Thread: Designing a map for a fantsy kingdom, have a look!

Originally Posted by Gandwarf

Writing is all the fun I think. It's almost impossible to earn any money. As a beginning novelist you shouldn't expect to receive more than a dollar for every book sold. You would need to sell many books to make a living out of it.

One of these days I am going to send my stuff to some publishers however. One of these days

Since I was a wee lad, I've always gotten a certain thrill when someone read what I wrote and liked it. As I said, getting paid would be gravy, but I'd love for more people to read what I wrote and like it... One of these days I'll have finished some of my stuff, then I'll bea able to decide whether it's good enough to think about what to do with it. My wife is having doubts that I'll finish, and I keep saying "Once I finish my map, then I'll be in the right frame of mind to start writing!"

Originally Posted by Karro

Since I was a wee lad, I've always gotten a certain thrill when someone read what I wrote and liked it. As I said, getting paid would be gravy, but I'd love for more people to read what I wrote and like it... One of these days I'll have finished some of my stuff, then I'll bea able to decide whether it's good enough to think about what to do with it. My wife is having doubts that I'll finish, and I keep saying "Once I finish my map, then I'll be in the right frame of mind to start writing!"

So you're 'full of crap' like I am . Welcome to the board!


Sigurd

Originally Posted by Sigurd

So you're 'full of crap' like I am .

Haha, very funny

Anyway, it's one of the reasons I can't allow myself to map at the moment. I need to get some writing done. All I was doing was mapping stuff, lol...

Originally Posted by Sigurd

So you're 'full of crap' like I am . Welcome to the board!


Sigurd

I'd say thanks, but I've been here almost a year. I believe the good welcome goes to t_S (who's friend apparently is also writing a book).

My wife, by the way, agrees with you.

Originally Posted by Gandwarf

Anyway, it's one of the reasons I can't allow myself to map at the moment. I need to get some writing done. All I was doing was mapping stuff, lol...

My wife tells me I should do the same. But I keep thinking "how can I show the true depth of my characters if I don't fully understand the world in which they interact?" Chicken or egg, I guess...

[/threadjack]

Originally Posted by Karro

But I keep thinking "how can I show the true depth of my characters if I don't fully understand the world in which they interact?" Chicken or egg, I guess...

I'm pretty much the same. I've written about 45k words so far in my most recent endeavour and it was becoming harder and harder to wrench the story out. I realised that much of my problem was due to me not knowing enough about the world they were playing in. I had a character turn to the south at one point and he was supposed to be internally visualising what lay in that direction between him and a certain town. But it occurred to me I knew absolutely nothing of the land around there, or even about the town other than its name. I attempted to just fudge over it but it became apparent that I was doing it more and more and I was getting less happy about it.
Just working on my map is already suggesting certain plot points to me, which is pretty cool. I equate it to knowing your characters (which is basically what the land is, another character) - if all you know about your character is a name, height and hair colour then you are going to struggle to give them a personality and they won't be able to help shape your story based on what you know about how they would react to a given situation.
I've already spent far longer away from the writing than I wished to (I expected a map would take me a few days to a week ) but I am confident that in the long run I will be thankful for the time spent.

Really guys... you are dragging me back into evil.
I just starting downloading Campaign Cartographer 3 to my new computer. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooo....
My wife is gonna kill me as soon as she sees me plopping down houses in City Designer 3.

[/threadjack]

Thanks to all of you that have replied to my thread!

For those who're saying that the mountains don't fit with the rest of the map - I completely agree! As I've mentioned already, I plan on redrawing all of the mountains in a bit of a fountain pen style (with shading), possibly the coastline as well.

It's still a pretty big WIP, as none of the locations are definite - once they are, I'll more than likely ditch the font and write/scan the names in myself for a much more authentic look.

Originally Posted by t_S

Thanks to all of you that have replied to my thread!

For those who're saying that the mountains don't fit with the rest of the map - I completely agree! As I've mentioned already, I plan on redrawing all of the mountains in a bit of a fountain pen style (with shading), possibly the coastline as well.

It's still a pretty big WIP, as none of the locations are definite - once they are, I'll more than likely ditch the font and write/scan the names in myself for a much more authentic look.

Wow. That'll take some dedication! Good luck!

-snip-

I'll move the updated image to the next page.