Maps and Books

Since I’ll be picking up my first ever car this afternoon, I thought I make one more blog entry concerning books, before a flurry ? of car stuff

Maps! I love maps.

Many authors make maps for their books and I am one of them. Especially for second world fantasies those maps can be very helpful. Since I cannot draw for the life of me, I’m making maps with Power Point. Using blue lines for rivers, brown triangles for mountains and the like. It actually works quite okay and takes me only a couple of minutes to make a map. I think maps are very important for second world fantasies to realize yourself as the author where is what and also how long it takes people to get there given their means of transport.

Depending on the nature of a science fiction story also here maps are helpful. Just as an example I am attaching two maps I have made for Dome Child. One of the entire area, to get the big picture, one of the city core of Shangbei, where most of the action is happening. It helps greatly during the writing process to know where is what in relation to each other. Thanks to maps you can avoid logistical and logical mishaps.

For some stories this of course is not necessary, meaning you can look at a real map as in case of my Hagen Patterson trilogy which plays itself out in the New England states. Another story I have not made a map for is a space opera (currently in the submission circus, fingers crossed). I tried to make a map but since it involves jumping from planet to planet via space bending an attempt at a map was rather futile.

I would have liked a 3D map, but that exceeds my computing capabilities

For all second world fantasies or science fiction that I have in my drawer, I’ve made maps. There is a high fantasy trilogy in the making which will (at least it’s first part) hopefully see the light of day via Dark Quest some time in the future, for which I have made detailed maps and I’m actually planning to ask the publisher to print an artist’s rendering of those maps in the actual books.

For Dome Child the maps were only for me and the movements of the characters through the world are not so complicated that they would have required a map in the book.

Also when reading I love books that have maps so that you can quickly check where is what and where people are going.

So, I’m a big fan of maps and highly recommend them for the writing process as well. If you write novels and haven’t made a map yet, give it a try. It’ll teach you something about your own world and will be helpful as a guide.