
How Writers Map Their Imaginary Worlds - crunchiebones
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/writers-maps
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wtracy
Okay, here's my excuse to vent a personal pet peeves. :-)

If you're going to publish a map of your imaginary land, map out the
watersheds and make sure they make sense. You don't have to include those
details in the final map, but they should inform the final map.

Real rivers _go_ somewhere. They don't just stop in the middle of nowhere.

~~~
KineticLensman
And mountains. With right angles, like those in Middle Earth [0]. Although to
be fair to Tolkien, Ilúvatar probably wasn't bothered about credible plate
tectonics.

Actually, ignoring the issue of whether Middle Earth was geologically
feasible, Tolkien went to great lengths to make sure that the story was
consistent with the geography, e.g. in terms of making sure character times
and locations were synchronised across the many plot strands. The LOTR map was
specifically created to help him keep track of it.

[0] [https://www.tor.com/2017/08/01/tolkiens-map-and-the-
messed-u...](https://www.tor.com/2017/08/01/tolkiens-map-and-the-messed-up-
mountains-of-middle-earth/)

~~~
empath75
Plate tectonics wasn't a generally accepted theory until well after Tolkien
made those maps, anyway.

~~~
KineticLensman
Indeed. Actually the cosmology of Middle Earth (which is the first part of
'The Silmarillion' and barely mentioned in TLOTR) does require, to put it
charitably, a certain suspension of disbelief. I'm paraphrasing somewhat...
(spoilers)

The creator, Eru / Ilúvatar creates a great theme and the Ainur (spirits) are
then invited to create a music from it. The evil Morgoth (Sauron's boss) sows
discord by breaking Eru's harmony. Eru then stops the music and the various
spirits manifest in the world (Arda) created from it. The world is initially
illuminated by stars and then the light from two great trees. Which Morgoth
destroys, although their light bearing fruit are used to create the Sun and
the Moon. The Valar (the most powerful good Ainur) create the westerly island
Valinor, which (after a lot of misery which forms the main subject of the
Silmarillion) Ilúvatar eventually makes inaccessible by sending a great wave,
changing the shape of all the lands of Middle-earth.

Hence my comment that plate tectonics (or whatever geological processes were
understood in the early 20th C) wasn't an overarching concern for Tolkien. But
once he'd made this world, he made sure that the LOTR characters would see the
same phase of the moon at their respective parts of the story.

------
bryanrasmussen
in the Languages of the Night, a collection of Ursula K. LeGuin's essays on
writing, there is a section(IIRC I read it more than 20 years ago) where a
famous fantasy magazine editor had asked her to go into how she mapped out her
world and created all the documentation beforehand so she could refer to it
when needed, her process as it were, and she replied something to the effect
of this is not how I do it.

The description of how she did it was that when it became time to have that
information, she looked it up in her mind and it came to her, what we might
describe as making it up as she went along but which was more like querying
her unconscious knowledge of the places and people she was describing.

~~~
dsimms
For the Wizard of Earthsea books, there's an afterword (at least in the later
editions I have around the house) where she says she just sketched out the map
first even before any characters, and filled it in with the stories as she
went.

(How many more stories would she have written in that world? I wonder)

Also: collection to her maps

[http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Maps/Index.html](http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Maps/Index.html)

as well.

~~~
BerislavLopac
> How many more stories would she have written in that world? I wonder

Earthsea is one of the most underrated settings for roleplaying games...

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shakna
> Philip Pullman (author of the His Dark Materials books): “Writing is a
> matter of sullen toil. Drawing is pure joy. Drawing a map to go with a story
> is messing around, with the added fun of coloring in.”

It's the other way for me - in writing I can invent nonsense, and call it
reality, and that's just how it is.

However, the moment I start to create a map, I need to either consider the
environmental factors of mountain and river placement on local geology, or
invent an entire weather system that explains why it's acceptable for the
forest to live where it does, because it'd be a desert in our world.

------
jinushaun
> One of life’s great treats, for a lover of books (especially fantasy books),
> is to open a cover to find a map secreted inside and filled with the details
> of a land about to be discovered

Quite honestly the reason I read fantasy at all.

------
Jaruzel
There is an active fantasy map drawing community over on Reddit in
/r/Worldbuilding, Maps range from truly amazing... to quite awful.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/search?q=flair_name%3...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/search?q=flair_name%3A%22Map%22&restrict_sr=1)

~~~
Kihashi
I was active on The Cartographer's Guild[1] forum for quite some time as well.
They had a huge amount of tutorial content for those looking to get started.

[1]:
[https://www.cartographersguild.com/](https://www.cartographersguild.com/)

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ilamont
Many (but not all) fiction authors are known for creating elaborate files of
characters, plotlines, scenes, and of course, maps of the world or town or
place where the story takes place. But if you have thousands or even millions
of people reading your work, someone will find the inconsistencies in the
carefully crafted milieus. I think it was fantasy author Piers Anthony who in
the intros to his series books used to tip his hat to some of the readers who
had written into him to flag the bugs.

Having tried my hand at writing quest-based far future fantasy (unpublished),
I can say that for me the map starts out first in my head and then migrates to
paper where it undergoes many revisions as the writing progresses. It didn't
seem super hard, and because I wasn't super precise about distance covered I
think there is a lot of flexibility. I noticed that George RR Martin's map in
the "Game of Thrones" world can also be vague - other than the wall, distances
between places aren't really articulated and it often seems that the distance
from north to south of the realm when described in as people travel around is
roughly equidistant to east to west, even though on the map Winterfell to
King's landing looks to be so far apart. And, I might add, the lack of a map
for the cities and other places across the sea is maddening - I just have no
frame of reference for the location of the Dothraki Sea in relationship to
Braavos, Valyria, etc.

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madrox
Here is a similar article in the same spirit about how Andy Weir mapped his
moon base for Artemis: [https://www.space.com/38725-artemis-andy-weir-author-
intervi...](https://www.space.com/38725-artemis-andy-weir-author-
interview.html)

