This Map is an Award Winner

I think that the last contest I won was junior high school science fair. Not sure. I don't enter a lot of contests.

A couple weeks ago I came across an on-line map-making contest sponsored by ProFantasy.com, makers of great cartography software for role-playing games. Make an island, they said, about three miles across. Something like a medieval treasure map. The contest had been open for months, but was closing in just a few days. I took a look at the submissions that had been sent in thus far, decided I had a shot at winning, and threw myself into it.

Victory! As judged by Mike Schley (something of a legend in the fantasy cartography world, and someone whose maps I've been admiring for years) my map took the prize.

I worked feverishly, right up to the deadline, and actually ran out of time to put everything I wanted into the map. That's why there's no border around it, and no compass rose... But what I did manage to produce followed my vision. I wanted to have some storytelling elements that would blend with the drawing. Some secrets or clues that would only be available to those who looked closely. And an overall aesthetic that was vivid and eye-catching.

Of all the submissions, I felt that the Cloister Island map functioned best as both a visual information system and an inspiring illustration of its setting. Even though the cartographer left off a compass rose and scale bar, the overall work felt the most coherent and provided numerous levels of information. Like an onion, the island and story revealed themselves in layers, giving the reader an opportunity to explore deeper and deeper into an immersive world. On top of this, I’m a sucker for hand drawn isometric maps.  --Mike Schley

If you're interested in my process, here is what I wrote when I posted the map to the forum:

I haven't yet been paid for my skills in this arena, so I'd have to consider myself an amateur.

Virtually all of this map was hand-drawn in ProCreate on an iPad 3 using an Adonit Touch stylus. There are a few "pattern brushes" in that app which help with things like the the jungle trees and the ocean waves, but everything else is just drawn. The shape of the island and mountains isn't based on anything other than doodling with the idea of a vaguely volcanic tropical island in mind.

The cloister overhead plan was laid out in Adobe Illustrator. It's far larger, sharper, and more detailed in the original file, with many upper floors and basement dungeon levels. The "3D" isometric extrusion of the cloister is actually just faux-3D, a technique I use in Illustrator where I take the overhead plan and rotate, squash, duplicate and move by a certain amount, and then blend. I took a screen shot of that and traced over it in ProCreate.

The last step was to bring it all into Adobe Photoshop, create a "parchment background", lay out the various pieces, and add in the text elements. Then I did save-for-web and picked settings that looked good but kept the resulting file under 2 MB.

The cloister itself is about 300 feet on one axis, making the hypotenuse around 500 feet. Since you can line up 30 of the little cloister images end to end and have them stretch from one side of the island to the other, the island winds up being about 3 miles across.

Why maps?

From time to time I've heard readers of fantasy lament the inclusion of a map at the beginning of a book. Such a tired cliche, they say. How sad that, ever since Tolkien and Lewis, every fantasy author feels the need to include a sketchy layout of their imagined world.

A few of these critics admit that a map might be acceptable so long as it has a real, in-story reason for being there. Witness, for instance, Thorin's map leading to the Lonely Mountain, with its nifty moonlight lettering of secret instructions. The map's mentioned in the book. So it's ok.

Here's the thing. This is Secondary World fantasy we're talking about. Fantasy that takes place in an alternate reality bolstered by a "secondary belief" that the author (hopefully) evokes in the reader. We don't need maps for narratives that take place in the space of our primary belief, do we? We don't need a map of Harry Potter's England...it's just England. Open an atlas. Go to GoogleEarth. If we're told that James Bond takes a private jet from Heathrow to Monaco so that he can play baccarat, we can picture that trip. But if we're told that Eddard Stark needs to get from Winterfell to King's Landing, we have no context without a little cartography.

We take for granted the layout of the real world, our mother Earth. We can't do that for imagined worlds. These maps are necessary details that enrich the experience of the novel.

And maps are cool.

A Sample PDF for Sharing

I've put together a little sample packet in PDF form, representing the most current revisions of chapters one, two, and three. It also has the nice new map, and an updated graphic for the title. 

 Here is a small version of the PDF, with lower-resolution graphics.

Here is a high-res large PDF, where you can see the map in full glory. 

This is the kind of thing I'm happy to distribute, and I encourage all of you reading this to share. It's copyrighted work, but I'm issuing these three chapters under a creative commons license. This means you're free to share it around, print it up, etc. I'm a full believer in the try-before-you-buy philosophy.

Those of you who've read "revision one" of these chapters will find some interesting new material that hooks into later chapters in the novel. 

Mapping the Novel

Here's a map I've been working on for a while, detailing the section of my novel's world where most of the first book takes place. It's the result of some experimentation, lots of inspiration from web sites like Cartographer's Guild and Deviant Art, and informative tutorials from people like Jonathan Roberts at FantasticMaps. Just as with the writing, my style is evolving and improving the more of it I do (funny how that works.)

In the map you can see the trail that Dal, Sven, and Lars travel in the foothills above the Wetwood. You can see the hint of the ruins of Krona-Pri were the ambush happened, and the rescue attempt is made (you haven't had a chance to read about that yet). Sorn village is there, where Copper and the rest meet up with Furg, their guide to the swamp... 

Incidentally, should you wonder how a swamp could fill a highland area near a cliff, here is the explanation. The area of the Wetwood is a vast and shallow basin, lined with clays, and the cliff region is raised slightly, forming a lip (except where the great waterfall drains the flow from the swamp and empties into the Weftal by Everreed.) I was inspired a bit for this "high swamp" concept by the boggy area on top of the island of Kauai, which drains into a spectacular canyon. 

Everything was drawn by hand in on the iPad in ProCreate, the best drawing program available in the App Store.  I use a stylus when I draw, usually an Adonit Touch or a Hex3 Jaja. The text labels are the only thing that was done in Photoshop.

