Hi!

[The Mad Writer]

*waves* Hi, I'm a fantasy writer. I've been writing since I was nine, but I didn't become serious about it until college. I don't have any novels published yet, just a short story and a few poems. I've always loved fantasy maps, but I only just started trying to make my own about six months ago. I was mostly goofing off, then I started to make one for my current project and realized I don't have a CLUE what I'm doing, lol. I found this site while looking up how to properly add rivers, and I've spent the last three days reading about that and mountains. Today I've been drowning in climate information. Attempting this has actually made me realize how little thought I've put into my other two worlds (which is probably why they aren't done yet, ha. Although, in one world the land itself is magic, so I have a little leeway there). I'm having a lot of fun learning, and eventually I'll post a rough draft of the map .

I can't draw (seriously, at all), so I started out using Inkarnate, but last week I found Wonderdraft and I LOVE it. I managed to create my own continents with it instead of using the generator, I'm ridiculously pleased about that .

I'm looking forward to learning more from this forum!

[Tiana]

You don't have to be able to draw to make a map! Programs like Wonderdraft and Other World Mapper (the one I use) ensure that. Of course I draw maps too, but gotta say, mapping programs are super handy. I'm glad you used Wonderdraft to make a good map instead of using a generator! It's a good move forward, you'll have more control with it, even if it has some limitations that learning to draw doesn't the time saving can be huge if it's just personal projects. Welcome here.

[The Mad Writer]

Thanks Tiana! ^_^

[JoshStolarz]

Welcome to the Guild! Honestly you can draw a pretty clean and effective map just with some basic shapes. I think sometimes people see all of the amazing hand-drawn maps by very talented artists and begin to think they HAVE to draw a map the same way. And if you don't have an artistic background...frankly you know you can't do it without a lot of practice. But seriously, just begin with basic shapes and go from there. Make your mountains triangles, make your forests squigly shapes, mark your cities with a simple icon or even just a square!

HERE is a link to a map I shared on my Instagram recently.

Part of my goal was to keep things extremely basic, and see what I could do in just an hour. Obviously I have some practice, but I hope that encourages you that you don't need to be a landscape painter to make an attractive map.

All the best!
- Josh