I had a great weekend churning out the revisions of Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 of my novel The Seed of Hope. I worked for hours and eventually my eyes glazed over and I couldn’t really make much sense of the lines of words on the computer screen. I needed a dictionary detox and started thinking more about the map I started which is planned to be printed inside the first page of the book.

I love the idea of reading fantasy books with a map that you can imagine the borders and kingdoms and blighted lands where the evil minions swarm towards the relative tranquility of civilized farmers and city folk. There is something about the map that lets the reader visualize the world and get your barings.

So I started sketching and doing some research re what is the best way to tackle my map. Luckily I have a pretty good talent for drawing and sketching so the technical challenge of drawing the map is no problem but I wanted to get a sense of other people’s opinions and what separates a good map from a bad one.

Overall there was a mixed feeling regarding maps – some people loved them while some hated them. A lot of it depended on whether you were looking at it from a readers perspective or a writers. I found a great article for writers that I wish I found before I wrote the book that gave me some hints as to how to use the map as a guide for my writing (as I result I also found a really cool site for authors called searchwarp.com and their hall of fame - I have a new challenge here!). Tonight I am going to take my rough sketches and start putting something more final together. This should be fun considering how, in the Talent Tree series the magical worlds intersect with the non-magical ones. I haven’t quite worked out how to depict that yet but I plan to draw from the description already in place in my book.

For me, maps are a fundamental part of the reading experience so hang on and I will post mine here soon.

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Tags: "fantasy map", author, fantasy, novel, Quinton Wall, Seed of Hope, Talent Tree, writer

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