Maps!

[Ophiucha]

I do like a nice pretty map. I have six or seven books of really old maps. Mostly from Northern Europe, since that is the area that interests me the most.

 

[Mdnight Falling]

I like the maps cause I like to really get into a story.. I'm the one that wants to see where everything is. Where they main party goes on their travels, roughly how far it would be, what kind of terrain they passed through. Even if the book tells me all this... I still like referencing the map LOL

 

[Ophiucha]

I've just yet to read a book where the travels were so complex that I couldn't follow it without a picture. Maybe I've just yet to read a story with much zigzagging. Still like drawing them, though, even if they never relate to my stories. Indeed, I tend to prefer to draw real countries instead of fakes ones. I'm stuck drawing one up for my tumblr, though. Did a poll, and my most requested post would be for a "When To Use A Map, and How To Use It If You Do" in the words of one follower. Doing a hand drawn one and a computer one of the same place, and am being lazy and just using my own world since it's already planned out. Anyway, I don't feel like going any further with this one, since I don't have to, so I might as well show y'all how dreadful I am in photoshop.

 

[Mdnight Falling]

Oh I can always follow the story.. I just like the maps LOL I dunno I'm weird I guess I like looking at them when the party gets to a new place it helps me picture it even better

 

[Ophiucha]

Trying to think of maps I liked, and I just remembered a map of Europe from Scott Westerfeld's "Leviathan". http://www.digipendence.com/images/leviathan_map.jpg

 

[JGSTYLE]

I love maps. At some point in every book I read I might flip back to the front and check the map.

Guy Gavriel Kay's Sailing to Sarantium: "Hey, there's (the country of) Esperaňa! Whoa, that's far away..."

George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire: "Hmmm. Looks to me like Valyria is STILL THERE on the map."

Strangely enough, as I recall, Guy Gavriel Kay's The Last Light of the Sun did not have a map. It mildly annoyed me and other fans because the story itself did not do a great job on describing where exactly the action was taking place. It was the same world as Sailing to Sarantium, but where..? A rare miss for GGK.

I also love drawing maps. I'll always initially draw it out on paper until I get it nailed down, then scan that in and add demarcation and type. Depending on how big it needs to be I might vectorize it in Adobe Illustrator.

It's a lot of fun for me and really helps me work out the story.

 

[Amorus]

I enjoy having maps. I also enjoy looking at how the landscape has changed over the years in my story. It also helps me world build and serves as inspiration when needed. I guess I'm visual in that sense.

 

[Digital_Fey]

I respect those who can draw detailed, attractive maps, but it's something I gave up on ages ago. As a reader, I don't usually refer to maps in detail. I feel like the author should be able to explain things carefully and succinctly enough for me to visualize the characters' journey without having to flip back and forth from map to story every five minutes. On the other hand, I think maps can be useful to give an overview of the story's setting, and if you're planning complex military maneuvers then they're obviously essential.

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,)

You have no idea how often I've wanted to do that. I, however, have restrained myself, just in case it was the Nazgul who would turn up to do the ruler smacking

 

[Ophiucha]

Yeah, my motto on whether or not to include a map is basically "do they travel back and forth a lot?" and "are we following more than one group of people?" Otherwise, I think we can all accept "they traveled five days east, through the mountains of Midgard" and be able to visualize that. It takes up maybe five extra words than what you'd have said with a reference at hand, but keeps us from having to stop the book to look at a picture. Of course, if you need a map to write the story in the first place, go forth. I like having the reference. I just wouldn't bother putting it in my book.

 

[Fnord]

As a tabletop RPG vet, I've sometimes put more time into drawing maps than actually fleshing out the world that I'm drawing.

 

[Zahantian]

I can't help but love a good map. While I'm not so much into the over-detailed map that shows each individual footprint of the character's journey (I'd like to think I'm clever enough to work out where the character without the author needing to hold my hand) but I think a nicely laid-out map can really enhance a book.

I also think maps are an invaluable tool for the writer, it was the very first thing I did when I started thinking about my current story. It can be a great way to generate ideas and it certainly worked for me, but I also know people who have started planning and then conjured a map to match it. Helpful world-building devices and very fun to draw. All-in-all maps get a thumbs up from me.

 

[The Realm Wanderer]

I'm currently writing a novel called 'The Realm Wanderer', hence my user name and created a quick map for the world in which it takes place (Esilas) with PhotoShop. It was never meant to be seen by anyone else, just a reference for myself whilst writing, but if I ever find out how to show images on here, I'd be happy to share it.

