/lit/ - Literature

That depends on how important geography is to your story. It's nice to be able to flip to the map when they mention a place, but most of the time, it's not really relevant. And even if it is relevant, the story should still be able to function without it.

I enjoy the aestethic(i aint googling it) pleasure derrived from looking at fantasy overworlds, but it shouldn't be that relevant to the book. It's good for a reference point sure, but ambience alone should extinguish the need for a map.

>>2016465
I guess geography is only of middling importance. Obviously some travel goes on but as far as I can tell it's pretty straight forward compass direction stuff and there aren't a great deal of long cross-country journeys going on...

I love books with maps

Do your characters spend the entire time travelling to places with obscure names to the point where the reader loses track of where they are relative to the starting point?

In my mind your character's relative positions to their starting points are what the reader will be most interested in.

>>2016458
Depends. Is there a lot of travel in your story? Is there an invasion? Is there a rotating point of view? If you answered yes to any of these questions, it might be nice.
An alternative is to just describe or imply where each place is in relation to each other, but you've got to make a point of doing this. Something you might do is write the story with out the map, let your friend read it, and then get some input on how they felt about the geography.

Historical horror Book "The Terror" Made pretty good use of a map found in the front cover, giving the reader an idea of the distance and hardship they face in a featureless ice hell.

>>2016472

Well then it isn't needed. And honestly, there are plenty of other ways to explain the geography without a map.

>>2016477
You may have convinced me. There's 3 main POV characters, two of whom are together in the same location for a while before they separate and a third who travels far North, then back South. I guess it can go in. This is really hypothetical since I have no real delusions of publishing, it's just something I've been wondering.

>>2016475
No, they don't. There's a few major cities and fortifications as well as some minor village locations that get spread across 3 protagonists and what will probably be about 6 POV characters.

>>2016483
It's nice to have one for multiple characters, knowing their relative locations to each other and to their starting points is good. Since this is hypothetical I'd say include it, it's the sort of thing an editor would probably give the yay/nay on if you were to publish.

I really liked maps in childrens books. I could look at them and imagine how the places feel like, what the roads connecting them are like, where I would walk around etc. But when I read some fantasy novel with a map now, I really don't care were they are. Like Dune. I had a really vauge idea about where what was but I didn't care enough to look at the map. They could have had a scheme of the ecosystem or examples of the architecture existing in universe. It doesn't really matter for me. They all just add more facts to the story and the author should stop at some point.

>>2016493
The map I have drawn isn't populated with anything that doesn't appear in the actual story, so I'd probably find myself including random locations that you never actually get to see just to make the map look populated.

depends how big what you write it

Abhorsen Trilogy didnt need maps, Lord of the Rigns needed maps

i read a book once that had two povs, and one of the characters ended up in some place that was never covered or described before

it was confusing as fuck

I have a question for /lit/ about maps.

Have a story going about a train and the locations it stops, would a map be conducive to a story where the setting is in constant change?

That map has a place called Shit Alloer on it, as well as two places that are very geographically removed from each other having Deception in their name while all other places around them have LOTR names.

wow

The OP map is too random. Why are there regular sounding places like Black Forest next to tolkien knock off locations like P'Zouth Darz'volath?

>>2016961
Go google image search for 'fantasy map', that picture is the first result. OP just used someone else's image.

I do have a weakness for a good map of the pointy-mountain school, I confess. Glossaries of made up words too.

All high fantasy books should include a map. It's just so much easier to work out what the author is talking about. I wouldn't say it really adds anything more than that, but I have read fantasy books that didn't have maps and it is just so fucking irritating.

A map sort of tells the reader that you DID plan this ahead of time and your not just making up the locations as you go.

In the story I wrote. I made the map before I even started developing the plot. I had to adapt the events to accommodate the terrain and that made the whole thing seem more natural. I liked that the terrain was set in stone.

>>2016931

bahaha

>>2016547
A book about trains AND maps?! this is exciting for me

>>2017020
>Glossaries of made up words too
yeah!

