In which the author expresses his simmering frustration with the work of mapping a fantasy world, his previous attempts to solve this frustration, and his plan going forward.
Apologies, but we shan’t be visiting Earthsea today. A busy day at work (I love my job, but I do wish I could never work on a Sunday ever again), the time change, and family returning from a trip dashed apart my day so that I got nothing more than a poor job of sweeping done.
In lieu of today’s Earthsea post, I’d like to start another series. I have a dilemma in regard to maps.
I am a writer; not a terribly disciplined writer or a really prolific writer, but a writer nonetheless. I like fantasy. It’s probably my preferred genre to write in, though oddly not always my preferred genre to read.
I disagree with writers (even Tolkien) who say that maps are an essential element of creating secondary worlds. One can write a good story without reference to a map.
That in mind, I noticed several years ago that I was allowing the map to take up too much of my time in writing, and I decided to try to forego it. Then I decided I’d make it quickly and precisely. Then things spiraled out of control, and I found myself with something akin to writer’s block.
And the problem persists.
I think I drew my first fantasy map when I was single digits. I drew several as a teenager. I made some very detailed maps in my twenties. Then the dilemma arose.
I learned enough to recognize a lack of precision, to ask questions of my maps that were beyond my skills as a lay cartographer. Soon I found that I could not complete a map to my satisfaction without investing enough time that the time itself became a source of frustration and eventual disinterest.
And then another problem became apparent. One can write a good story without reference to a map, but I am not one. The maps I drew at nine and thirteen and twenty-five weren’t just reference material. They were part of how I built the story.
I didn’t need to know, necessarily, how many stops the train makes between the Glorious Capital of the Enlivened Aurate Golemonarch and the Village of Ten Elms Upon Three Hills, but I did need to know that between the capital and Ten Elms, there is a gorge over which the train must pass. And as it turns out, that’s not something my brain supplies readily on the blank page.
I need the outlined inkblot curlicued shapes of islands and continents and the hairline fractures of rivers to stimulate the creation. I need to put marks on paper that say “the village is here and the mountain is there,” sketch a big, hairy shape around them, and then look at the empty space in between in order to figure out whereabouts might be the dragons.
I have tried GIMP so that a computer can help me be more precise, but that, it turns out, leads to massive files of incomplete maps that stretch beyond reason. I have tried transit mapmakers that allow me to map the routes between and rough relations of various cities. That left out too much of the middle.
Now I am going to get back, mostly, to the basics. I have a big, honking pad of graph paper meant for some engineering purpose, and I have some pencils. I am going to choose a scale, draw it down in one corner, and then I am going to start putting a world on paper to the best of my abilities, making it up as I go, and erasing as needed.
Until next time!
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