Check out my City Designer 3 tutorials. See my fantasy (city) maps in this thread.
Gandwarf has fallen into shadow...
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.
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...Originally Posted by Gandwarf
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I think, therefore I am a nerd.
Cogito, ergo sum nerdem.
Check out my blog: "The Undiscovered Author"
It's the story of a writer... follow me in my simple quest to get published, and share your own writing stories, adventures and writerly tips.
Pimping my worldmap here. Still WIP... long way to go, but I'm pretty proud of what I've done so far...
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.
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.
I think, therefore I am a nerd.
Cogito, ergo sum nerdem.
Check out my blog: "The Undiscovered Author"
It's the story of a writer... follow me in my simple quest to get published, and share your own writing stories, adventures and writerly tips.
Pimping my worldmap here. Still WIP... long way to go, but I'm pretty proud of what I've done so far...