Once I have a rough map of a country, city or town I start thinking about its landscape. This might involve creating a topographical map or making notes about its climate and terrain. I often start looking at pictures at this point – there are so many lovely photos available on the web!
Landscape has always been a source of inspiration for me – the giant trees of the redwood forests, the misty sweep of Puget Sound, the old castles I visited in Scotland. One of the big differences I have noticed between landscapes in the United States and those in Europe and Asia is that the obvious layers of civilization are far more noticeable on the latter. Though we have ancient native civilizations here, they are much smaller, fewer and less elaborate than in other places around the world. Landscapes in the US often fell much wilder for this reason.
At the moment I am working on the country of Hynovia which is somewhat based in the eastern Mediterranean. For inspiration I have been looking at pictures of Turkey which has both stunning landscapes and fascinating ancient buildings. Here are a few of my favorites - they are linked to their original sites:
I always begin world building with a map. I sit down with a piece of paper a draw a country, a city or just a field with a house on one side and the entry to a forest on the other. Even when I start a story without a map, the moment I have to figure out something about the physical space, I start drawing a diagram of the house or the path of the river or the city streets.
I drew the map of Idhua a long time ago - spreading out sheets of graph paper on the dining room table and shading in woods and rivers with my mother's Prisma Color pencils. Eventually, I decided I wanted the ease of editing on the computer. I didn't have a scanner so I took digital photos of the map.
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| Jigsaw of the Photos |
Since then I have generated political, historical and topographical maps - zooming in to country or city, zooming out to mark oceanic currents.
I like to know where I am located. I have a good sense of direction and am usually correct when I try to locate north. I like it also when I am reading to look at maps and diagrams on the cover leaves and trace the journey I am reading about. Perhaps this is why I seek to understand the space I am writing in as the entry into my fantasy world. I want to know how far it is to the sea or how close to the edge of the Forest, as the physical landscape is a powerful anchor and influence for a person. As I am rooted in the various landscapes of my childhood, my adulthood and my travels, so I want my characters to belong somewhere – or if they don’t, to be able to explore where it is that they don’t belong.
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| Recent Topographical Map |
