Fantasy
Fantasy maps are never just maps. The useful ones tell you where to go. The better ones tell you what the world wants you to believe about where things are.
A kingdom that draws its borders cleanly is usually hiding something. So is one that makes the mountains look smaller than they are, or leaves the marshes vague enough to swallow a village whole.
I like the maps that feel slightly suspicious. The ones that reveal distance, power and omission at the same time. A place can be very revealing when it refuses to be precise.
A kingdom that draws its borders cleanly is usually hiding something. So is one that makes the mountains look smaller than they are, or leaves the marshes vague enough to swallow a village whole.
I like the maps that feel slightly suspicious. The ones that reveal distance, power and omission at the same time. A place can be very revealing when it refuses to be precise.
Maps can be suspicious for a much simpler reason. They are often made by people who want to be found, taxed, defended or obeyed.
The omission is usually practical before it is poetic. A salt marsh left vague on paper can be a warning, or an admission that the surveyor never went there. In a book, that difference matters. In my own draft, a route through the fens says more when the paper is uncertain than when it is neatly coloured in.
The omission is usually practical before it is poetic. A salt marsh left vague on paper can be a warning, or an admission that the surveyor never went there. In a book, that difference matters. In my own draft, a route through the fens says more when the paper is uncertain than when it is neatly coloured in.
Sometimes the map is just propaganda with better paper.
The bit that interests me is what gets made tiny on purpose. Not only borders and mountains, but railways, back roads, the place where the story actually happens. A fantasy map can be suspicious in the same way a badly designed cover can be: it tells you what the book wants to sell, not what it contains.
The bit that interests me is what gets made tiny on purpose. Not only borders and mountains, but railways, back roads, the place where the story actually happens. A fantasy map can be suspicious in the same way a badly designed cover can be: it tells you what the book wants to sell, not what it contains.