Cartography Craziness

The mountains are on the wrong side of the planet.

At least mine are. This weekend I spread all the maps I made for the Moonstone Chronicles on the dining room table, and although there was a lot of work that went into them and they were something to be proud of, they were also wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

In the books I referred to the Shadow Mountains being in the west. Darkness is building in the west. Anakaron is holed up in the west. Well, when you’re facing north, then the west is on your left. The Shadow Mountains are on the right, making them in the east.

I thought briefly of flipping the map (or in this case multiple maps) over and tracing the outline from the back, but that’s not really going to work either. I have three big maps and a multitude of little maps. I need one map to rule them all.

See, the other problem I have with my maps is that they were created before I started working on the Chronicles. Other than Ghren and the Darkwood Forest, all the towns and cities were pretty much added in a haphazard manner, appearing just willy-nilly wherever my pen tip happened to land. And then I lost my maps when I was doing the actual writing, forgot the names of these towns (never mind where they were) and made up new ones. Ones that appear nowhere on my maps. And let’s not forget in Lucky Dog the action crosses and recrosses a river, which also does not appear on the map.

*sigh*

So what is the lesson to be learned?

When writing a fantasy series that involves a lot of traveling, a map is a very handy tool for keeping track of where your characters are and where they’re going. However, it is best to start out with a vague outline and fill in the details as you go along. Also, do them in pencil, going over them with ink when the series is done.

Someone should really write all these pearls of wisdom for writing a fantasy series down, eh?


Prompts of the Week

Prompt One
You’re at work, like any normal day, and happen to look out the window as you head to the break room for a second cup of coffee. What you see makes you stop in your tracks. What is it?

Prompt Two
One day, while reading your favourite book on the beach, you notice a boat slowly drifting to shore. It eventually lands near your spot. A person, draped in pirate clothes, yells to you from the boat, “I have a treasure map and I need help. Are you in?”

You don’t need to spend a lot of time on these, they’re just meant for fun. Take 5 minutes to think about it, then write for 10 or 15 minutes. And if it turns out you like what you’ve written, then by all means turn your exercise into an actual story. You can find these prompts, and others like them, at Writer's Digest .

Once More, With Feeling...

Short Fiction - 0
Long Fiction - 1140
Poetry - unknown
Total Words - 1140+
Paragraphs of Notes - 11

Well, that didn’t exactly work out like I expected it to.

Just when I thought I was getting things back on track I got slammed with the stomach flu. So no writing at all, let alone posting, last week. I was far too busy being sick and recovering from being sick. I did get a bunch of reading in, if that counts. Maybe I should start including a weekly reading report too - after all, reading is just as important as writing when you’re an author. ;-)

Now to be completely honest, I was recovered enough by the weekend that I could have spent some time writing, and I actually planned on it, however the characters in the book I’m working on stopped for a rest after escaping from some dark elves and now they refuse to budge. And that’s pretty much my own fault.

I’m not entirely sure where exactly the elven enclave that’s been taken over by the dark elves that my heroes escaped from is, let alone how far it is to the shrine they’re supposed to be headed for. In fact, I’d never heard of the shrine until they decided to head there. Apparently it’s on an island on an inland sea.

I need a map. And I need a proper map, not one of the namby-pamby ones I drew 15-20 years ago when I first came up with the idea for this story - it was more fun working on maps and character sketches than actually writing back then. Some of the names on those maps are cringe-worthy and a lot of the places have changed. Not to mention there are a bunch of places that have been mentioned in back stories that aren’t even on those maps. I need a map like this one:

Okay, maybe not as fancy as that one, but I do need a more comprehensive idea of the lay of the land. So as a starting point I figured I could use the outlines of my old maps and just fill in new details. Only I can’t find them. I have a file folder marked “Maps” that had several pages of maps that when pieced together made a really big map, only I can’t find it. Somewhere, in the Great Office Shuffle, I seem to have misplaced it, along with all my other notes, etc. on the Moonstone Chronicle universe.

Now after a very long frustrating search I did manage to find the maps I’d traced from the smaller pages onto three really large pages, but my first thought there was - TOO BIG. Which leaves me in a bit of a dilemma. Do I keep searching for smaller maps, tearing apart filing cabinets, drawers, and offices (and probably my hair) in the process? Try and trace the pertinent sections of the huge maps onto smaller, more manageable pages and make the necessary changes? Or suck it up and just make the changes on the big maps, which would take copious amounts of white out and leave me with a really messy looking map?

As excuses go for not writing, I thought this was a pretty good one.