Some of you now know that I like to write short stories, mostly for fun. But in my reference travels, I found the best way to stage a story or book is to plan everything out before writing. In other cases, I generate material from the top of my head.

Case in point . . .
When I was working on an old story called Blue Magic, it started off in a small location. However, since I am easily influenced by art and photography, I tend to make the place excessively large and continue to add more land to the story. I started to make the map when it was the original land. Of course, when new art appears, I add it to the land. What started off at 50 square miles of land, turned into 6000 square miles of different land types in a small location.

One of my problems, now, is to superimpose the small region I have worked on for all this time amidst a larger map, showing the other regions beyond the estate's borders.

I ask you all;
how do you generate your maps? Do you start big and end up doing small or vice versa?