Been lurking, just joined

[Straf]

Greetings everyone

I've been trying to draw maps for quite a few years. I've started several fantasy type novels but every time I decide I need a map I end up stalling*. I have tried using AutoREALM to create outlines but my maps ended up looking a mess as soon as I tried adding features. So I decided to try GIMP as I read quite a lot of people on this site use it. I followed a tutorial through on YouTube and have produced a couple of maps I can work with. So far so good

But there are a billion and one features available in GIMP and I'm only really scratching the surface. There are some pretty good maps showcased on here and some rather impressive effects. I am looking forward to learning a lot more and hopefully in time I can start giving back to the community. I've been having tremendous fun with GIMP these past few days.


* I end up stalling because I am paranoid about continuity/consistency within my stories. I need something solid to refer to and a map is one part of that. My trouble is I dig deeper and deeper into backstory - why are those people where they are? Where did they come from? When did the first settlers arrive? Who else has arrived since then? What languages are spoken? Why are the settlements where they are? Sometimes I think I'm only going to write a few lines in a notebook to explain some history or geography or something but then end up writing several pages, going into more and more detail. Then I end up having to research something to make sure I get my facts straight. And that's just backstory!

[Grover White]

* I end up stalling because I am paranoid about continuity/consistency within my stories. I need something solid to refer to and a map is one part of that. My trouble is I dig deeper and deeper into backstory - why are those people where they are? Where did they come from? When did the first settlers arrive? Who else has arrived since then? What languages are spoken? Why are the settlements where they are? Sometimes I think I'm only going to write a few lines in a notebook to explain some history or geography or something but then end up writing several pages, going into more and more detail. Then I end up having to research something to make sure I get my facts straight. And that's just backstory!

This is me to a tee when designing RPG settings for my groups down the years, .

[Mouse]

Welcome to the Guild, Straf

* I end up stalling because I am paranoid about continuity/consistency within my stories. I need something solid to refer to and a map is one part of that. My trouble is I dig deeper and deeper into backstory - why are those people where they are? Where did they come from? When did the first settlers arrive? Who else has arrived since then? What languages are spoken? Why are the settlements where they are? Sometimes I think I'm only going to write a few lines in a notebook to explain some history or geography or something but then end up writing several pages, going into more and more detail. Then I end up having to research something to make sure I get my facts straight. And that's just backstory!

I think this describes a huge proportion of everyone who ever tried to write a book, so you most definitely aren't alone

[Straf]

As a later post has showed up but my reply in this thread hasn't I can only assume that when something went wrong while trying to post that my post had indeed been lost. There's a place in cyberspace where nothing but lost 1s and 0s are forever trapped. Well those and odd socks.

Anyway I just wanted to thank you for the welcome and the reassurance that my procrastinating ways are not unique I do intend on playing NaNoWriMo this year so I can see for myself how little time I actually spend writing. I'm a bit of a binge writer, I can write nothing for days and then hammer out 4000 or so words in one session. Some of them even form sentences and one or two of those have actually made sense!

As far as maps go, for as long as I remember I have been fascinated with maps. I'd sit for hours poring over atlases, seeing where things are in relation to one another, seeing how the roads connect places together or perhaps they were built as a convenient means to escape a particular locale. I never studied geography as a subject in school, mainly because the teachers weren't exactly inspirational. I did do geology up to the old O-level standard, my further and higher educations were scientific from thenon.

I still maintained my interest in maps and started to collect prints of Christopher Saxton's county maps of England. Unfortunately I have somehow managed to misplace them as I have moved around a bit in the last 10 years. That place in cyberspace again no doubt! When mapping software began appearing on the web I was straight in there. Being able to relate the maps to satellite imagery gave me a new perspective on things. I took a few flying lessons when that sort of thing was a little more affordable and my instructor said I had a natural ability to navigate as I pointed out various roads and features. So in that moment I knew those hours spend studying for fun had paid off. It still surprises me today, however, when I go on a walk somewhere and then look at the map to realise how not in a straight line I had walked. Paths look a lot windier from the sky than they do from the ground.

I like to walk. I am surrounded by miles of forest and heathland with lots of interesting flora and fauna to enjoy. I love the way that at first glance everything looks chaotic and haphazard but it's really a fine balance of order and opportunity. I love the way nature reclaims man made structures with the pioneer species like lichens and mosses breaking down the building materials into soil and paving the way for an explosive ecological succession process. Our landscape is alive and maps are merely a snapshot of that particular moment. Coastlines change, sometimes dramatically. A walk along certain areas of the Norfolk coast in East Anglia where the sea has eroded the cliffs to such an extent that whole houses have crashed down onto the beach below. Rounded fragments of brick and tile embedded in the sand are testament. We make bricks by forming the earth into a shape we like then baking it. Nature turns up and says "Hey! I want that back" and takes it away to recycle it, to deposit elsewhere and form a new chapter in the infinite geological story of our planet.

Yet in other ways we have managed to tame nature to an extent that we can happily inhabit regions of the planet previously uninhabitable. Unfortunately we have also rendered areas uninhabitable, one particular area named after either wormwood or black grass, depending on which theory you accept, had been around since at least the 12th century but became somewhat less of a des-res in 1986 when a nuclear reactor incident rendered the surrounding area a bit too 'fizzy' and the area was evacuated. Thirty years later nature is apparently doing its best to reclaim although some residents have returned to the city whose name is taken from the local river which was rather lazily called 'tributary', or Pripyat in the local tongue.

Water has a nasty habit of frustrating cartographers. Just as you're standing back to admire the masterpiece you've created, the detail of the rivers and banks, a huge storm brings a deluge and suddenly, that river you had so painstakingly charted has shifted several feet to the left and you have to start again. It would be almost tempting to curse at this stage and perhaps the river may become known as the Bloody River. Centuries later toponymologists would be scratching their heads wondering what it could have referred to and a theory of a huge battle would be written into history.

[jambalayafore]

Welcome to the Guild, Straf



I think this describes a huge proportion of everyone who ever tried to write a book, so you most definitely aren't alone

Charlie Rose interviews book authors sometimes on PBS. I think it was with John Grisham (earlier this year?) who said that the characters in his completed books often don't end up where he first thought they would.