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Writer's pictureNicholas Adams

Visualizing My Stories

Writing takes up the bulk of my work, but oftentimes to do that efficiently, I need a world to put my stories in. Someplace where I can visualize characters acting alongside their environment and locations where the plot could interestingly unravel. That is where maps come into play. About halfway through the first draft of 'Lines of Light', I found myself wanting to visualize this place I had created. The world was making sense in my mind, but things were becoming too broad to jot down only in my memory. I wanted an image of my world to easily reference as I wrote so that the plot, characters, and the setting could more easily be seen working as one cohesive unit, all going toward telling a better, bigger story. After a bit of digging, I found a great tool called Wonderdraft, a software that allows you to create maps without any artistic skill. This was very handy for me.


 

Lines of Light, The Known World


This is the first draft of the world map for Lines of Light. It is still very early, with relatively little detail, and I would not yet describe it as anything close to pretty, but that is the world. This map is all and more of what I had been putting together in my mind and would quickly become imperative in helping me tell my story. In creating this map, I introduced many new locations to the world simply by putting things down in places that I thought they would fit. I cleared up a lot of the muddled ideas of cultures, cities, locations, relative distances from one another, and everything that had been floating around in my head for months. I named many places which, in my second draft, I am going back and putting into the story. More than anything, it gave me a picture of the places in which my characters were living. How long would it take to travel from one place to another? What would they encounter in their travels? What cultures and races inhabited these lands and what differences would they have to overcome? This map gave me all of that and went directly toward allowing me to tell a more immersive and gripping story.


 

Lines of Light, The World Fountain


This is a map I created for a small location within The Known World map above, an island to be specific, and my first attempt at clarifying a localized area. The World Fountain plays a big role in the story and to the development of the characters. It is a sacred place, and it quickly became important to me to have a physical idea about what this place looked like. I had a few questions to answer. Why was it sacred? What about this place makes it sacred? What are the different society's relationships with it? Do people still believe in it? Do they know it still exists? It is a mythical location that has, in many places and many cultures, fallen into legend; believed insofar as a character trusts the truth of fairytales. Naturally, this place had to represent that - a place faded to myth that does not hold the overt worldly sway it once had. Water courses from this island, feeding into the supply of the larger world represented in the map of 'The Known World' above. A great tree, the Heart Tree, grows in the island's sacred center. Even though it is at the heart of the world, it is scarcely known to be there. I cannot say much more about it, but to me, the map of this land clarifies a lot about the vast origins of this place and what kind of influence it has on the greater world.


 

Seekers of the Silver Wolf, Fahrulian Landscape


This is one-quarter of a four-part map located in the upper right, North-East corner, and the most complete section. It will eventually expand into one large map covering NE, NW, SE, and SW quadrants, and the story will explore all of the lands. For this project, I decided to make the map alongside my writing. I am five chapters into the book, and one-quarter of the map is (near) complete. This map has quickly become invaluable to my writing process. The beginning of the book begins in the city of Fahrul, as shown on the map in the red banner, and laying it out in this format has allowed me to explore the history, landscape, makeup of the city, and so many more facets of the culture that have allowed me to tell a broader, more intricate story. In the making of this map, I came up with two of the gods present in the cultures divinity. Makhilar, as pictured in the 'Gate of Makhilar' is the goddess of protection. Naturally, a goddess of protection would inhabit a gate, protecting and guarding a city, giving purpose to her power to the people of the city. Aztaan, as seen in the top right corner in somewhat small letters, is found in the location 'Aztaan's Smile'. Aztaan is the god of chaos and fortune. I gave him this spot, in the quarry, at the mouth of a pit that looks like a smile. It was given the name after how many deaths the pit claimed - you were considered lucky to make it out alive. The deaths are then blamed on Aztaan rather than the aristocracy that sends people into the quarry's mines day in and day out, giving structure to society and to the divinity.


 

many more, smaller things on these maps which have helped me with storytelling and the etymology of beliefs and ideas that every character holds. Creating maps has become an invaluable resource in helping me understand my story and, one day, helping my readers understand where it is these characters are walking, amongst who they are walking, and where they might go.


Thanks for reading.

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