It is cool when characters say the length of time needed to travel from point A to point B, but it's cooler when you actually get to look at a map and see the distance they have to travel.
Yeah. He's right that not every book needs to be PUBLISHED with one, but I like making them for myself so I can keep track of where everyone is. The only problem is that I'm absolutely terrible at it.
I want to see a character that is a cartographer, that loves maps. But as the story is told, characters help the cartographer to map the world. And the map at the start of book only includes the small town where the characters start off at, then the world expands as the readers go out into the world with the characters.
There is an excellent fantasy book about magical cartographers that uses maps in a really interesting way called “Flesh and Spirit”. There are two books in the series and I highly recommend them for the magic system and great character voice and development throughout the story.
I love when a great book has a great map and the characters are traveling all over. When they get to new places, I love to turn back and look at the map and watch where they've been/where they're going.
For me, I expected maps in my fantasy books because of the Conan Hyborean Age map with the shadow outline of modern Europe/N. Africa and the Young Kingdoms maps from the Elric series. I was often disappointed when I found a new book that didn't have one.
I can't help it but with Brandon's speaking cadence here and the talk of maps I am instantly reminded of that old clip of Miss South Carolina completely spacing out on stage and uttering nonsense, "Some-eh.. people out there, don't.. HAVE maps.." It's mean but would be priceless to intercut that quote after Brandon says some of his books don't have maps. 😂
In pc adventure games of old, there was a term called feelies. It refered to items included in the games box - imagine, for example, playing zelda (no, this didn't happen, this is just an example) and having an ocarina in the box. Fantasy maps, really, are feelies. They are transmedia items (they aren't exactly writing) that make the art feel more real.
Reading mistborn for the first time. And find myself going to the mad up front, just to orient myself with the directions, deffinetly helps emerse oneself in the story.
Having a map helps, even it's not published with the book as I have read stories where they screwed up the scale of how far apart things were. But had they made a map they might have been more consistent. Making the map you publish in-universe also gives you flexibility to change it. You just have to show how those in-universe individuals got it wrong until new information was revealed. This happened a lot in the real world, look at any historical map pre-20th century and you will probably find major errors compared to what we know the Earth looks like today.
I don't know about that ... I love maps in fantasy and sci fi books and any fiction set in a different world. But one of my favorite authors ever refuses to create official maps lol (Abercrombie)
@@juliprato some people are trying to normalize peed-oh-feel-ya by making it sound nicer and changing the terminology to MAP: Minor-Attracted Person. And the S at the end would just be the plural of MAP. Sorry about the messed up spelling, Big Brother RU-vid has determined that such conversations are thoughtcrime and deleted my original comment
It's cool to have written the time it takes to travel from point A to point B, but it's way cooler when you get to look at a map and see the distance they have to travel.
Maps are a must! I remember reading a fantasy novel that only had a bare bones map and whenever the MC went some place I always tried to find it on the map but as time went on more and more places were being visited or mentioned that weren't on the map! I became frustrated and immersion/suspension of disbelief was completely FUBAR.
I have a map and some diagrams of certain things in my story. I want to add the diagrams at the start of the chapter in which they will first see the thing.
The shitty thing about maps is that you can hardly see any of the important details because it falls into the crack between pages. My LotR has a fold out cover so the map is on one continuous page - I think this is the only acceptable way going forward.
Way to often (and brandon is guilty of this sometimes) you'll find a map where barely any of the places indicated on the map are mentioned in the story and conversely none of the places the characters go are indicated on the map. It's infuriating. It's ok that ypu would tease important locations from future books but having the remote village where the characters will go to in book three but not the f**ing royal palace they are headong toward in book 1, come on!
I actually like it when there are places on the map that are not mentioned in the story. It makes the world feel like it has a life on it's own, beyond the scope of the story.
@@vidarfe agreed if it's important features but as mentionned elsewhere i like to follow the main characters and look at the journey ahead when a destination is mentionned. And when i don't fibd the locations that they visit, nor any capital city but there à dozen of remote places with cool names that don't appear in book one, i find that extremely frustrating. I don't have my stormlight collection at hand but if memory serves, the world map is guilty of that.
@@thomasfevre9515 3 months late but I do have mine on hand and nah. All the major locations (national borders, capitals, citystates and geographic features) are indicated on the map, at least by my reckoning. Minor geographic locations of character/narrative import however aren't necessarily. There's a bit to remember that's mentioned in this short, the maps (& other illustrations) in Brandon's work are specifically framed as in-universe material rather than just being there as a tool to assist the reader.
Well if your going to tell me a story in a made up fictional world, I need maps and info about the world. I think it helps it feel more flushed out and easier to get into
Holy sht scared the fk out of me bro. The internet has turned my brain into mush and I swear for a second I read the title and my mind went to he "maps" on twitter .. P.s. I LOVE Joe Abercrombie's books. One thing that bothers the f out of me is that the guy refuses to make maps. We basically only have fan drawn maps. They are great and pretty accurate.. but not truly accurate. I don't care if maps are corny and I get that maps are a lot of work man.. it means you need to be super consistent in your travel stuff and places and regions etc etc. But it ads a sense of realism to the world and grounds the world. I don't care if you are writing cyberpunk or fantasy or even sci fi .. I feel like if you're creating a new world, it's kinda important to add a map to the book. And honestly I personally prefer a loose map in the book. Because that allows me to have the map next to me while reading and I don't have to constantly go to the back of the book to see the map. That said I can excuse not having a map in a very expansive sci fi world. If your story plays in like 20 planets it would be an insane amount of work not to mention the galaxy map etc.
These days every new YA fantasy with no nuance and no well-thought-out world-building gets intricate maps that you don't even feel the need to look at because that's how poorly done the world is.
