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Posted By: kahlan Jul 20, 2001 - 11:47 am

hi everyone!
this may sound like a bizarre topic for a cambridge geographer to be studying but i decided to carry out an obscure dissertation into fantasy maps and landscapes and how realistic/important they are. do any of you know of articles about creating fantasy worlds? or do you have any comments on whether you think worlds and maps created in epic fantasy such as tolkien, eddings, jordan etc are realistic and whether the use of familiar landscapes helps you get into the story, and whether or not the maps are useful...
thanks for the help!!
vicky

Posted By: The Master Jul 21, 2001 - 02:39 pm

There are several listings in the Resource Network related to world building that you may want to check out.

As for the maps provided in many fantasy books, I do find them helpful. When characters travel a lot, it sometimes helps me figure out where they are in relation to each other.

Realistic? Not usually, at least not from a "the world is round" standpoint. Most have obscure "wasteland" or "barrier range" or "endless ocean" etc. edges to keep the action confined to an area with clear east/west, north/south zones.

Posted By: Nighteye Feb 08, 2002 - 10:46 am

I am also quite fond of maps. Especially in the Lord of the Rings, where Tolkien always talks about geographic landmarks that the characters use in different ways.
But to talk of them as realistic is maybe not the right word, look at almost any map and you will detect funny mountains, and deserts where the climate should be monsun-rainy.

Posted By: Ultamitefantasy May 13, 2003 - 10:24 pm

my maps i use in my writing must allawys be following the laws of weather and nature so it can be geologically and geography sound so it can be real as possible. allawise a good book it cannot be.

Posted By: RongFo May 14, 2003 - 01:37 pm

I started as a SF writer and only recently began writing fantasy (though I started reading in the opposite order). So, when I started worldbuilding for a fantasy novel/series, I worked out all the details of the ecology, planet, solar system, etc. as "realistically" as I could before I even started mapping. Though much of this will never come up directly in the narrative, I know exactly the size, the weather/season patterns, tectonic plates and movement, poles, nearest stars/systems, other planets in the solar system, etc. Until I finally started writing, most of my research was directed toward planetary geology.

I did, however, use a world that is mostly ocean, with a single large cluster of continents and a "ring" of islands and archipelegos surrounding the planet from one end of the continental cluster to the other--following the tectonic plate lines. This was--as the Master suggested above--a way to keep the "known world" simpler while making the "great sea" and its chain of islands a more mysterious entity to the "continental" denizens.

Posted By: Battlepaw Feb 02, 2004 - 12:29 pm

Ever try measureing the acuracy (int terms of scale) of a fictional map? I was suprised with a few. Tamora Pirce did a really good with the scale of hers, in terms of distances. Although she claimed that some places where based off real maps.