L.A. Garnett – Author

As a reader, one of the best ways to get me immediately engaging with a world is to present me with a map. I love the feel of a good fictional landscape – I like to scope out cities as they are mentioned, try to find the mountains or rivers that an author throws in, and track the characters through their world as they embark on their journey.

As a writer, however, creating a map has proven to be one of the most difficult aspects of world building. I have no sense of what a world “should” look like. I am not geologist or a geographer, so I do not know the ins and outs of why mountains exist, or which direction a river should flow or why I should put a forest down here and not a desert. While that information can be helpful for me, the author, in creating a cohesive world with rules, it is not necessary for the readers.

There is a reason that cartography is a skill that experts spend many hours honing. It combines geography and aesthetics, with a heavy reliance on artistic ability that I simply do not possess. Instead, I use the following questions to guide my work:

1. Does this general shape feel organic?
   • Many resources will tell you not to just fill your page – you’ll end up with a big rectangle and it becomes pretty clear that you were following the outline of the page. That’s why you see so many tutorials where people trace around a spill – it is a natural shape that feels more pleasing to the eye.
2. What is the scale of this map? Are these cities and villages a short stroll from one another or will it take days of travel to reach the next point on the map?
3. Is there an in-universe lore reason that the world is shaped the way it is?
   • This can be anything from this river is haunted and that’s why it’s green” to “this mountain range is in the middle of a desert and seemingly came out of nowhere because it is actually the skeleton of an ancient dragon”. This part can get complicated and it is easy to fall down the rabbit-hole of worldbuilding.

There are no “right” or “wrong” ways to make a fictional map. That’s the point, after all – it is imaginary! It would defeat the purpose of the whole exercise. There are, however, ways to go about making your world so that readers aren’t thrown out of the suspension of disbelief that you want them to be comfortably sitting in while reading.

The Spiraling, my debut book, is out now! Check it out on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you buy books online. I’m so excited for this book to be out in the world, and I can’t wait for you to read it.