of the information irrelevant. The character's geography is what is important to their story, so you don't need more than they would reasonably have.

 

[Sapheron]

I find my geology degree helped dramatically in over the top world building projects. Once you have basic statistics such as global temperature and sea level and you've positioned the tectonic plates and decided what types they are most of the rest just falls into place though a logical progression.

Unfortunately, then you end up with a very realistic world that is likely to not be set out in a very helpful way for the story you have in mind.

Anyway, I'd say your best resource is simple common sense. If you want to make a realistic world (in the sense people can accept it could be real, not as in the sense that it could actually happen, let alone be probable) then simply listen to your head. No, that rain forest can't have a direct border with that massive desert with no boundary between them. No, those cold blooded reptiles can't live on the permafrost. No, that river can't run up hill.

If nothing stands out as stupid to you while you make it, chances are it won't to the people reading it, except for that guy. We all know the one. The one that will write in a complaint to something simply because he has the right to. And it's not as if you could stop that guy anyway, so why worry?

 

[TheTomG]

"No, that rain forest can't have a direct border with that massive desert with no boundary between them."

Unless you are in a MMORPG, in which case that is de rigueur. Well, it's allowed to fade just a little bit, over a few tens of feet maybe.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I make maps to get a general idea of where everything is in relation to everything else, but since the setting in my current trilogy is more or less medieval I figure that the maps wouldn't be accurate in terms of distances, so I don't worry about making them correct that way.

If you look at maps that are six or seven hundred years old, the sizes of different countries might be in proportion to their importance in the mind of the mapmaker, rather than their real proportion compared to everywhere else.

And how long it took to travel from one place to another often had more to do with the roads and the terrain than with actual distances.

So, as I said, I don't worry about it. I just try to show the relative locations of the places my characters travel through.

 

[Anne Lyle]

I agree with Sapheron - avoid having rivers that run uphill and you're halfway there. You could get into a few big-picture details, e.g.

* Was there an ice age or two? If so, you'll have fjords and stuff towards the poles.

* Decide which way the prevailing winds blow - rain will fall on the windward side of any high ground, leaving a "rain shadow" of drier land on the other side

* The middles of continents will have greater extremes of temperature than the coasts

* Climate will vary by latitude, but sea currents can make a big difference - e.g. London is the same latitude as Calgary, but has a much milder climate owing to the warm current from the Gulf of Mexico

 

[Ursa major]

"No, that rain forest can't have a direct border with that massive desert with no boundary between them."

Unless you are in a MMORPG, in which case that is de rigueur. Well, it's allowed to fade just a little bit, over a few tens of feet maybe.

Although the cause is not rainfall but river flow (with, perhaps, some irrigation** thrown into the mix), you do see a change over a few feet in the Nile valley (such as the east bank near Luxor), with the desert morphing into green fields in a very short distance. And very odd it looks too. (Well, it did to me.)



** - And then there are those collections of green circles in the desert where they use some sort of rotating irrigation equipment.

 

[Anne Lyle]

** - And then there are those collections of green circles in the desert where they use some sort of rotating irrigation equipment.

Yeah, saw a lot of those flying to San Francisco - humungous circular fields. Very weird!

 

[Sapheron]

Although the cause is not rainfall but river flow (with, perhaps, some irrigation** thrown into the mix), you do see a change over a few feet in the Nile valley (such as the east bank near Luxor), with the desert morphing into green fields in a very short distance. And very odd it looks too. (Well, it did to me.)



** - And then there are those collections of green circles in the desert where they use some sort of rotating irrigation equipment.

In defence of my statement (through the use of pedantry, admittedly) I wouldn't call the little band running down the Nile a rain forest. It's just a flood plain.

That said, it does indeed look very unnatural.

 

[Ursa major]

There's nothing wrong with a bit of pedantry, or your original statement, for that matter.