Novel Mondays: The Fantasy Map

A very basic rough draft of my new continent.

Along with doing lots of extra world building for my April NaNo Novel, I’ve also been designing  a map to go along with it.

One of my biggest pet peeves is opening a fantasy book and finding it lacking in the map department. Being a visual kind of person, maps help me situate myself in this new, unusual world, and without a map I feel lost in the story. In workshops in university, I would often get feedback from people saying they were confused about where they were in my fantasy land. There are only so many times you can say “south of X” and “west of Y” before realizing you need a map people can reference when they forget you already mentioned directions.

People favor different ways of making maps. Back in the day, I used to doodle in a notebook when I was supposed to be taking notes in science class. I then moved on to Microsoft Paint to color-code everything–really high-tech here, folks. A few years ago, I found AutoRealm, a program specifically designed to suit your map-making needs. It took me a bit of practice to really get it right, and I’m still discovering different things I can do–but for my purposes, it’s a great program. (Here’s a handy AutoRealm Tutorial if you’re interested in using it!)

Auto Realm lets you make a jagged coastline, places text for countries and major cities, and provides markers for various landmarks–forests, mountains, dunes, towns, cities, etc. It has a lot of features, and though the product might not turn out as pretty as something made in Photoshop, for those of us who are artistically challenged it can make maps look like masterpieces.

When designing my maps, I usually have an idea about how many countries there are as well as where they’re located in relation to each other. That said, shape of the map and countries tends to be random. I just let AutoRealm’s fractal polyline go wherever it wants. Then I divide the shape into countries, usually using natural barriers like mountains, rivers, deserts, forests, and the like. Natural barriers have always made more sense to me, but there’s an option to draw a line down the middle of a field, too.

I almost always focus on the “big” map with different countries first. Then I head into the “little” maps–one each of the main countries involved in the story, or, in this case, a city map (which I haven’t started yet!).

Maps can be handy, too, for writers trying to make some details more realistic. For instance, your main character is going on a journey to a town on the other side of the country. Once you figure out how far away that is, you can find out how long it will take him by foot, horse, airplane, magic carpet, and phoenix if you’d like. Most readers probably won’t notice tiny details like this, but getting them right certainly gives me peace of mind.

What do you think about maps–a must-have, useful, or unnecessary? What do you use to create your maps? Have any maps you’d like to share? I’d love to see them!