On maps...

Well, I’m currently neck deep in one of the funnest stages of writing Fantasy: The Map Phase.

I’m unleashing my inner cartographer and mapping out my world, filling pages with topographical depictions of mountains, rivers, lakes, forests, even some grassland. I’m naming things that may never actually be in the story, creating features at random just because I can. I mean, I just built a massive wall across a country, just for kicks!

In a way, the mapping of a world drives many of the other facets of the planning and execution of a story. When you create countries and nations and cities, you create political and economic considerations, military necessities, and potential narrative options. If there are two countries next to each other, then an author must consider how these countries interact, how their cultures and societies differ, what each might produce or import, ethnicity, religion, and so much more.

While it may seem a frivolous and infantile pursuit, mapping is, in fact, a requirement for good fantasy, even if the reader never sees it. The author should form the maps, commit them to some kind of record, and force himself to abide by the rules and places he’s created. As opposed to just putting pen to paper and spilling forth unorganized thought, a map forces an author to consider and plan, to think things through that he might otherwise neglect. Because the map is not just geographical. One would be remiss in any substantial writing to not map out the narrative, to form an outline of the plot. The mapping is simply a visual representation of an outline for an epic. Because in this form, the story is told across distances, from various locales. And how those locales interact, how they contrast, is vital to the story.

The story of an epic, especially in fantasy, is not stationary. It travels, it moves, it is not static. And in order for it to move, a world must be established for it to move within. In fantasy, this world must be created from scratch. That is good, because it allows one the freedom to adapt the world to the tale, and not the other way around, as non-fantasy fiction often requires. If you need a group to go from point A to point B, but need a trial in between, then in the map you can provide a mountain or valley, a river or fortress to overcome.

Certainly, a story could hardly be told from a geographical perspective alone.

But it can hardly be told well without that perspective.