1. Introduction
2. The Foundation of Believable Worlds
3. Crafting Realistic Societies and Cultures
4. Navigating Plot and Conflict
5. Tools and Techniques for Effective Map-making
   1. Free Map-Building Websites/Programs:
   2. Paid Map-Building Websites/Programs:
6. What To Keep in Mind with your Map-Making
7. Writing Exercise: The Cartographer’s Quest
8. Conclusion

Introduction

In the symphony of speculative fiction, maps and geography are the unsung conductors, orchestrating the dance of worlds. Through carefully drawn cartography, we chart not just landscapes, but the very heartbeat of our narratives. How does the art of mapping become the compass, guiding readers through the uncharted territories of imagination?

Understanding the terrain your character is crossing or will need to cross isn’t just great for reflecting your plot eases and struggles, but also gives the readers another layer of believably to hold on to. It will also help with your development of society and cultures withing your story. Overall, having a map is a powerful tool for those extra layers of depth and to answer some of your own questions you discover as you write your story.

Like we’ve talked about before, believability is a key factor in keeping your readers engaged with your story.

The Foundation of Believable Worlds

How can a drawn out depiction of your world add to your story’s believability? In the simplest way, it shows the reader that you took the time and effort to imagine your world beyond the words on the page. The map shows that you thought out the details of terrain, climate, and challenges your character will face as they traverse the landscape of your story. You show this by identifying key terrain markings, or cities, or borders that will bring challenges, adventures, and obstacles into a visualized location for the reader.

The more your reader can visualize the world they’re about to enter, the more they’re willing to accept. If you live in a fantasy world where one city exists in a valley of waterfalls, then showing some sort of depiction will help your readers vision come closer to your own. It also helps your reader formulate their own opinions on what challenges that might create. You can choose to select some of the most obvious options, or you could try to find a unique challenge that most readers might not consider. Either way, it creates the depths of the known and unknown by having a map available. But the known and unknown elements don’t have to be limited to your readers alone.

If you’re writing a story of a character journeying through the desert and never being able to tell how close they are to civilization, the readers can see that if they’d gone a little further in one direction they would have found safety.

Using detailed maps has enriched many renowned works throughout history. In literature, one notable example is J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” series, where intricate maps of Middle-earth not only provided geographical context but also enhanced the readers’ immersion in the fictional world.

Similarly, the “Harry Potter” series by J. K. Rowling featured maps of Hogwarts and its surroundings, allowing readers to follow the characters’ movements and gain a deeper understanding of the magical world. And don’t forget the Marauder’s Map, which became an iconic item for the series.

The “Wheel of Time” series by Robert Jordan is another example where detailed maps contributed significantly to the readers’ appreciation of the expansive world and the characters’ journeys across diverse landscapes. By visually representing the various regions and their unique features, the maps added depth and clarity to the narrative, enhancing the overall reading experience for fans of the series.

Crafting Realistic Societies and Cultures

One thing that many of us don’t consider in our own lives, but can easily see in others, is how geography drives cultural diversity and societal structures. Living in Northern Utah brings a lot of the outdoor culture to the forefront of most people’s minds. From hiking in the mountains in the spring, summer, and fall, to skiing/snowboarding in the winter builds cultural norms for those who live here. These activities also drive the economy, where cities are more population dense and other factors.

By mapping out your world and figuring out its geography, you’ll better understand where people live and why they live there. Are there more people in the coastal towns because it’s a port? Or are there fewer people because of the dangerous creatures that inhabit those beaches? While your civilization may have existed there for thousands of years, understanding why the main cities began where they did becomes critical in understanding the culture and societal structures.

The social structure in your book can also grow from the geography in simple ways. For example, your elite in the society could live the closest to a certain resource, be that fresh water, valuable minerals, or the source of magic. Those in control stay close to the material to “protect” it. Or there could be a negative attribute to the high value resource that they force the lower class to live by and mine/harvest/store the resource. Your world’s social structure could simply be based on what height of the mountainside they live on. These are all just general ideas, but a great way to begin looking at your social structure and how to form it based on geography, or vice versa.

Mapping doesn’t only influence the social structure and culture in your story, but also the storyline and character development. I can’t remember exactly where this rule came from, but it’s the rule that when things happen to a character, they should happen in threes. By mapping out the land and storyline as they journey across the map, you can knock one of those three out of the way by making natural areas of conflict in the character’s/story environment. For example, in Harry Potter and the Chamber of secrets Harry and Ron are blocked from getting on the Hogwarts Express, so they take the car that Ron barely knows how to use, and then they fly into the whomping willow tying together the struggle of the physical journey, the overall goal of the scene to arrive at Hogwarts with no one noticing they missed the Hogwarts Express, and Ron/Harry’s relationship with the Weasley parents are put into jeopardy. All that to say, when it rains, it pours. Try to layer on your conflicts into one scene to make more memorable key scenes. Your maps will be a great way to help with that.

Navigating Plot and Conflict

Navigating plot and conflict isn’t just something that remains in the words on the page. You can use the geographical features to create plot twists and conflicts. Understanding the landscape is key to any journey you take in real life or a fictional tale. You’re not going to willingly take a motorcycle through a snowy pass with a foot of snow still on the road. This may force your character back to the road they hadn’t wanted to take to make it to their aim in time. An outline of a plot is a nice linear thing that you can essentially overlay on your map, especially if you’re working on an adventure type story, and can help you keep the details straight on the page. We’ll go over tools and approaches you can use in the next section, but remember that laying out the plot against the map can help give you some natural obstacles to layer into your scenes.

