The Map, Part Two: An Apology to Artists

I've finished populating the map for my world. Finally. I had to read through the second novel to pick up any stray place names. I always hate it when you read book one of a series that has a large map, and some places are blank, but in later books, the author has put something there. It makes me feel like the world is randomly rewriting itself.

Granted, that's exactly what the author is doing. "Oh, let's have the hero gallivant off to Northern Shake-and-bake for this latest adventure. I'll have to make up the whole culture that lives there, but I can do that."

As a reader, I dislike when there wasn't at least a modicum of effort put forth to name everything on the map ahead of time. Certainly, I don't expect a full three page description of the land, its inhabitants, their culture and ways of making a living, and how dangerous it is to those on the western edge by the Swamps of Haze and Fog. But a place name on the map would really be nice. A casual reference like "I'm not an uncultured Carthan, Lord Faahr. I know how to use a knife and fork. Now pass that glazed pumpkin, or you'll see how I use them to impale your arm," would be fine.

Mmm, glazed pumpkin. Now I'm hungry.

Maybe a small, stylized pumpkin next to the dot that reads Cartha would be nice, too. They could probably use some, so they can practice with their knives and forks.

I do like map illustrations. The map for The Wicked Heroine will have a few sea monsters on it, since ocean hogs the spotlight in its design.

One of the things I found myself staring at in the map for Jim Butcher's final (?) Codex Alera book, First Lord's Fury, was the pair of lines that traced every shoreline. It gave a fine, finished touch to the whole map. I doubt I'll get something as nice on my map, but since I do have a brazillian miles of coastline, it would definitely help!

You know, fitting landscape-oriented maps into books isn't a pretty job. The pages support portrait maps only. Either you have to crank your head every time you refer to a single-page map, or you get the map spread over two pages (which is much easier to read). But then you have to deal with either a large gap between halves of the map along the spine, or you're practically tearing out the pages to see what necessary detail has gotten wedged in that dark little crevice of folded space.

Is there any two-page map that's balanced between these extremes? I might read a new book just for that.

On framing: surely a map is always better with a frame, right? Not necessarily. For fantasy, you want a frame that displays the map with a medieval quality, or no frame at all. If you get a frame around your map that shows up like a photo-corner tabs from the nineteen-thirties, you'll probably raise a few eyebrows.

If they even notice them. I admit, I rarely looked at the how of a map before trying to draw my own. I suppose it comes down to whether anything stood out as negative. If nothing catches the reader's eye in a bad way, then you're probably fine.

I suppose those people blessed with the gift of drawing, sketching, painting, etc (which I am most decidedly not) would notice these maps more than I have. So it is to you gifted ones that I must offer this advance apology for the surely-amateur work my map will appear as, despite the best efforts of my publishers.

If you find yourself overly sensitive to crap maps, then please skip over that page when you begin reading my book. If the compulsion to look becomes overwhelming once you've started reading the first few chapters, then I trust you'll be able to handle your own disappointment. But keep in mind that I wrote The Legend of the Shanallar duology without a map a'tall. So I expect you can read it without one as well.

Unless you're terrible with directions, like my sweet grandmother, who always gets confused outside her small home town as to which way is north. Then you might just have to Suck It Up, and use the thing anyway.

Of Maps, and Magic Lost and Found

One learns a lot when one does something for the first time. How often I forget that! I feel like I'm always struggling to find a balance between learning something new, and avoiding the fear of messing something up.

Well, I messed up the map for my world several times, so I called them drafts and moved on to the next sheet of paper. Good thing I'm not a god of worldbuilding. The numerous times I shifted whole continents around would have killed everyone off with volcanoes and tidal waves, and their food crops would have died off and made everyone starve come winter. If they had winter anymore. The poor Kazhbor people went from a UK environment to that of Scandinavia. Sorry guys. Uh, no wonder you're so good at building those Sea Gods. You're all desperate to get to the tropics for a nice warm vacation. Yeah, that's it.

Honestly, what I actually learned during crafting this map is that I should have done a better job on the rough map I used when I wrote the story. I had no sense of distance on the map, only in the story. And putting a map together based on a story written with only a vague sense of distance, well...let's just say that a newfound benefit of writing fantasy is that revisionist history is always an option.

Does anyone else notice that going through a brazillian (brazillian: a number somewhere between a bazillion and South America) edits on the same story really kills the magic that books held when you were a kid? Seeing the messy side of a story is far different than simply picking up a polished, published product and enjoying the fruits of months of labor by numerous individuals.

And yet, to me it reveals another magic: that of creation. That writers can craft and polish common, familiar words into complex forms that convey the full spectrum of ideas and emotions, and reveal to readers a crisp, clarified universe that doesn't really exist--surely, if anything is magic, that is.

Ah, look, I got all rambly. That happens now and again. When I'm old and gray, I expect to be even more prone to such maunderings. If I am not, I shall consider myself cheated.

Well, the master copy of the map I finished last night has been sent to the publisher. Way more fun than I thought it would be. I used to stare at puddles as a child, and imagine they were borders to continents. I'd often doodle maps for fun and try to figure out where the mountains and rivers went. That endeavor--the rivers and mountains--was generally a failure until I learned more about geography. Maps of imaginary lands and stick men are about all I can draw. Oh, and stylized suns shining on stylized flowers that grow on stylized hills next to a stylized tree. Seriously. My drawing skills topped out in second grade.

It really helped this week that I had a few books with maps to examine (funny how I never really looked at their construction before I needed to draw my own). Most of our books are packed, alas, but a few with maps were close to hand. Some I looked at, aside from an example my editor furnished me with, were in Marie Brennan's Warrior, Jim Butcher's First Lord's Fury, and the lovely old map in C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew. Mostly, I was looking at how they drew their mountains and hills. I have terrible mountain-drawing skills. Making upside-down Vs is much harder than you think! Or, no, that's probably just me. In the end, I fell back on my stylization skills and didn't even try to make them anything approaching realistic. Realism and fantasy, they are oil and water in the beaker of my mind.

All right, my throat's getting pretty sore again: back for some more salt-water gargling I go. And no, I wasn't actually talking out loud while I typed. Hee.