Questionable Advice

Some things we do are complex. It’s natural to seek advice about “the right way” to do them from those who have gone before, especially when first starting out.

Imagine you know little of carpentry, but have ambitions. You could go to Domicile Depot, buy a bunch of wood and nails, then set about building yourself a house. With decent problem-solving skills, you might be able to throw up a structure able to withstand a stiff breeze. You’d likely be in for some discomfort the first time it rained.

Humans have been building shelters for…oh, let’s say fifty-thousand years. Load-bearing mammoth tusks supporting hide roofs. There’s been a lot of progress on that front in the intervening centuries, and that progress was passed down as knowledge, and much of that knowledge has been recorded. Luckily for you, some of it is almost certainly recorded in a language you can read.

It would be foolish or arrogant—or both—to plow right into a complicated endeavor like home construction without at least trying to partake of that font of knowledge. We’re social creatures who learn from each other. In fact, we’re the acme of the animal kingdom when it comes to learning from each other. No need to reinvent all those metaphorical wheels: just draw upon the best practices of the past.

Picking the best advice is important, of course. Lots of people are sharing their expertise, but some are more expert than others. Some are charging for their advice—nothing necessarily wrong with that—but that poses another question: is it worth the cost? Sometimes free advice from a master is far more valuable than a paid class taught by a poseur.

Being a humble learner, an eager padawan, an honest seeker of truth impassioned to acquire expertise, you look for tutorials, demonstrations, treatises, and blueprints. You find blogs or YouTube videos by those who have gone before you and want to give back. You look closer and closer at the objects of your passion—the instantiations of your chosen craft that you encounter in the world—and you find yourself peering beneath the surface detail as though you were gifted with x-ray vision, picking out the bony scaffolds that give the thing its structure.

I do, at any rate. My big, complex task right now is becoming an author. I want to write fiction that people want to read, stories that people love, novels that inspire and entertain. For decades I’ve been looking intently at stories, narratives, films, and books, wondering what made them tick and what factors made a few of them great and many of them not-so-great. For the last few years, I’ve been drinking in all sorts of writing advice. Most of it being the free kind, in the form of blogs, magazine articles, podcasts, etc.

I’ve had that wide-eyed expression throughout that time: sucking it all in, finding some bits more valuable, more applicable, than other bits, taking it all “under consideration,” so to speak…

There’s a milestone you reach with regards to advice when you’re practicing your craft. Well, there are many milestones, but there’s this one that just struck me: you get to a point where you can disagree. You reach a stage where, still listening to all the advice you can, you suddenly find you know enough to argue back. You see the short-sightedness in something you’ve been told.

I was reading a writer’s blog of advice on novel revisions. Novels are big things, tend to be terribly complex, and always need lots of revision. And I was following along, point by point, going down the list, thinking: “That first point is good. Yep, and that second point is something I already do. I use the technique this third point is describing without having to think about it. I’m doing the next one as well. Wow, I’m already doing most of the things this person is recommending. In fact, if I were put on the spot and asked to give my own novel-writing-and-revising advice, I’d be echoing much of this advice.”

Then I came to a point I disagreed with. And I knew why. I knew that the advice was generally good, and would have been useful to a novice, perhaps…but it was over-broad. If followed slavishly, the rule would produce a novel without enough stylistic variation. I wouldn’t have had the perspective to see that a year ago. I wouldn’t have had the experience that a couple hundred thousand good words gives me. I wouldn’t have noticed many great writers breaking the very same rule, to good effect.

I think the same thing happens for everyone who tries to do something that takes a great deal of education to get right. There’s a moment when you move from being someone who knows so little that all advice is welcome, to someone who knows enough to be able to debate a point or two. You become someone who can tell that some advice is flawed, and can point it out. It’s kind of a great moment to experience.

Lastly, let me state that, should I live to be 100 and have scores of novels to my name, I’ll know there’s still lots for me to learn about the craft of writing. There’s always more to learn, and always someone new to learn it from. This is post isn’t about not needing to learn anymore, or not needing any more advice—it’s about that cool transition when you become someone who is more of a participant in your craft than an ambitious beginner.

If you're going to use irony, make sure you really mean what you say.​

Assailing Daisy's Essay

Last year, when monologist Mike Daisy was lamely trying to defend the fabrications in his story about Chinese workers assembling Apple products, he tried a number of defenses. He affected a post-modern stance for a while and pointed out that truth was fuzzy, and relative. Sure, buddy.

Then he took a different tack and pointed out that he's an essayist, and that the word "essay" means "to attempt"...so he should be allowed to attempt a description of Apple's labor practices in China, even if that attempt failed in terms of the facts. He only claimed to be trying, you see, not succeeding.

But he's more wrong than he knew. Because "essay" actually comes from late Latin, the verb exigere, meaning to ascertain or weigh. When the form of the essay was being developed by Montaigne, in 1500s France, the Latin exagium (weighing) had become Old French "essai", meaning "trial".

Now, in terms of activities like artistic endeavors, there is a modern sense that "an essay in the craft" is merely an attempt to make something in a particular mode, or with a certain method. But this is applied to efforts and actions, and is a different sense of the word from the "piece of short writing on a subject".

The true root of "essay", especially in the form of the written document, does not, and never has, translated to "something immune from judgment because it's just an attempt"—though I know from experience that this is a common definition in many classrooms. No. It means: To put an idea to the test. To bring reason to bear in a non-fiction, long-form argument, giving the notions within a careful weighing. To put a concept on trial.

If I were a philosophy professor grading Mike Daisy on his apology (in both senses), I'd mark him guilty of the fallacy of equivocation.