OP, take a look at the map in The Valley of Horses by Jean M. Auel next time you're in a library. it's very simple and the story could have easily been told without it, but i was glad it was in there (and there are maps like it in all of the clan of the cave bear series). The characters travel alot, and she likes to show you their routes on the map with minimal place names--just ones relevant to the story. Also in the copy of Watership Down i was reading there was a map with a little list next to it saying without spoilers what chapter/event corresponded to what location on the map, it was cool

and i feel compelled to share this:
http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf

funnest shit ever if you like maps and worldbuilding and general dork behavior

>>2017064


Hey, Faggot.
Why you got to be such a fuck face? I asked a reasonable question if a map would work for a setting in constant flux or if it would detract from the readers experience and you go and be a fuck face.

Why you be'n a fuck face?

The question was valid and still unanswered. You just going to give me shit for answers or I'm I gonna rape your sister and maker her eat her aborted fetus?

lol this map is also obviously Southeast Asia and Japan with whack-ass names all over it

>waterbridge

COME ON.

Also, this is an interesting question. I always wondered who the fuck scouted the dangerous-as-fuck land so as to give us those exact and complete maps at the start of books, which evolved into a story about a cartographer who gets stranded in unknown territory, and the issues that arise from crashing into a previously totally-isolated foreign land where the people speak nothing like your own language.

But it sucked so I deleted it.

>>2017476
What's wrong with waterbridge? Waterford, after all, is a real place.

>>2017480
Can we really say Ireland is a real place? I mean, come on, guy.

When I was in middle school I read The Hobbit three times. In 6th grade for Geography class I created on paper, a map of Bilbo's travels. Had Beorn's house and everything. I miss being young

is the OP picture your map? looks pretty nice if so.

i've got a sci-fi story set far in the future (of earth) that i'd like to make a map for, and this post has inspired me. i would make the map, it always helps draw readers into your world.

>>2017070
I think I love you for this.

>>2017579
:3

/tg/ plays it online sometimes, in case you don't get the opportunity to play it IRL

>>2017462
woooahhh are you the train guy? because i was seriously expressing interest in that. just to be clear: i would like to see this story about trains and have it be accompanied by a map

You fantasy writers on this board all seem to have some kind of inferiority complex. Maps are pivotal supplementary detail for fantasy books. I just read through The Black Company, the first fantasy series I've read that doesn't include any sort of map, and the lack of any drawn map included was probably my biggest gripe with the series. Having a map to look back to when geography is mentioned helps the reader digest content more than I ever thought it would.

That said, I guess if you had no desire towards world building and your characters remain stationary throughout the book, you probably could do without a map. Otherwise you're doing yourself needless harm by not including one considering you already have a completed map.

Whether or not to add the map is really something that'll shake down once you've got the manuscript approved. Use the map for your own purposes until you're done with the story.

I really love mapmaking for stories. I've got a fantasy world I'm developing (slowly) for my own amusement, probably won't ever do anything with it besides some Burning Wheel games someday, and making the map was fun as fuck.

I love fantasy maps. While i know this is a shit complain in a world that has dragons breathing fire ice and lightning and mages zappin people, but I wish they didn't have the giant ice mountains in the north, the forest in the middle, the swamp coast, possibly rolling plains, and a wide desert range all in a setting the same size of the United Kingdom.

I wish maps were standard in every kind of book. Like if I wrote a boring literary novel about the dissolution of a suburban marriage, set entirely in the present day, I'd want to include an fancy map of Upper Darby Township on the endpages

>>2018116

With a large X to mark the magical row-house of the Enchanted Tina Fey, one presumes.

And a drawing of the seven-headed Septa asleep in its foul-smelling cave at 69th Street.

>>2018123
awesome

>>2018116
>I wish maps were standard in every kind of book.

let's make this happen, Anon. We'll just start addin' maps to books till the idea spreads

>>2017916

I apologize then as I thought you were being disingenuous to the nature of my question. I hope my work should it get published be looked favorably by you.

As per my earlier question, do you think it's conducive to the story to have the plotted out destinations? or is that reveling too much of the coming story?

Though I do feel he >>2017968 seemed to answer that a bit. Thoughts?

When isn't a map good to have in a book?

>>2019179
Whenit leads to people drawing maps and writing stories to conform to them.

>>2016458
>Does a high fantasy book really need a map at the start?

No, absolutely not. Only include a map if you think it would be pretty to look at.

it always bothers me when maps show features that are topographically impossible.

>>2016458
>wut do?
you are creating a book not a comic book, dont include it