Maps as a tool in fiction
When I began writing Dual Memory, I knew I wanted it to take place on an island in the north Atlantic Ocean. Then I had to figure out the particulars. Luckily, I discovered a real island that had some of the necessary characteristics: Grímsey, the northernmost inhabited location of Iceland.
It’s about the right size, on the Arctic Circle, and has lots of puffins. Unlike the island in my story, its population is only about 70 people, but I imagined it could hold 20,000 with enough apartment buildings. I got a map from an Iceland tourist site and from Google and used them to help me keep the details right: the docks were here, a park was there, and the hospital was in the middle.
The novel Immunity Index takes place in real places, and maps of those places, as well as visits, let me try to recreate a setting that felt “real.”
For the novel Semiosis, I made my own maps. Again, they helped keep me oriented. As characters moved around, if they looked in a certain direction, what would they see? If they went from point A to point B, what would they pass along the way? (Readers will notice if you’re inconsistent.)
These are just some of the things maps can do for an author. They don’t have to be good enough to include in the final publication. They can be incomplete, simply showing the relative locations of important things in the story.
If the characters are going to make a journey, the author might benefit from a map, but it might not be the same map that the characters use. If the story involves a treasure map, having an accurate map to refer to, however crudely drawn, will help the author guide the characters through the countryside — and allow the characters to complain about how misleading their map is. Only the author knows how cruelly lost they are.
Much like maps, another tool for the author can be the plan of a building, space ship, or other physical setting, such as the circles of hell, if the characters have the ill fortune to find themselves there.
The act of drawing a map can be a prompt for the author, discovering details and relationships that inspire new depth to the storytelling. What has to exist in that kind of location? What cool things might be there? Where is a character’s favorite place? Where are things that a character would avoid, and why? Is there a good spot for birdwatching, and what does that say about the local ecology?
