Maps

I spent some of today trying to draw a map for my fantasy novel. I quickly learned that I can’t draw to save my life. Of course it rather begs the question of when drawing would save your life.

Part of the problem was that I wasn’t sure about the scale. I don’t know if it’s confusion between kilometers and miles but I find distances hard to visualise. I was also looking up population densities trying to deiced how densely packed the Kelpies, Centaurs, and Elves in the story should be.

It got me thinking though there are two ways to go about this. The first is to decide the basic plot and draw the map based on that plot. The other idea, which is perhaps more interesting, is to design the world first. If the world is designed first the story can be built around the geography.

There was an art program, it was probably SMart, many many years ago that made a paper mache planet. This isn’t it by the way – but you get the idea.

On SMart they used a beach ball. It was done in such a way the when it dries you can just deflate the ball. I might actually do this as it would give me an over view of what the planet looks like.

I won’t bore you with the storyline but there is another idea I’ve had. Just use Earth. Is complicated but the basic premise is that on this world it was magic that took off, rather than technology, and an Earth twin might work for that – but maybe I’m just lazy doing it that way.