M Is For… Maps! – by Rachel Wilder!
My partner in crime, Rachel Wilder, has some thoughts about maps for you. Rachel, take it away!
This turned out to tie in with the previous post. I guess great minds think alike!
Maps are great in preventing you from getting lost and are also useful in that respect, when an author is writing. Engaging characters and a well thought out plot are huge factors for a successful good story. Setting is right up there in importance and maps can help in that regard.
I love road maps for many different things when I write. From telling me how long that car trip is going to take, to where a side street is for our hero to rush out and rescue our main character. Another useful tool is a simple, pencil drawn home-made map for a setting.
This is from Burning Bright, a male/male romance penned by A. Catherine Noon and yours truly.
Sasha approached the street corner. This side of the brick building housing the Factory lay quiet and unoccupied, its exterior lights out. On the other side of the narrower street, empty windows stared at him. Too rattled to read the name of the business on the placard, he turned right and glanced back after discovering no parking lot with his Chevy waiting.
“Hi.”
The voice startled him and he stopped short of running into the muscular chest of a man, who stepped out from a doorway. He wore a leather trench coat over jeans, Russian gang tattoos visible on the naked skin of his upper torso.
“Fuck,” Sasha blurted.
The sketch above was invaluable in keeping us- and the action – right where we needed it to be. Don’t worry about the level of your ability, just have fun and grab a pencil.
What a great post! Excellent follow-on to L for location.
I have gotten lost many times. Once, hiking alone on a rather large trail set, I made a wrong turn and struggled to beat the setting winter sun. Over the years I have learned not to panic. Oh, and did I ever tell you about my guardian angel?
I love maps of all kinds. Changing maps of Europe. Maps of antiquity. Maps of fictional places. But I also like my GPS.
Stephen Tremp
A to Z Cohost
M is for Movies
I also love old map designs, like on cards and stationary etc. Darla, that sounds like the tag line of a story!
Sat nav will never replace the real thing! Well, it probably will, but I'll stick to those paper jobs you can never get to fold back the way they started!
There's a neat shop here in Evanston, Illinois, USA, that carries all sorts of maps – antique ones, cartographic research, etc. Their website is here: http://www.ritzlin.com/; and they have an online gallery. It's heady stuff.
I find that orienting myself on paper is much better than trying to do it on a GPS. I've used a GPS and all but given up on it because of how many times it's not been just a little wrong, but a LOT (like the time it sent us to the police station on the wrong side of town instead of our hotel).
Yes, and I'm not too bad at reading maps! Liked the example you used, not an over use of description and plucky, enough to keep us engaged. Lisa, co-host AtoZ 2015, @ http://www.lisabuiecollard.com
Delighted that I have begun to follow you.
I get lost all the time, too. 🙂 No sense of orientation at all. Funny that I draw a map for my story world, manage to write the setting correctly, but in real life I'd get lost around my house. 🙂 I loved reading your post, and the excerpt you added!