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Feeling stuck with my fantasy map after 9 revisions
Last month I started a new fantasy story and spent a week drawing the map for it. I thought the mountain range in the north made sense and the river split looked cool. But now I am on revision number 9 and every pass makes the geography feel less real. My beta reader from Ohio said the capital city has no reason to exist where I put it, no river or trade road nearby. That hit me because she was right, I just wanted it centered for looks. I tried using a random town generator for inspiration but the names clash with my world's style. Has anyone redesigned their whole map after already writing chapters that reference those places? How do you keep the story from breaking when you move entire cities? I am thinking of just setting the story in a smaller valley to cut down the size of the map, but I worry that kills the epic feel.
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gavin_kim1d ago
Heard a writing podcast once where the guy said most fantasy maps get fixed by rivers and roads, not by redrawing the whole thing. Like, plop a trade route through your capital and suddenly it makes sense. Shrinking to one valley could actually make it feel bigger since you can pack more detail in.
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betty_perry241d ago
That trick works everywhere. Draw a road or a river on a blank page and your eye fills in the whole landscape around it. Same reason a town map with just one main street feels more real than a huge empty grid.
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