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“Maps encourage boldness. They’re like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible.”
― Mark Jenkins
Mapping out the fictional world in your book is always and advantage you should take if you are fabricating a brand new, unique world. It helps you organize points in your stories, keep track of historical events, where certain objects are, how long certain journeys would take, and allows you to remember where your characters have been and what they have done in your world so far.
So obviously drawing up a map for the world you are writing about is useful, but not everyone has the ability to draw out a J.R.R Tolkien level majestic map out of nowhere.
So exactly do you design a map for your fictional world?
Well, today I am going to go over some tips and tricks to help you compose a map for your fictional world.
STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION
First of all, let's start with the basics with structure and function.
You need to think about your world, or a land in your world's, purpose. Make your map efficient to the purpose of your land or world. Is your land a huge trade post, or outputs a lot of resources for the rest of your world? You might want to think about giving it several streams and lakes and easy access to bodies of water and places to put ports or shipping docks. Is your land more dangerous to get to and defensive? Include lots of islands, mountains, and jagged shapes. Is your world more welcoming a peaceful. Considering flowing shapes and include ding forests and lakes. Is your land connected to other continents in your world? Consider adding land bridges and islands to connect them all.
UNDERSTANDING GEOGRAPHY
You might have thought you were done with geography after school, but even fictional worlds have it.
Before you map out your fictional world, you need understand a bit about what makes up the things in our world. From mountains, to forests, to islands and volcanoes. Things don't just pop into existence for no reason, or without anything causing them.
True, your world is fictional. Mountains and volcanoes could pop up out of nowhere if you wanted them, too. But still, knowing a bit about geography will improve the way you think about your world before you map it out on paper.
For instance:
- Islands are either formed when there is a large landmass and the water level rises, surrounding some of the original land, by hundreds of years of erosion, or underlying continental shelves, coral reefs, limestone deposits, or volcanic eruptions.
- Mountains are formed by millions of years of two tectonic plates underneath the Earth's crust pushing against each other, and eventually pushing up an over each other.
- Forests are simply formed when plants and trees are allowed to grow and spread untouched.
- Volcanoes are formed when one tectonic plate is pushed beneath the other, and is heated up by the hot mantle below Earth's crust. Molten is heated up and pushed out of the Earth's crust. The pressure on the way up to the crust can force pressurized rock and gas up out of the surface, causing an eruption to happen. The most common kinds occur on the edge of tectonic plates.
- Hills and Valleys are formed by water and/or ice erosion
- Lakes are formed either by receding glaciers, tectonic plates, human damming, meandering rivers, landslides, and rainfall.
- Rivers are formed either by erosion or by overflow of larger bodies of water cutting channels through the land
- Canyons are most commonly formed by long-term erosion.
These are just the basics, and more than likely you have known all of this since elementary school, but it is a good idea to get a recap and do research if you are thinking of applying these elements to your world.
MAKING ROOM FOR THE PEOPLE
Of course, not all the land can be taken up by cool mountains, gorges, and mythical, enchanted forests. You have to leave room for settlement.
After all, if your world has no room for people, then there would be no...well, people. And without people, there would be no story.
So how much is too much room, and how much is too little room for the people?
Well, for this question, let's take a look at one of the most mountainous states in America- Arizona. Having 210 mountains ranges, nearly half of Arizona is covered in mountains. But still, the state has a population of about 7.02 MILLION people.
This is something to consider when mapping out your world. Just how much of it is landscape, and how much of it is people.
This can change though if your fictional human (or not human) race can live on water, mountains, or even volcanoes. Unlike us. Please don't try to live inside of a volcano.
Now we get to the fun part....
DRAWING OUT A MAP FOR YOUR FICTIONAL WORLD
As I said before, not all of us are Leonardo Di Vincis when it comes to drawing maps. I'll admit, it's hard, and I'm decent at drawing (I actually drew the G.E.M With a Pen logo).
There are several things to consider when mapping out your fictional world. After all maps are made for organizing your story, so that means your map could include cities, locations of major plot points, a route of your main character's journey, the antagonist's home or secret lair, where major battles occurred, and magical items your protagonist is on a quest to find. But there are many methods to use when it comes to drawing a map, even ones for the less-than-Di Vinci-level writers out there to use.
1. To begin, I thought I would include an example of the world from my book's map.
Now before I go any further, I must admit that my map has evolved from the original drawing, too. The first drawing of my world that I ever did was on a classroom whiteboard. I dragged the marker across the glossy board, just kind of letting it flow wherever it wanted to while going of the image I already sort-of had in my head. Later, I copied it on to paper and jotted down major plots and notes on it to use for reference while I wrote. Finally, I made what I think the "final product" would look like (my design may change sometime in the future, though) with a digital tablet and a plug-up pen in hand.
