Jesper Schmidt - Fantasy Map Making: Writer Resources, #2

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Is This Book For Me?

I f you are reading this with the intention of creating a map of an imaginary world, being a fantasy novel, a movie, a video game or a role-playing game, then Fantasy Map Making is written for your benefit.

Its a type of checklist-compendium that takes you through the entire map creation process, step by step. Most creative people and I will assume that you are one, too will have a wealth of inventive ideas for their fantasy settings. However, without the knowledge of geography and climate to match them, they end up creating a non-realistic version that will break immersion.

That word, immersion, is an extremely important one in the context of map making.

Its your job as the creator of the fantastical realm to forge a universe which offers infinite possibilities, yet is kept easy to interpret and understand. Your audience might not be able to put their finger on it, but most will intuitively know that something is off if a map doesnt depict reality correctly.

For this reason, Im going to talk a lot about realism when it comes to creating your map.

I do respect the fact that many fantasy worlds are often shown as medieval Europe, without Christianity and magic added, but even so, this is still where I will ground us. You see, Fantasy Map Making will assume that you are redrawing an Earth-like setting.

Most fantasy makers are headed in this direction anyway, and for good reason. I just mentioned it: immersion. So, unless you are en route to a completely alien planet, the teachings of this book will be for you.

That said, feel free to ignore the guidelines as they are written. Its your art, after all And if you want to, you can always blame magic. Besides, knowing how things generally go in the real world gives you the power to judge what to change in order to craft extraordinaries and fantasy.

The strength of this guidebook is that it will show you exactly how to translate your ideas into a realistic-looking map. On the flip side, this is also its greatest weakness.

Fantasy Map Making is not a publication on worldbuilding.

Although, I will touch slightly on nation-building almost solely in relation to placing them on your fantasy map you wont find information on how to develop a fantasy world here. If that is your aim, then this is not the book you are looking for.

Since I write fantasy fiction, this is also the angle Im coming from, but know that when I use the word audience, dont read it as only pertaining to readers of fiction, but also someone watching a movie, playing a video game, or participating in a role-playing game. The contents of this book are applicable for everyone interested in creating fantasy maps.

Fantasy Map Making is a full guide, created specifically to assist you in crafting a realistic, Earth-like fantasy map.

Inside these pages are also a number of pictures. They are placed with the intention of supplying you with visual aids in the creation process. With that said, please note that the eBook version of Fantasy Map Making has been professionally formatted with the best of intentions to avoid oddly displayed pictures across different types of e-readers. If your particular device just happens to be the exception, I hope you will be forgiving. I have done my best to prevent that from happening.

Second Edition Changes

O ne of the things I needed when I began to write my first fantasy trilogy, back in 2015, was a map of my new fantasy setting, Erisdn.

I created my first fantasy world about 30 years ago and ever since, as a child, I first became acquainted with the Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, together with the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, fantasy has been a huge passion for me.

Deep down in my heart, I believe that a true fantasy novel, board game or role-playing game take your pick isnt complete without a map, so it goes without saying that this was the first item on my to-do list.

You see, Im very much a checklist type of a person. The structure of this book will prove as much.

Delving into the creating of fantasy books not only for my own pleasure, but also with the intention of selling them I found it important to create a map that would do the novels justice. I browsed through the Amazon Kindle store in search of eBooks to assist me in this undertaking. I was going to do it right this time. My home-made slapstick approach was not going to cut it for a commercial product like a fantasy trilogy.

I found plenty of books on how to draw a map, but none about how to design one. I wanted to know how to create a realistic map, so I researched how in depth.

As a result, Fantasy Map Making became the first book I ever wrote, and as some Amazon reviewers have rightly pointed out, the first edition, released on the 1st of August 2016, had some weak spots. Writing a book is much harder than it seems, but now that I have a few under my belt, I took the feedback on-board. I reinvested a lot of time, energy and money to do the content of this resource guide full justice and make it the best it can be. It deserved no less.

My hope is that the steps I have laid out in the pages to come will help you in all your endeavors to create amazing maps for your future worlds.

Its equally daunting and exciting to create a setting that will truly immerse your audience being readers or role-playing gamers and having to reinvent the wheel over and over, researching the same topic multiple times, wont make it any easier. I now give you a resource guide which has been designed for the sole purpose of carrying you through the entire process step by step.

Welcome to the new, second edition of Fantasy Map Making.