The second panel of the weekend for me was about maps. I was really into the idea of the panel, but I was unsure of how it would all work out. Here’s the description and what I had prepared.

Mapping the Landscape

Every science fiction and fantasy reader has their favorite book with a map in the forward or appendix. Besides helping audiences keep track of where things are taking place, what roles do maps play in fiction and gaming? How does a creator go about creating a clear memorable map, from both narrative and visual perspectives?

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Ask yourself if a map is really needed? Being a very visual person, I LOVE maps and building layouts, but does your book / story actually need it?

Look at your map at 3”x4”. If you can’t read it then it is too small to print in a mass market. Consider adding extra maps that show blowups of things you actually want readers to know about.

Cheat. Take a known map and turn it upside down, then relabel everything.

Don’t be afraid of looking for inspiration in the old. There are a number of museums that have digitized their collections of historical maps and have them available for viewing online. This goes for plants and monsters too. The biodiversity heritage library has 150,000 images out there. University of Chicago Press have created a history of cartography collection with downloadable PDFs.

Think about what your map looks like relative to your story. What does a fantasy map look like exactly? What does an urban fantasy map look like by comparison? How will it look when it’s squished down to 3 inches wide by 4 inches tall in a paperback?

How much area are you mapping? 2D or 3d for your map?

The panel itself ranged all over the map (see what I did there LOL). The panelists had a wide variety of backgrounds and it was a really neat discussion. I grabbed a couple of notes of my own, and was surprised (though I probably shouldn’t have been) when discussions ranged into technology and things connected with my day job. Turns out that architecture is essentially building mapping – and that includes site context.

It was a very enjoyable discussion and the folks that attended seemed to be really happy with what we delivered.