Originally, Patro was more pointed with fewer islands around it, and Eloen had little, if not none, existing islands. But I always knew I wanted Fiar to have the curved shape it does. It reminds me of a scorpions tail, which is adequate because it is both the home of the antagonist in my book, and cluttered with mountain ranges.
I feel like the "true" map for my land came out when I drew it digitally and looked up world maps for reference. I feel like there's a sense of realistic-ness that wasn't there the first two times that I drew it. Patro was so pointy, it was almost a triangle, and the islands were basically just globs and dots.
Now, you can kind of see Canadian inspiration in Patro, maybe a bit of Iceland in Eloen, and ….I don't know....Mexico or Italy for Fiar, maybe? Fiar kind of came naturally to me, because that's where the antagonist lives, and where my protagonist spent most of his life.
My advice after drawing up my map:
Look at other maps, either fictional or real, but never stare at the same map for too long. Otherwise, the continents and lands in your world will start to look like the ones you are looking at. Try laying some maps out on a table, or pasting some together on a word document before you start drawing.
Picture your world and the lands in it like scraps floating around in the ocean. No continent or island is perfectly round, square, oval, or triangle. Make islands ragged, and the land should have some jagged. This makes your land feel real , even if it is fictional.
Have a basic idea before you start drawing your world, or describe it to someone who is drawing it. This will keep you (or the person drawing it) from stumbling around in the dark . Have a basic idea of the shape of the land (or lands) in your book, and detail it as much as you can. It's okay to go through several rough drafts of the map, as long as you get an end result you are happy with and that will work for your story in the end.
2. MAJOR TERRAINS
Let's move on to the second part of the map. For me, the next thing to do after I drew out the shape of my world was to plot the mountain ranges.
Mountains play an imperative role in my story, because that's where the people harvest a resource that is very important to them. I would recommend the second step of drawing out your map to be to planning where important parts of it go. Places you already know have to be included on your map. Things like forests, mountains, canyons. If it's important, and you already have a good idea of where it should go, jot it down.
3. MAJOR LOCATIONS
In my case, step three when drawing out my map was noticing major features. This is basically looking at the sketch of your map and "stating the obvious".
When it came to my map, I scribbled down notes next to the districts with the most mountains, the districts with the least mountains, the smallest districts, the smallest island, the smallest island with mountains on it, where I thought the top tourist destination would be.
It's basically like opening a tourist pamphlet.
4. WEATHER
Step four for me, when it came to drawing my map up, was a technicality, but still what I feel is still a good thing to consider when making your world.
Weather. I never pictured my world having strict, exact climate (still don't), so this was very interesting for me.
When it came to my world, I stuck to a more logical route. The northern side (Patro) is slightly colder in the winter than the southern side (Fiar), and Eloen is somewhere in between.
However, your world's climate can be however you like. If your world has magical winter elves who thrive in a cold, winter environment or fire giants who can only live in sweltering heat, then by all means, go for it.
5. WATER SOURCES
Every world needs a water source, and a made-up one is no exception.
For me, I didn't really know where the water sources in my world would be. The country itself is surrounded by water, but as far as smaller bodies of water within the world go, I kind of just went with the flow, and the results were interesting. I noticed that afterward, I had unintentionally placed water sources in the center of each district, branching off from the ocean. The biggest district had three water sources, the smaller ones had one each, and the bigger islands have one each. All in all, that worked out perfectly for me.
For water sources, I would advise not to get too technical about it, unless you plan on mentioning these oceans/rivers/ponds/lakes in your story.
6. STICKERS!
STICKERS!! I stuck all the important points involved in my book on my map including the antagonist's home, where major plot points in my story occurred, resistance/headquarters/hideout, towers and palaces, oldest settlement, and major resource suppliers.
This isn't a required step, but I find it to be less jumbled-up and easier to read than jotting down notes all across the paper. I have the stickers below for free use.
METHODS FOR DRAWING MAPS
So what if you don't have a single cell in your body capable of drawing, much less drawing a map? Well luckily for you, I tried out some popular map drawing methods.
One of the most popular methods I have seen for drawing fictional world is to toss dice onto a piece of paper and trace around them. Some people even use the numbers they roll to plot geographical features.
Now I have to admit, this is a random method, especially if you already have an idea of what you want your world to look like in your head, but I suppose you could rearrange them in the shape you want before tracing around it.
For me, I used both coins and string.
Overall, I love the coin method best. If you're plotting a lot of geographical features, you can include more in places where the coin value is highest.
The string method was a little trickier. The string moved around a lot, so there are a lot of start and stop markers from the marker where I had to keep adjusting it. The land also turned out a little longer than I wanted, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad method, especially if you want longer land.
Well, I think that about covers it....
If all fails, you can always ask a friend that can draw if they would be willing to draw your world, but remember this is your world and you have the right to make it however you want. You are limitless in your imagination. Remember that maps are a tedious process (as is world-building itself), so take the time to really visualize your world and develop your own methods of mapping it out! Happy world-building!
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