Maptastic World Building.

I love a good map. The first map I ever saw in a book, was Tolkien’s map of Middle Earth in The Hobbit, when my mother red it to us when I was a child. I loved the map, and would study it for hours. You see I couldn’t re-read the book myself due to my low-reading age due to my undiagnosed dyslexia, BUT I could stare at the map and imagine myself going on the journey and experiencing Bilbo’s adventures. It was a visual tool that allowed me entrance back into the story.

 
The next map I saw was when I was in my mid-teens was of One Hundred Acre Wood by E.H. Shepard. I loved it for its intricacy and pen-man ship, but it was a bit of a shock, as I already had seen it in bright Disney animation, with Poo jumping between the pages, the original is however much more intriguing and inviting, which is probably why the original fetched £430,000 at auction in 2018!

When I was at school I was good at both geography and art (both of which I went on to study at degree) so of course everyone put two and two together and thought I should pursue a career in cartography of course none one took into account my bad sense of direction, or the fact I didn’t know (and still don’t) my left from my right. However how that I’m writing and world building, I find map-making hugely helpful.

‘I wisely started with a map and made the story fit,’

 

J. R. R. Tolkien, 1954

Unlike the very wise Mr Tolkien, I usually start with a story, then when it all starts to get complicated, I put pen to paper and draw a map, (and characters and landscapes). But the map is probably the most helpful, and the only thing you can’t get anywhere else, unlike characters, where you can get photographs from the internet (or like Roald Dahl did, keep a stock of photos cut out from magazines and newspapers.)

 

I have tried my hand at cartography for a few of my books, one a sci-fi fantasy YA, it was more of a drawing of planets and more recently I have tried my hand at a more traditional map for my WIP mammoth book, of both the geographical area and the main complex. It is so helpful to actually see where everything is in realisation to each other, and for unlocking key aspects of plot. Of course some writers like Terry Pratchett can keep it all in their heads, and never make a mistake, but for me I need to see it to really write it.

One thing I have discovered is that although I’m an artist by training (one thing I can do is draw!) Sadly my maps aren’t spectacular. In comparison however my 15 year old son, is a very talented map-maker. He had previously been commissioned to draw maps for peoples Dungeons and Dragons quests, and his world building is fantastic. He starts with maps, and then works on the biomes, eco-systems, faunas, flora, cultures, histories, cuisine, fashion, languages and mythologies. All these things are rooted and inspired by the original map and type of biome he’s created. I am in no way envious of his commitment or talent honest!

My son's world building & Map making

 

In fact I think maps are an essential part of world building – just as much as mind-maps as an essential part of plotting. Like Tolkien’s map of Bilbo journey ‘there and back again’ in The Hobbit helped me enter Middle Earth, creating map helps me enter the world and experience it, and even envision the environment , making it easier to describe but crucially see how the biome will influence the plot .

 

So if you haven’t tried drawing a map yet, I totally encourage you to do so, it really doesn’t matter about how well you draw (after all Tolkien wasn’t a great artist and his maps are possibly the most famous in fiction!) If you need any more encouragement I suggest you have a look at the beautiful celebration of fictional maps, in the lovely book The Writers Map edited by Huw Lewis-Jones, that explores fictional maps, and how to create them.

Living the Fairy Tale - World Building

Living the Fairy Tale - World Building

A few weeks ago I posted about the world building for my WIP, Journey to the Bone Factory. I spoke about the depth of research and about the methods I use to store all this vital information so that my mind is free to be creative and write [Press here to read].  This got me thinking about the differences between the world building between Bone Factory (YA SCI-FI) and my first book Through Mortal Eye's, and so I decided to post about the world building in Through Mortal Eyes.

Through Mortal Eyes, is a very different book; but it is still one that’s heavily reliant on world building for success. Its fantasy told in a duel narrative, but it’s a fantasy based in this reality and time. You’d think it’d make world building easier but that’s not easier it’s just different.

Through Mortal Eyes, is about Fairy tales, but not fluffy one ending with happily ever after, or ones set in different worlds. In the world of Through Mortal eyes, fairy tales are real, the characters moving around in the shadows, and eventually they get entwined with seventeen year old Ruby, who has to bring the all the tales to an end.

Of course I need not have to worry about gravitational pull, and the proximity of planets to their suns, or population density but I did have a whole lot of reading and world building of two different views and times within our world. But instead of the  physics of the world I was looking more at species of the world, and making a normal setting seem dark and fairy tale like.

So for the world building I looked at fairy tales, stacks of them. Then I also had species to work out so research veered in the direction of ghouls, beast and the un-dead from mythology and folklore across the world.  I noted down species profiles, much like character profiles, but with anatomy, and social histories.  I also researched actual history to slip things to make the species history more believable and add depth; researching the dog-headed Saint Christopher and the Hungarian Countess, Elizabeth Bathory who murdered and bathed in young maiden blood.

For places I used the little love town of my youth, using the oldest house in town, and the oldest church with the hollow tree.  Both these places in the right light with the right words look like they belong in a fairy tale. Also In the novel there is an abandoned town, which was burnt to the ground in middle ages, only leaving the church standing. This actually happened to a town about fifteen miles from the  in the novel, but not knowing what it was called I found a great web-site detailing all the lost medieval town of Berkshire Press here.

Of course sometimes a simple object can be enough to set your mind working, dictating to be used in the narrative and that the world is built to include it. This happened with my dad's old dagger that he dug up on a building site years ago.

All these notes were spread out over an array of notepads, ring-binders and stored virtually.  Coming together to build a disturbing yet scarily familiar world.