World Building Pt. 2 – Maps

Ok, so the map of the world isn’t really the logical next step in world creation. Before you can have an effective map, you need to know a lot about what you want the world to accomplish. But let’s face it — drawing maps is pretty much the best part.

I like to draw maps. That’s how I doodle when other people are talking, by drawing coastlines and then putting in mountains, rivers, cities, national boundaries. Then, if the map that results intrigues me, I begin to make up more information — which nations speak the same language, what their history has been, which nations are prospering, which waning.

–Orson Scott Card, How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy¹

I’ve created made up maps since I was, I dunno, little. Maps are fascinating, I don’t know why. And as I’ve learned more about geography and geology and history and everything else, maps have just become more and more interesting.

The benefit of creating a map — even a rough one — so early in the process of world building, is that the process of creating a map awakens my mind to all sorts of other realities about this world. If I go with a story concept, and build the world directly from there, everything I create in the world will be related to my concept. That’s just not an interesting world. By making a map of a larger area, I start asking more questions — what are the countries around the area my story takes place in? How to they interact? What’s their history? Who’s in power? How does the physical landscape affect how people get around, migrate, trade, speak?

For Shadow of Death, I knew I needed certain things to fuel a pirate story: lots of ocean, islands, water-based trade, etc. I also knew I wanted a lot of different cultures colliding in this maritime locale. That meant that the sea on which the pirates sailed had to be surrounded by a lot  of different land and countries.

I’m also building this world from bits of a world I created previously, so I had some ideas about counties and landmasses I wanted to include. But I also wanted to change things around so that, for instance, more of the counties I had designed before would border this maritime area.

So I started sketching some landmasses. I moulded them around a central sea area, and sketched dotted lines of island chains between them — this would be where the many independant pirate-ridden trading towns would be, which would create the framework for a thriving maritime world.

But as landmasses are sketched, inevitably there are parts that don’t — won’t, can’t — relate to the central area of the story. Yet these end up having the same questions asked of them — who lives there? What’s their culture like? And as these questions are asked, the world grows richer.

Plans and Mistakes

During world creation, I always have some plans for the world, whether or not they relate to the story directly. Some of the ideas I’ve had before come to the forefront, and I mould my world around those ideas.

I knew I wanted this world to be complex enough to sustain other stories. I also knew that my interest in real-world history and mythology was going to heavily influence me. I wanted to include locations in my world that mirrored in many ways real-world locations: an African-savannah-like plain; an Amazon-like jungle; an Arabia-like desert; Indonesia-like archipelagos; etc. So as I drew out my continents, I took all this into consideration — I needed large areas for desert and jungle, I needed mountains separating them, while all at the same time, making sure the areas I wanted to be part of my pirate culture were bordering the central sea.

But another part of mapmaking is the mistakes I make — or even the questions I deliberately leave unanswered. Sometimes these lead to the most interesting parts of the world. As Orson Scott Card writes:

…I believe that, when it comes to storytelling — and making up maps of imaginary lands is a kind of storytelling — that mistakes are often the beginning of the best ideas. After all, a mistake wasn’t planned. It isn’t likely to be a cliché. All you have to do is think of a reason why the mistake isn’t a mistake at all, and you might have something fresh and wonderful, something to stimulate a story you never thought of quite that way before.²

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