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.

Who Writes this Stuff, Anyway? Oh...Right...That Would Be Me.

Well, Christmas and the New Year are both over with, and it's a very ordinary January 2. My editor, Gerry, and I have both been very busy over the holiday. He, editing the vast majority of my novel while on a rural farm in Australia, and me, getting a pic taken for the back of the book, writing a synopsis and an author bio.

I think Gerry may have had the easier task, of the two of us. Okay, perhaps not. But having to kneel Japanese-style on a pillow tucked in back of my knees until my lower legs went entirely numb wasn't something I'd anticipated during the photo session, but we needed the extra height. (Read: I'm short. The better to be underestimated in a fight, my dear.)

We kept adding and swapping props, and adjusting the position of the katana so that it wasn't hogging the attention. Glittery blade much? You'd think this was an anime the way it tried to jump in there and gleam. I was suddenly very glad that its guard was generally octagonal in shape; we finally found an angle where it didn't blind the camera with the flash reflection, but you can still see that it's there, way down in front, if you're looking.

I suppose you'll all go look for the sword now. Go ahead; I'll wait. Bio Page  It's also permanently located in the Links of Interest on the right side of the screen.

Also, writing a synopsis of the book (as well as one of my relevant life) is just as hard as composing a short story. It took over an hour for each of those to get the way they are. As with short fiction, you have to add only the relevant details, and leave out most anything that isn't pertinent, interesting as it may be.

In the case of the synopsis, this is much longer than the book-back blurb, of course. It's over 400 words, which wouldn't fit on the back of a book at all. However, I considered that those who went to the IFWG Publishing site should get a little more information about the story than those that just see the book.

I also had to keep it mysterious, which is something that apparently comes naturally to me. I have a hard time coming out and saying what's happening in a story, just giving away all the details, even at the points where exposition is practically required. You'll see what I mean when you read The Wicked Heroine, though there's a massive scene of this kind in the first few chapters of its sequel, Oathen, as well.

I guess I like putting my readers in the same boat with at least a couple of my characters. Not only is there more fun in learning the full story slowly, over time, but there's a chance for more identification with those characters who are just as in the dark as you are. *smirk*

As I said, Gerry has given me the first-round complete edit job. I'm wading through it now. It's so exciting to have a professional opinion on my writing, catching things I am blind to. I look at the text now, down at the nuts-and-bolts level of comma placement and word choice, and it just sparkles. The before-and-after pictures, showing how much smoother it reads now, are so exciting. I swear, this'll make a real book yet!

It doesn't hurt that Gerry really enjoyed reading the book, either. When I can capture and impress a fellow fantasy writer, on both a content and writing-skill level, that makes me feel awesome. If you enjoy fantasy, adventure, and epic good vs. evil, with a solid grasp of worldbuilding and the natural and geologic features that support it, all written to a YA/adult crossover audience, I think you'll enjoy my book as well.

When it's ready for purchase, I'll set up a link to it here on my blog.

Serious Writer is Serious, Part 1: Snatch the Pebble, Grasshopper

I'm just getting started in this whole "serious writer" vein. I'd call it about a year and a half now, in which I have thought of myself as aspiring to be serious about this hobby I have.

So I'll try to keep my topics somewhat relevant to beginning. Sometimes. I do have that sort of mind that makes associations far afield, and sometimes I forget what topic I started with.

Now, where were we? Oh wait, we're not there yet.

I've been thinking about the editing process lately, since my book The Wicked Heroine is in to my editor. "My" editor. Wow. Even saying that makes me think I should feel far more legitimate than I do. But I have to say I've learned a lot about the nuts and bolts of good creative writing over the last year and a half, and I have to say I do feel just a little bit legitimate now, compared to the fluffy writing style I used to have.

Oh, it was horrible. I had compound-complex sentences everywhere, even in places where you'd normally see short, straight ones, like in battle scenes. But no, my stories were full of phrases, semicolons, and subordinate clauses. They bristled with commas. Grammatically correct, every one, but darn hard to read.

My favorite word was "and". And then Aerynn swung... And so it was. And that's what happened. "And then" really bugs me now. Surely you only need one of those, unless you're really waxing poetic, or working in a dramatic moment. "And then the ceiling fell in, revealing seventeen ninjas tumbling down amongst the dusty bricks and burnt-umber roof tiles." That, as its own paragraph, sounds moderately acceptable, aside from the cheesiness of seventeen ninjas (an old what-if holdout from jujitsu class).

It took some time for the concept of differing sentence length to become a tool I felt capable of remembering long enough to use. It was easy to edit my long sentences into short ones; I'd already written them, after all. But writing them short in the first place, that took another level of awareness in my head, which I'd not previously owned. I think I've got the tool now, or at least the awareness. I'm sitting here analyzing my sentence length in this blog, checking if I've shot myself in the foot. It's way better than it used to be, and a good representation of how I write now.

Getting those short, direct sentences in is important, because I write fight scenes. I like fight scenes. The experience of reading about the fight is enhanced, you see, by making the sentence structure match the action. Blurring, direct blows. Sudden reversals. An unlucky fall turned into a desperate roll to safety. You see what I mean, there.

I'm still making the transition in my mind from reader to writer (and there's a whole other topic right there), so I admit, I haven't fully analyzed the way others write their fight scenes. I have certainly enjoyed them, though. I do feel a bit slow on the uptake with the "art imitates fictional life" concept, but now that I get that, all sorts of possibilities open up.

Other nuts and bolts I'm enjoying using, aside from sentence structure, include metaphor, simile, alliteration and assonance. That's [AZ-uh-nence], not ass of Nance.

Hrmm.

There once was a sweet ass o' Nance,
It sat quite secure in her pants,
'Til she slipped on the ice,
Split a seam once or twice,
Fell and broke all that sweet assonance.

Yes, I'm afraid you're right; I am prone to the Imp of the Limerick. It's a blessing...and a curse, as Detective Adrian Monk used to say.

Until next time, all.