To map, or not to map?

[Lorn Ashby]

Have any of you reached a point where you just absolutely felt you needed a map to ground your writing?

I recently took 3-4 days off from actually writing to generate and then customize an Azgaar's map.
The action in my story takes place in a few far-flung locations, and geography is a key driving force in the world.

I had held off on doing this, knowing that - to some extent - creating a map locks you into staying within its confines. But I'd hit the point where I was no longer sure how far apart locations were, how long travel would take, whether the sun rose behind or to the side of certain mountains, or where a river originated.

Azgaar's is a great tool, I think. I spent quite a bit of time setting up the weather and biomes, and I've just added the handful of locaitons/markers I needed to reorient myself. Not planning to constrain myself by filling in all the empty spaces on the map.

 

[CupofJoe]

I am old-school and I think visually so I have dozen and dozens of pencil and paper maps for what I write.
Using them I find it far better/easier to tweak. If I use soft pencils I can just use an eraser to wipe out a town, redirect a river or move a forest.
For me A3 is about the right size and if I need more, i can always tape another sheet where it is needed.

 

[Rudolphthered]

I think it's effective to have a visual representation of your world, even if you will change it later. Some of my maps were made with Inkarnate, now I switched to digital drawing. Ctrl+Z helps a lot when making a mistake, and brushes facilitate you plenty of textures if you want to make it more stylized.

Maps are also easy to make even for someone who isn't used to draw, if you only care about superficial details that is. Delving into air currents, tectonic plates and erosion will prove harder and more demanding, naturally.

 

[pmmg]

Its one of the first things people will look for and see about your story. And many may notice if its not there. So...yeah, I think its important to have one.

I've had a map for quite a while thought. Originally hand drawn, then computer drawn, then computer drawn again. Maybe I will do it again before its all done.

 

[MSadiq]

It helps to visualize the relative size and location of your different geographies and locations, but it doesn't have to be detailed, really. The "map" that I made for my own use is a bunch of labeled triangles with different line shapes and thicknesses to mark the biomes, placed and sized relative to one another

 

[Mad Swede]

I have a sketch map of the setting for my stories, and also sketch maps of some of the towns and places where things happen. This is because I need these to keep things consistent within the stories (distances, relative positions, travel times, etc) and to ensure that the setting is reasonably believable (geography, climate, trade routes etc). But the maps don't appear in any of the books, I leave it to the readers to form their own map in their own minds.

 

[Lorn Ashby]

I am old-school and I think visually so I have dozen and dozens of pencil and paper maps for what I write.
Using them I find it far better/easier to tweak. If I use soft pencils I can just use an eraser to wipe out a town, redirect a river or move a forest.
For me A3 is about the right size and if I need more, i can always tape another sheet where it is needed.

I've done quite a few hand-drawn maps and found they just take me a lot of time, and I end up focusing on that fun exercise rather than writing...

 

[Lorn Ashby]

I have a sketch map of the setting for my stories, and also sketch maps of some of the towns and places where things happen. This is because I need these to keep things consistent within the stories (distances, relative positions, travel times, etc) and to ensure that the setting is reasonably believable (geography, climate, trade routes etc). But the maps don't appear in any of the books, I leave it to the readers to form their own map in their own minds.

Yes, that's my primary motivation as well. Otherwise, I know I'm guessing and introducing inconsistencies.

 

[TimothyDovekeeper]

For what it is worth, I drew a map before starting, and the map paced my story.

 

[Super Fantasy]

Draw a "rough map" real quick, this can help you plot the adventures of your characters, where they live/meet each other

 

[Prince of Spires]

For me, for any story where there's a lot of travel involved, I need a map. It helps to keep track of how far it is from point A to B, and where both are in relation to C. It prevents messing up give the same river two names or two rivers the same names, etc.

If you're mainly in a single location, it matters less I guess.

And of course, maps are awesome. Which in itself is already a great reason to have one

 

[DesinKalaScribe]

My map was super helpful for me as I considered travel and timeline. It forced me to reshuffle my characters a bit so that they're not stuck traveling for months on end to get from one place to another. Plus, the map gave me an opportunity to dig deeper into some of the historical and cultural differences that are now driving some of the plot.

 

[Gurkhal]

Since geography has yet to become important in my stories I have not done any maps. I find that mapping for its own sake just diverts me from the writing and researching to write and so is a distraction.

I'm sure it can be a fun distraction but it kind has the feel of the World Building Swamp in which you can get stuck.

 

[pmmg]

One thing I will add about maps...

Which is in a 5x8 book, they can be rather small... And if you make your map with a lot of detail, it may be hard to get it to show up in a useful way. One things I did in my map was to include some places that did not appear in the book, such as few dots with village names. Well...they have drawn more comments than I would have expected. Some say the names are hard to read cause the font is small, and others have wanted to know more about them.

I was kind of like, they dont affect the story, so who cares? Well, people do.

I just included them to show the world was a little bigger than just to local region, but not in a way that was supposed to matter to the reader. Getting those fonts to be readable and not take up a lot of real-estate on the map, is not an easy feat. Another option is to just remove them, but then the world does not look 'real', it must certainly contain more than just the few places mentioned in the story.

What can you do? Maybe I will get someone to do it by hand, and that might help end the pixilzation on smaller objects.

 

[pmmg]

Since geography has yet to become important in my stories I have not done any maps. I find that mapping for its own sake just diverts me from the writing and researching to write and so is a distraction.

I'm sure it can be a fun distraction but it kind has the feel of the World Building Swamp in which you can get stuck.

A map for Gurkhal.

Howard actually had no map for Conan, he only made comments about what it was like. Once he said he drew a crude drawing, but lost it somewhere. The map that ended up being the big map for his tales was made by fans who pieced it together from his writings. I think there is something to be said about freeing one mind of stuff that does not matter.

In one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, there is a bit where Sherlock is asserting that the sun moves around the Earth, and Watson is aghast that someone with Holmes's intelligence could believe such a thing. The science had been clear for years that the Earth went around the sun. Watson went about proving his case, to which Sherlock said, thanks but I will promptly forget this tomorrow.

When Watson asked him why he would do such a thing, Sherlock answered, because it makes absolutely no difference to anything that matters, and I will not waste my memory trying to hold it.

There is some wisdom to that.

 

[Lorn Ashby]

Gurkhal I think that's exactly the balance (or the question): is the map for the author or the reader?

At this point, the map is for me. So I can track the story. I simply can't hold it in my head.
Yes, it does "lock" things in...but of course, until something gets published, it can always be changed.

I think others may do this differently, but I add things to the map as they get written. So I am not spending time adding countries and towns and roads first and then trying to make the story fit.

This is actually one of the things I like about Azgaar's: if you turn off all the auto-generation of places, cultures, etc., you just get geography. Geography, you can modify and tweak to your heart's content. But, unlike a hand-drawn map, if you move a mountain range, you can have Azgaar's adjust all the water features, biomes, elevations, etc. in an instant. And if you want to put a town somewhere, you can just drag it to a different location later.

I had found that when I drew maps by hand (which I love doing), you really do get locked into what you drew, and I was tempted to fill in the whole map up front.