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Maps!

Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
Anyone else draw maps? I have this really crude way of drawing them using Microsoft Paint. Mostly I just draw political maps (country names) and that's it. I don't really have any intention of using them other for my own reference. I used to draw lots of maps by hand and always had fun doing that.

Do you feel by drawing a map it helps you world-build more? Sometimes I feel it helps me and other times restrains me. Depends on the story.

Map lovers (cartophiles?) unite!
 
I do. I have a 12x18 map of my fantasy world on a bulletin board so that I can stick pins in it for troop movements, etc. It's a great tool. I don't have a computerized version of it, though, since it's too big for my scanner.
 

Mythos

Troubadour
I'm really bad at drawing maps, but when I do I use some natural formation as a sort of guideline. Mother Nature is better at shaping land formations than I am. I find maps useful and a good way to organize my worldbuilding thoughts on paper.
 

Behelit

Troubadour
I don't have a computerized version of it, though, since it's too big for my scanner.

If you're willing to fold up your map, you can scan it in parts and then put the pieces together in an image manipulation program like PS or even a freebie like GIMP. On the other hand, you may not even care whether or not it's on your computer. It's a suggestion, no less. :)
 

Chilari

Staff
Moderator
I occasionally draw maps. They're rough things, generally, for my own use so I know where things are, which direction things are in, etc. I love looking at maps, both those created for fantasy novels and put in the front of the books, and those created in the middle ages, especially the ones based on Polybius' writings. I love seeing how the people who drew them viewed the world and in particular Britain - my favourite is the one where Scotland extends east, all bent over and weird. I like, too, seeing the little drawings they do representing towns. Some of them are very specific to the particular town, with cathedral spires and castles depicted recognisably (though houses are generic). And I also love seeing maps which have the sea going all the way around the outside, cutting huge chunks of Africa and Asia off to fit a medieval Mediterranean world view. I have dozens of scans of real ancient maps saved on my hard drive, including one of Britain where east is up and, while the road networks and towns in the south of England are accurately depicted and named, those in the north and in Scotland are much less so, with fewer roads and towns depicted at all and those which are shown often being too far north, not close enough to another town, not named, etc.

But in terms of maps for stories, yes, I draw them. I also draw plans of buildings which are important so I know what they look like, or make the building in The Sims (it's more fun than drawing) (hey I could totally do the same thing to get a character's look and take screenshots. Why did I not think of this before?)

Maps are cool.
 

Calash

Scribe
For small areas I will hand draw a rough map so I can keep consistency for my story.

Larger scale I tend to go with something like Photoshop. Drop in the key places, throw on some random noise, and run some filters to make a world map. I had found a tutorial a few years back that showed how to use filters to create a nice looking random map with elevation. I will have to try and dig it up.
 

Ophiucha

Auror
Even in stories where travel is featured, I rarely draw maps for the stories. Too much effort with little payoff. If I need to keep track of them, I can just draw a line. "Hometown - Next town - forest - villain's base - river - healer's village - big city - mountains - villain's castle" and it works about as well as a map, with about one hundredth the effort. Sometimes I draw maps for fun, unrelated to my works. A little trick to creating 'realistic' looking maps: take an old (pre-1800) map of a country, an island country works best, and put it in photoshop or whatever. Mess about until you only have the border. Move some of the small islands around, or delete them entirely. Flip or mirror the map if you like. And then 'bam!' instant map. The old maps are always hilariously wrong, oftentimes too wide to be seen as we see them, and a few changes make it utterly unrecognizable.

Mind, I've never once referenced a map whilst reading Lord of the Rings or anything of that sort. I'd find a street map of a city to be more useful than those broad sorts of maps, unless the characters are doing a LOT of backtracking, which is almost never the case.
 
I'm kind of opposed to folding my map just for a digitized version of it that I don't really need. Like I said, It's mostly for plotting the military campaigns in my project, keeping track of where armies are and whatnot in a very visual fashion. Writing a note that Army A is 500 miles from Army B is all well and good, but I work better with visuals. Too many sand table exercises in the army, I guess.

