Map Making For Fantasy Writers

Fantasy novels greatly benefit from the use of maps. They provide a new dimension to the story, making it easier for the reader to imagine themselves in the setting. Writing your work with a detailed map at your disposal is a great asset. You can use the following tools and guidelines to create professional quality maps to enhance your writing.

How Far You Can Go When You Travel

Getting the size of your globe right is a significant question mark and a major roadblock on the way to creating a successful map. Because it is your world, the author of a fantasy tale can make it as large or small as they choose. But if you insist on using a more conventional yardstick, you might always think about how fast horses and people can walk. This can help you get a feel for the scale of your world and the relative distances between major features.

There are no hard and fast standards, but a generally fit person can walk roughly 20 kilometers in a day. Depending on the length of the day, this is around the rate at which Roman legions marched. Obviously, this might be pushed in a piece of writing. Distances that horses can cover in a day also vary, but a fit, healthy horse can often travel between 50 and 60 miles on a good day. Extraordinary horses could be able to go further, perhaps even a hundred miles, but doing so in a single day would be an extreme undertaking that would necessitate weeks of recovery time.

Since your novel is a work of fantasy, you are free to create any rules you like; nonetheless, it is important to keep in mind realistic travel times and distances. Having your travelers walk hundreds of kilometers in a single day is not ideal. Remember this while you document and united states map the area.

A man can cover around three miles in an hour, hence one league is a common unit of distance measurement.

The Map's Secret Code: Required Ingredients

A map's key is the text box that gives background and explanations to the map's visual elements. Some important details to add to your map are listed below.

A little diagram placed on the map depicting the cardinal directions is called a compass. Your map would be incomplete without one. This is especially useful if you are writing instructions for the reader to follow. A reader can quickly grasp what is happening and where the characters are going if one of your characters says something like, "We will reach the Lucky Dragon Tavern by midnight, and in the morning we will set out East toward the Brine River." North, South, East, and West may be seen on a compass with a high degree of accuracy. Even a miniature compass may be used to find North, which is usually all that's needed.

One way to indicate distance on a map is with a line called a scale. The map's scale can be determined by first determining its overall size. To find out how many inches your drawn map is, simply divide the whole distance by that number. If your map is 10 inches wide and covers 1,000 miles, then 1 inch represents 100 miles. A 1-inch line is drawn and labeled as 1-inch Equals 100 miles to produce the scale. Extending the line by an additional inch and labeling the terminal point as 200 miles will increase the scale.

Drawing in important landscape details can give your map a more polished look and make it more intriguing to look at. There are options for adding in mountain ranges, waves to bodies of water, and trees to forests. Cities and towns can also be represented by drawing little buildings.

Use this guideline as a general rule of thumb when labeling key features on your map: This text should be larger for more significant landmarks. If you're going to be using capital letters, save them for major cities and other sites of significance. In doing so, you aid the reader in picking out the most important aspects of your argument.

Adding parchment curls to the edges of the map or a border in the style of the Middle Ages can improve its aesthetic appeal. Some people have even included little pictures of animals. It's not unusual to see whales in the seas or horses on the prairies. These are purely cosmetic changes that could be made to the final map before it's printed and bound into a book.

Referring to your map while you create

You can incorporate your map into your writing as a helpful tool. Is the protagonist of your story moving from one location to another? Take a look at a map. Approximately what sort of landscape separates these two cities, if any? Should we expect to encounter a river? Is it mostly grassland or forest? You may find inspiration for your writing there. Also, keep your scale in mind. To what extent do you rely on your map's mileage markers? Have you envisioned this trip as something that can be completed in a day? And keep in mind how the geography of your world influences the fauna, flora, and people who live there. If your map features different types of terrain, such as mountains, forests, deserts, and wetlands, the wildlife found there must also vary. Furthermore, tourists visiting these regions are subject to the unique obstacles that each ecosystem offers.

Carrying around two maps simultaneously

I suggest drawing up not one but two separate maps. You should make the initial map very large, on poster board if feasible, and save it for your own reference. You can do this entirely in pencil, so you can erase and edit it as you write, and you can add plenty of details and even include critical notes and story elements on it. This first map will be used to inform the second, more concise map that will be featured in the novel (typically as a two-page spread at the beginning of the book) once the novel and map are finished.

Which comes first, the map or the novel?

To get the most out of your maps and tales, I suggest working on them simultaneously. Drawing the map by the story's requirements will help you stay on the right track while you write. Your story's map will evolve as you write it. Both should progress at the same rate.

A fantastic map is a brilliant addition to any book, and you don't need any special skills to create one. But there are some guidelines you should follow to ensure your map is clear to your audience. A well-made map will enhance the reading experience by making the world you've built feel more tangible to the audience. And it will serve as an excellent resource as you work to improve the quality of your fantasy tale.