So you want to start writing, but there's a question on your mind: where does this story take place? If you're lucky enough and it takes place in a real place, nowadays, you'll have plenty of opportunities to look up the area in google maps, street view, or to even go there in person. However, more than not, when writing fiction, especially in the areas of fantasy and science fiction, you're not going to be as lucky. I myself have finally started writing my manual book, and I've settled for a pirate story that's set on an alternate planet. I would have gone for alternate history, but I'm pretty sure that alternate history implies that the geography of the world remains intact, meaning that the places in the story will be real ones. However, in this case, I wanted to make up my own islands. What a disaster! I think one of the hardest things to do when world-building is getting the geography right. My go-to is to try to map out the world: where are the borders, the cities? Don't even get me started on getting the distances right and knowing how long it would take a character to walk/horse-ride/sail from one point to another! My goodness, to get to that point is such a pile of work. The first thing I tend to do is try and draw a rough outline of the map to get a feeling for the layout of everything. But how does one go about sketching this map? There are many online tools, but a lot of them seem more work than it's worth - unless you really know your world and already have maps at the ready. One of my favourite map generators is Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator. It's fun to play with, and it provides a lot of inspiration or pointers. The main problem is that it can be pretty specific (with kingdom names, etc), and IMO things like that shouldn't be decided by some website, since kingdom layouts and names all will have to do with the history you're planning for your world: should the kingdoms sound more alien-like? Do they have Latin names? Or are they more of the high fantasy type? Their borders also have huge consequences on the story, so if you already have ideas on that, it can be difficult to use tools such as these. Here's what such a generated map might look like: I'm also a huge fan of the fantasy name generator. Not only can you generate names for characters and places, but you can also create custom maps. But here, it's better for those that already have a rough idea of their land layout. I have maps in my computer book folders (from many different websites and drawing apps) that I would not want to show anyone by how bad and half-attempted they are. Thus, I'm left with drawing them by hand. Yikes. Technically, it's much faster and easier to draw up a map than to find a tool to make one online. But then, of course, there's the questions of drawing capabilities. And though I don't think myself that bad of an artist, I must say, drawing maps by hand is another skill entirely. I end up cringing at my countries when they look crooked and oh so fake. For the handwritten WIP, I've even tried the orange method - where you peal an orange and let the pieces fall on the paper, and then trace the contours to create the map. But it just didn't look right. In the end, I used the contours of the orange peals and displaced them as I traced the outlines. Luckily for me, instead of planning a whole continent, I settled for a single island, with a rough idea of the main trading currents. Now I just need to do the layout of the provinces and cities. No big deal, haha... Here's the island for now: Let me know how you go about creating world maps!
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