I'm completely on the same page with Chilari though. When reading through stories that have a map in the front, I'm constantly flipping back and forth. I used to have one of the maps from the library's copy of LOTR, (Yes, I ripped it out. I know, smack my fingers with a ruler and let's move on,) hanging on the wall in my room when I was a teenager. I had the whole path of the story traced on the map, and could just kind of sit there and stare at it for a long time, soaking in all the little details. Yes, I know, I'm a geek. Cest la vie.
 

Ravana

Istar
I always draw my own, and almost always draw one–or several. I've gotten fairly good at upscaling notebook-size roughs to highly-detailed, full-color, poster-sized wall-hangers (and I have no idea what's going to happen if I'm ever called upon to provide one to a publisher… probably have to down-scale it in black and white :p ). On the other hand, maps have always been a hobby of mine–atlases make up one of the larger categories of my widely-varied book collection, and there's a whole file of paper maps from National Geographic and elsewhere–so it's not particularly surprising that I want maps for my worlds.

I never use computer programs; none of them are easy and flexible enough that I can make, alter, rearrange and erase details as I decide needs to be done. And I never use a generator, because I refuse to have the action of my story dictated by something I had little or no control in developing. I do plan to get a decent CAD program some day, as I'm not very good at doing 3D perspective drawings (not to put too fine a point on it: I suck at this) and I want to be able to create visuals of my locales–so that I can correct their descriptions, when I find out what I said doesn't correspond with my vision of how it should actually look–but I imagine my terrain maps are always going to be done by hand. I use pencil (as you could probably guess from the foregoing), including colored pencil once I'm ready to move from outline to terrain types.
 
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Telcontar

Staff
Moderator
Love maps. Drawing them and looking at them - I enjoy it when a book has a couple maps in the front. I draw maps for my own writing as well, though they are rather poor and if I were ever to publish anything I suppose I'd find a better artist to redraft my own work.
 

Mdnight Rising

Minstrel
I have always drawn ym own maps for both my writing projects as well as my gaming projects.. i wouldnt have it any other way. It helps show where characters are going and where they have been without all the confusion of trying to figure out where is where
 
good good you will draw them!!!!! o.o two of them not one two -prances- I'll give yew details when you tell me you're bored enough to do them LOL
 
I used to draw maps when I was a child; not related to anything I'd written, I just went through a phase where I enjoyed putting the imaginary places in my head down on paper. These days I don't bother with them, and I certainly never look at them if they're included in a book I'm reading. I tend to find that if I do need to check them out it's because of failures in the prose.

(Not that I'm suggesting any author who uses them is a bad writer - merely that if the storytelling is strong enough maps are a luxury, not a necessity.)
 
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Ophiucha

Auror
Yes, I don't have a problem with you drawing maps, I merely wonder if they are as necessary as some tend to claim. I guess it is just because I never reference them. They are very pretty - I have the special collector's edition of The Lord of the Rings which comes with a beautiful version of the map - and I'm not going to say it isn't any fun to draw them, but I would be annoyed if I had to reference them to read the book. Just as I am annoyed if I have to reference anything while trying to read a book, such as a conlang index in the back of the book.

I don't know, I just... trust the author, I suppose. If he tells me they've walked east from Tortira to Fallan, and it took two days by horse, I trust that. I don't need to know where on a map the two are. I get the idea. Even mountains and whatnot. Okay, and there are mountains there. If an author just says (in prettier words and spread out thoroughly), we're heading from Tortira to Fallan, from Fallan to Rorshan (passing through a forest), and from Rorshan through the mountain pass to the palace of the Acada... what is the map for but a picture to break up the text? They are traveling in a line. A no doubt wobbly one, but still. Few to no stories (at least not single stories; series might at some point) have any back tracking elaborated upon in detail, so I just don't see the point.

Unless the problem is... not remembering town names, I guess? But still, that seems like a problem of the reader more than the author.
 
I use the maps I draw as tools during my writing. It helps me keep everything straight and cuts down on foolish continuity errors where I sent someone west instead of east. Since its been drawn anyway, I'd probably throw it in the book just because. The work has been done already, so why not throw it in? And because I like maps...
 

myrddin173

Maester
I have a map for my fantasy series that has major changes every time a draw it. It just has the political boundaries and outlines of where the forests and mountains are (can't draw either of them).
I always love when there's a map in a book, actually they don't even have to be in a book, I'm just a total cartophile.
 
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