Morning all, I hope you had a nice long weekend. And I hope you managed to look over your list of emotions for your acts. Today, Wednesday and Thursday we are going to cover the last of our research and information gathering tasks and then Friday we are going to start pulling together our chapter break out. Today is in interesting one. Today, we are going to think about maps. Now for some of you the maps that are the most relevant involve a town lay out. Others will be mapping out entire worlds. Some of you may not map the world but need a specific route or even floor plan.
Regardless it is easier to figure out the space before you get writing. This could be a simple line sketch with places marked as dots on it or a small line sketch with street names. Sometimes it is helpful to know that Elm Street intersects with Oakhaven Avenue. Other times it is necessary to know that there are 12 miles between the inn where your questing party stayed and the forest where they are attacked by bandits.
Having the places marked and the distance thought through will help you. For instance if your characters are on foot and going at a normal walking pace, knowing how far will they travel in a day will let you know if they will be camping under the stars by the side of the road or if you need to add an inn along the route. It can also help you figure out when they meet other people or have problems crop up.
All of which can help you with structuring your events. I also makes you think about them in a slightly different way than when you were making your three act break out.
For this example I am not going to break out Bob. Although there are certainly points on his map. I am going to instead list some resources you may find handy when making your maps.
The first is obviously pencil and paper to sketch out what you need but there are always other options.
Inkarnate.com is a great site if you are building fantasy world or really any maps. It lets you create world maps as well as town ones. While it does have a paid section you can try it out for free. The free trial doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as the paid version but if you are just sketching for yourself so you can get a feel of your world and where things are located, it is a good resource to play around with. I played around with the trial for a bit and used it enough that I switched to the paid version. But that does depend on how much you are going to use it. Great site to check out though, especially for fantasy world building.
One resource I adore when setting up towns, whether reality based or fantasy/scifi, I like to start with the Library of Congress’ Sandborn Map collection. (https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps/about-this-collection/) Thes maps were originally designed as fire insurance maps and can tell you not only the lay out of a town, but in most cases the buildings are labeled as to what they hold so you can get a real life relationship between businesses. You can also look at the size of the town and figure out what resources they might have had. It is a great way to inject a little bit of reality into even the more fantastical of towns.
If you are looking to plan a route through the wilderness one resource I like to use is Alltrails.com. It lays out hiking routes so you can see them on a map. It also has pictures taken along various points and details about the route, mileage, level of difficulty. You can look up trails near you if you want to hike them (which is actually how I found the site originally and then adapted to using it as a writing resource) or you can look at different areas to see how the terrain affects various hiking ventures. I always find myself adding a little bit of extra detail when I use these maps. If nothing else they tend to spark little details I can use.
And finally if you are looking for floorplans, to be honest the best place I have found lately is Pintrest. You can search for floorplans in certain time periods and get a feel how the buildings your characters might inhabit work. If nothing else you can find out if the kitchen is next to the living room or in the basement. I find seeing the relationship of the rooms really helps me figure out how to move the characters through the spaces.
And yes some of that was mentioned in an earlier task if it sounds familiar, but it is helpful so I don’t mind the repeat and hope it doesn’t bother you.
And so, Task 32: map the spaces and places your characters will move through, figure out the route your characters take to work and mark out the street names. Plan the route the quest will take. Whatever area is relevant to your story, have pictures, websites, drawings or any other aid you need to set up the space.
And there we have it. Today’s Task. See you back here bright and early tomorrow.
Ten til Midnight 