Friday Fun-Day Writing Prompt: Mapping Your World

TGIF! Well, TGIS, now. Halloween is on Wednesday, NaNoWriMo starts Thursday, and Americans will soon begin the countdown to and preparations for Black Friday–oh, and Thanksgiving. It’s definitely a busy time of year. That doesn’t mean any of us should neglect our writing, though. (I’m pointing fingers at myself here.) That’s why I decided to bring back the Friday Fun-Day Writing Prompt this week, to help people to shift their focus back to their writing in time for NaNoWriMo. I also think that the topic of this week’s prompt is a rather fun one: mapping your world.

Fans of fantasy and science fiction are no strangers to mapping a fictional world. A lot of fantasy and science fiction writers have done it, including J.K. Rowling. It helps writers visualize their worlds and keep track of where different events in a book occur. It can also help with general world building as physical geography influences how different societies evolve.

However, mapping a world does not just help fantasy and science fiction writers; the benefits don’t even stop at speculative fiction in general. Any work of fiction in which the location is also fictional could benefit from a visual map. It can help writers remain consistent in where things happen, what those areas might look like, and, of course, where in the world certain landmarks are located. Unless you’re using a real location–in which case, you might want to look at a real map of the place–you’ll want to put your ideas onto paper as a sort of visual guide.

That brings us to today’s prompt. Rather than focusing on actually writing, this one will be about planning. As usual, the prompt itself is simple. All I want you to do is map out the fictional world for your current WIP, or at least part of that world. You can draw the entire world or just one city, so long as key events for your WIP occur in this area. Sketch the key landmarks, cities, geographical features, etc. and label them. You can also label where major plot points occur, but this isn’t required. Just make sure that you are mapping out and labeling the major features and landmarks and the rest is optional.

While I’m sure there are some of you out there computer-savvy enough to whip something like this up on a program (I most certainly am not), this exercise is better done by hand on physical paper. It can be graph paper, notebook paper, printer paper, etc. and done with a pen, pencil, paint, whatever you want; what’s important is that you do it out by hand. You’ll reinforce the visuals of the map in your mind that way. (However, I would recommend pencil over pen so that you don’t have to worry about making mistakes or changing your mind later.)

Right now you might be saying, “But I can’t draw! Or paint! Or any of that!” You know what? Neither can I! Not very well, at least. (Surprising since my maternal grandfather was an artist who did everything from highly-detailed portraits to architectural plans.) Nevertheless, I’ve done this. In fact, I did one for the world in my current WIP a few years back when it was the setting for a different novel series that I had to put on the back burner. I had a lot of fun drawing it, and mapping out the world got my creative juices flowing and helped me figure out some plot points that weren’t working out logistically beforehand.

You don’t have to be a good artist in order to map your world; all you have to do is try. After all, unless it becomes a bonus feature of your published novel someday, you’re the only one who has to see and understand it!

Before you ask, I will update this post to include a picture of my map once I find it. In an ill-planned cleaning spurt a while back, I put the notebook that had it in a storage container and now I can’t find it for the life of me. Once I do, I’ll let you see it!

When you’re done mapping your world and if you’re feeling brave, feel free to post a picture of it in the comments below. I’d love to see what’s going on in everyone’s heads!

Happy mapping, and I hope to see some of you over on NaNoWriMo next week!