Writing Do you create a map for your story?

[Civilian]

If I was artistic enough, or smart enough to know how mountains and rivers work. Though I guess a map generator could do, cause I do need a map.

 

[wimbledon]

I don't usually make a map, since the locations are pretty arbitrary.

If you don't wanna write about traveling far away, you can either time skip a few days... or just make the place closer.

Similarly—if you think there needs to be more traveling time, you can either write about what happens along the way (which you could do with a longer journey, anyways) or make the place further away.

That aside, if I were to make a map, throwing a buncha dice around for altitude is a fun way: turn large values into mountains, low values into plains. Anywhere that dice don't land can become water (or you can just fill it with more land).

Water can either come from mountains or glacial melt, so you can use those places as the sources for rivers and streams.

Legendary creatures/heroes in your lore? Show the scars of battle in the map—craters, split mountains, etc.

 

[Sleds]

I've made one at the beginning when my story was just a draft and then my fucking mind goes "Why should we stay on the same planet? Shouldn’t we aim for the stars?"
So now my story world include the universe and I don't have any motivation to make any universe map or a map for each planet.

 

[TheKillingAlice]

Do you create a map of your world, nation, town, city, or dungeon? How do you do it?

I do. For stories with their own worlds, obviously. I use Inkarnate, because I'm really shitty at making maps. But I'm giving it my all, I guess.

 

[bulmabriefs144]

I am as directionally inept as in real life. Do you think that I won't get lost the moment I would go outside and touch grass? Most of my adventures actually came from me constantly getting lost.

 

[lupenthewolf]

I reused a map I made for a homebrew D&D setting, which since my novel was set in a world that ran on D&D rules was quite fitting. I took the original world map, which was badly colored and stuff, edited it to be much more basic. I removed the color, zoomed in on the relevant area, and added country borders and labels, and then just used that for my visual aid.

When I go back to do the rewrite of that story, I'll probably reedit the map again to have more details and show more locations. I kinda got too comfortable with using bare-bones maps 'cause that's really all you need for most D&D groups.