 

[AvengerofOsiris]

Hi, everyone. I'm new here, but I wanted to comment on this topic. I personally think maps are pretty essential in a fantasy story. I'm actually into Fantasy and Sci-Fi, and if you want to keep a story consistent, a map helps a lot. Consider Star Trek (I realize its sci-fi, but bear with me). In one episode the Klingon Homeworld is 3 days at warp 3 or something from Earth, in another story its a week at a faster warp speed. In another story, the nearest friendly ship to the enterprise is 2 weeks away even though they are still in Federation space (what a planet inside the Federation is 2 WEEKS at max warp, but the heart of the Klingon Empire is 3 DAYS??? Then in Enterprise (the "new" show, which is set in the past), the Klingon Homeworld is even CLOSER. And they've contacted Klingons before races that would end up INSIDE THE FEDERATION. Now, Star Trek is obviously enormously popular despite these contradictions, but it bothers some people who are really annal like myself. If they had some rough "map" of the space these empires are in this could be avoided, even with multiple writers.

 

[Ophiucha]

I think Star Trek is exactly the sort of series that would simply be hindered by a map, for the reasons just stated. It doesn't care about internal consistency; it's a long, long running series and it has to change things in order to make each episode its best. For each individual episode, there is internal consistency. Maybe someone working on the Star Trek movie made a map to make sure they were consistent within that. But the show went on for how long? Several different series, each with several seasons. It isn't a show that wants to be 'hard' realistic, it is a show where each episode does what it wants to do. And if that means that, for the sake of the narrative, it is going to take a week to reach the Klingon home world instead of three days, so that there can be some sort of character arc or another external conflict, then so be it. Four more days, better story, sounds good.

And, let's be honest, even if it doesn't benefit the story of that episode, it just isn't the sort of show that cares. It isn't hard science fiction, it isn't trying to be a consistent world. They are tossing in new planets every few episodes that they clearly didn't know about when they started the show. The show lasted for ages, and they couldn't keep everything the same. I can't think of ANY TV series that lasts more than three seasons that does this, SFF or otherwise. Even ones with a full story arc, one that was clearly plotted out ahead of time, there are still a few oddities if you go rewatch the series after knowing how it ends.

Regardless, even if the people who made Star Trek decided to make a map for their own sake, they don't have to let us see it.

 

[AvengerofOsiris]

I agree with all your points, but I was only using Star Trek as an example because I don't know of any Fantasy examples where there have been such blatant contradictions in distances and locations. That could possibly be because I haven't read that many fantasy series, or because I haven't noticed the contradictions, or possibly becauseMOST of the series I've read do have maps, and most of them have been quite detailed at that, although I admit I've only read the most popular fantasy series (LoTR, Song of Fire Ice, the first book by Paolini (didn't like it enough to continue), Harry Potter, and some D+D inspired novels, etc.), being more of a sci-fi oriented fan myself.

 

[Ophiucha]

For the sake of an example, I guess there is Discworld, which only got maps after several books had been written. Indeed, Pratchett (the author) had said that he didn't want a map for a long time because he didn't really envision the world as a whole, he built it as he wrote. Not to mention the fact that he had no real problem retconning things. Eventually, an artist (somewhat obsessively, perhaps) mapped out the world based on everything he said, leaving some room for error, and that sort of became the 'official' map, which Pratchett is fond of. Terry Goodkind, similarly, had not wanted a map and didn't have one when he wrote the book; his publisher made him draw one up. Piers Anthony just uses a map of Florida.

A few popular authors I know of who don't have maps in most or any of their works are Scott Lynch (not in his books, anyway), Mervyn Peake, and M. John Harrison. And there are several authors who - like Goodkind - really only seem to have gotten maps because their publishers pressured them into doing it. It is expected, but as with many things, I am hesitant to include or do something merely because it is commonplace.

 

[Hans]

I started my main world without a map. But after I created one I found it a very useful tool. The map itself was simply created with The Gimp. This Gimp file has accumulated many layers over time. Some political layers, a layer for language families, a climate layer, some layers for the habitat of different creatures and so on.

For fun I once sliced my map for the Marble program, but had not the time to go very deep in it. I stopped after writing the geographical positions of the most important cities into my dataset.

 

[Chilari]

Hmm, using computer programs like Gimp to in layers with different meanings sounds like a great idea. I'd never thought of that before, but in my mind I have a rough idea of which religions are where, which languages are where, how large the region occupied by city states is and what types of settlements and nations exist outside it, and whatnot; visualising it would be useful.

Not that I've got a complete drawn map of anything anyway; I know roughly what direction one city is from another, which way the river flows, and the distances from the main city, Tretham, to other locations (based on real-world distances; thus Hurreton is 654 miles form Tretham, the same distance, according to Google, as between the Palatine hill in Rome and the Acropolis in Athens - I figured I'm already drawing the parallels, so why not add that one in for sharp-eyed readers. Another location is 55 miles from Tretham, which is equal to the distance between where I live now and where I grew up, which is also where my parents continue to live).

 

[Woodroam]

My maps are just rough sketches. Maybe someday I'll commision an artist to make something more professional.