Terrain, climate, and geopolitical boundaries all can influence the narrative by adding natural obstacles for your story and characters. Using these will vary dependent on your story and the maps you’ve built. Examples of how terrain, climate, and geopolitical boundaries influence the narrative.

Tools and Techniques for Effective Map-making

I want to start this section off with a clarification that you don’t need a super fancy mag generator to write your story. If you just need something to give your mind a path to work off, then you can start with a simple bubble and line map to lay the basics out. I used this in the first draft of my Epic Fantasy last year. This is not complete, but it was enough for me to orient myself to my map and know the general direction of my characters were moving. Now, as I get into further drafts, I’ll be trying some other software, or just drawing it out with additional details.

The program I’ve used for other maps, related to my book Extoria, and the image above I’ve used Affinity Designer. There’s definitely a learning curve, but YouTube has plenty of videos for this software. I pulled a lot of my map reading skills from the military to develop a lot of the markings. A lot of what you produce depends on the practice you put into the software.

But, you may not enjoy this type of project like I do, so what can you use?

There are an array of options ranging from free to paid browser based to downloading a program. Here are some that I’ve found, and they are only a few examples.

Free Map-Building Websites/Programs:

1. Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator (Free): This is an open-source web app that allows SFF writers to easily create detailed fantasy maps with customizable features such as biomes, cultures, and political regions.
2. Inkarnate (Free Basic Version): Inkarnate offers a user-friendly interface for creating fantasy maps. The basic version is free to use and provides a range of tools and assets for world-building.

Paid Map-Building Websites/Programs:

1. Wonderdraft (Paid): Wonderdraft is a popular map-making software designed for fantasy authors and world-builders. It offers a comprehensive set of tools and customizable elements to create intricate maps.
2. Campaign Cartographer (Paid): Campaign Cartographer is a professional mapping tool tailored for fantasy and science fiction writers. It provides extensive features for creating detailed, high-quality maps for novels and games.

Do you already use a map-making software? If so, what is your favorite?

What To Keep in Mind with your Map-Making

• Creating engaging and informative maps:
  • The reason certain maps are so memorable is that the readers can engage with them to follow the story on the page through the map at the front or back of the book. This helps add an extra layer of world-building that your readers can further immerse themselves.
• Consider your target audience:
  • Not all books will require a map, and not all audiences will want it at all. While I’ve referenced both sci-fi and fantasy throughout this post, maybe the readers for your genre of Sci-Fi won’t want a map. Look at books in your genre to see what other authors have done.
• Make it visually appealing:
  • This may sound like a straightforward decision, but making a map visually appealing can change it from a boring, never referenced map to an integral part of the story. In a map of a cyberpunk city you may get away with neon color highlights and black and white mapping, but that probably wouldn’t work with your Medieval Fantasy novel. But feel free to prove me wrong. The point is, by incorporating visually appealing elements, you’re more likely to make the map a key part of your reader’s journey.
• Include a map legend:
  • This is especially important if you’re going to create your own symbols to use on the map. If you noticed on the more detailed map above, I didn’t include a legend. There’s no way for you to know exactly what each symbol in the line map section means. Adding a legend also prevents reader confusion and ensures they’re interpreting the map of how it’s intended to be read.

In summary, to effectively communicate geographic information and captivate the audience, creating compelling maps requires a careful combination of design, functionality, and narrative alignment.

Writing Exercise: The Cartographer’s Quest

1. Begin by sketching out a basic map of the world/region/planet where your story takes place. Whatever basic means to you. Don’t get too detailed yet.
2. Identify 3-5 key locations that will feature prominently in your story’s plot and characters’ journeys. These could be cities, ruins, mystical sites, etc. Place them on your map, considering how the geography might have influenced their development.
3. For each location, write a few sentences that might address the cultural, political, or socioeconomic details of the society that arose there. How did the geography shape their way of life, traditions, power structures, conflicts, and more?
4. Now plan out your protagonist’s journey across the map, highlighting potential geographic obstacles or catalysts (impassable mountains, raging rivers, harsh deserts) that could drive the plot forward through conflict and challenges.
5. Pick one of the geographic features you’ve included and craft a scene where the terrain directly impacts your character(s) in a positive or negative way that advances the story. Use vivid sensory details to immerse readers.
6. Review your map and ensure you have included unique map icons/symbols and a legend to enrich the world-building and reading experience.
7. Finally, incorporate your new map knowledge by revising an existing scene or chapter, enhancing descriptions and character interactions with deeper geographic/cultural context derived from your mapping process.

The goal is to interconnect your storytelling with a tangible, mapped representation of the world to increase depth, believability and immersion for your readers. Happy world-building!

Conclusion

The art of map-making is an essential aspect of crafting immersive and believable worlds in speculative fiction. By meticulously designing maps that depict the landscapes, terrains, and geographic features of the fictional realms, authors can enhance the depth and richness of their narratives. These visual representations serve as powerful tools for storytelling, allowing readers to embark on a journey alongside the characters, navigating the intricate tapestry of cultures, societies, and conflicts interwoven within the geography. Maps have the profound ability to transport readers into the heart of imagined worlds, creating a deeper connection and appreciation for the finer details of your story.

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