Maps. Real Earth or your own private fanstasy world. How do you draw a believable map? I'm sorry fans but Tolkien's Middle Earth map is c...p to me. I want realistic maps.

I've been reading George R.R.Martin's Song of Ice and Fire these past four months and I've been going through that map tens of times. At first I thought it was disappointing like Tolkien's, but then I got used to it.

The one I like best is from the book Dinotopia. That map was perfect. Flawless. That's the kind I want for my world. I have it on paper with a pencil but the style is gruesome. Especially the mountains. I don't have a clue how to draw believable 2.5D terrain.

If it's the former, the publisher will probably take care of it for you. If it's the latter, does it matter if it's 2.5D?

Unless your question is just how do I make realistic geography? In which case my advice is, look at maps of the earth and then juggle the continents around. The world is incredibly diverse. We have chains of islands, and ithmuses, and continents, and tectonic plates. Short of not including enough water, making everything perfectly geometric, or just totally obliterating the scale, I'm not really sure how you can go too far wrong?

There are early maps of North America, when they only had the shorlines mapped, that had the continent about a quarter the size it really was.

Before The vikings, seamen had to stick to the shores. The vikings would take a latitude of a location by reading the stars. Next time they wanted to go there, they would sail until they were in line of that point and sail straight.

Most "believable" maps, if we're talking Rand McNally style, are made with advanced map making software or, at the very least, Adobe Photoshop or CS. And takes a load of time (take it from me--I dated a map maker for a brief time). If this is the Dinotopia map you're referring to, then that, too, was likely done with Adobe or the like. Drawing by hand... wow. Can't even fathom.

Well, Tolkien has had several different maps, by diverse hands (or is it "divers hands"?) He drew some, his son drew some, some amateur and professional cartographers have drawn some...and a lot have been published over the years.

I usually play around with maps when forming my story ideas or when I'm world building. These I'll do by hand. Then I'll play around with Adobe Photoshop for a cooler looking version (just 'cause it's fun).

I've also heard great things about Autorealm, a freeware fantasy mapping program. I've poked around it a little bit but haven't had the patience to really work with it. I have seen some amazing maps come out of it, though. And it has nifty features--once you set the scale you can measure distance in travel time (i.e. how long it might take by horseback, on foot, etc.). Don't know if it compensates for terrain, however.

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Most "believable" maps, if we're talking Rand McNally style, are made with advanced map making software or, at the very least, Adobe Photoshop or CS. And takes a load of time (take it from me--I dated a map maker for a brief time). If this is the Dinotopia map you're referring to, then that, too, was likely done with Adobe or the like.

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And yes, that Dinotopia map was done on a computer.

One thing to think about when making your own is the logic of the landforms. Look at transition areas. Do you have a rainforest smack next to a desert? Tundra next to coastal lowland? I'm not saying you can't do that, but you'd better be able to offer a non-geographic reason. Also think about climate, and how it interrelates with the landforms. Mountains get rain on the leading side of wind, none on the lee. How does this affect the locals, or your travelers?

Cartography is the art and the science of making maps. You can be a fine artist yet put out a crappy map because you don't know the science behind it. Or you can be like me, who can crank out a decent-looking, technically correct map, but not be able to create a "beautiful" map. (I have no artistic or design skills whatsoever, ). And unfortunately, with the prevalence of computer-aided (or computer-generated) mapmaking, the art part is slowly being marginalized.

So I always appreciate the effort made to include a map in books where it's a help (unless it's totally crap, then it just makes me cringe). I especially appreciate the ones where the author (and/or others) has taken the time to do it right.

It sounds like everyone has put in their two cents, so if you've already closed the topic, go ahead and discount what I say, but as a person with a geography degree under her belt (clears throat, readies rant)

1)Land masses all develop because of plate tectonics. Either the plates smash together, or they pull apart.

2)There are two kinds of plate material: Oceanic, which is more dense and sinks low, or continental, which is lighter and can rise higher. Not all "continental" Matter is above the ocean: there's quite a continental shelf off the east coast, which makes for those lovely beaches.

3)Where oceanic plates crash together, you get arc-like islands. Young arcs have small islands. The Aleutians off of alaska are a prime example. Older island arcs have more build up of land. Japan is a great example of this kind of land form. New land built up this way is rugged and volcanic. Older island arcs will have some flatter land.

4)Where oceanic plates hit continental plates, the oceanic plates slip under the continental plates, creating a thin ridge of mountains. South America's Andes is a great example of this phenomena.

5)Where continental plates crash against continental plates, you get very high mountains, lots of earthquakes, but relatively little volcanic activity. The Himalayas are the best example of this kind of plate action.

6) Where oceanic plates pull apart, you sometimes get (usually) small islands. These are volcanic too, but are not necessarily in an arc shape. An example of this type of island . . . Well, I know Iceland is one of them, but the islands aren't usually that big.

7) Where continental plates pull apart, you get a series of ridge valleys, and perhaps lakes, depending upon the location. Eastern Africa and the Holy Land show signs of this splitting. Madagascar may have been formed by this action (I was going to say for sure, but Google earth didn't show the typical boxy ridge system associated with this kind of pulling)
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8)Water erodes land. Rivers go through everything. Even desert areas will usually have dry riverbeds which carry the water away in the rainy season. River systems usually look like trees--one main "trunk" with lots of tributaries as branches. Look at the Mississippi river as a prime example. If areas are too dry to have rivers all the time, you may find rivers that don't seem to have very many tributaries. The Nile and the Colorado (I think) are examples of these.

9)Glaciers shape land. The fantastic mountain peaks of Norway and Sweden were carved by glaciers, not formed by volcanic activity. Rivers will always form V-shaped valleys, glaciers form U-shaped valleys, which may flood as glacial ice melts to form Fjords, lochs, that kind of thing. Glaciated coastlines have lots of islands and wide river outlets forming natural bays. The coast of the North-east United states is an example. Also. Glaciers also leave behind kind of cigar-shaped hill mounds of debris piled up on relatively flat land.

10) Outliers. Almost any mountain range will have foot hills, and they can also have little groups of mountains that are outside of the main group. Don't make the mountain ranges too perfect

11)Stretching and rising: The western part of the united states was once covered by a lot of water, called lake Bonneville. That big body of water sunk quite a bit of land. It's gone now, and the land has come up and expanded, forming the basin and range system of mountains that are found in nevada and the western part of Utah.

12) Hotspots. There are magma plumes that come up through the earth's crust in various spots. When they come up under oceanic plates, you get chains of mountains that aren't necessarily arc-like such as Hawaii. When they come up under land, you get Buttes, gysers, lava flows and tubes that are entirely like usual continental volcanic activity. For examples of these, see Yellowstone Natl. Park and also look at south-east Idaho.

I think that's it for land forms. Except that continents tend to be built along the lines of triangles. If you want to know anything specific, let me know . . . I can probably look it up.

I actually find badly drawn maps rather charming. As if they're coming from a society that doesn't have all of our science. The first maps of Florida were quite horrible. But still charming.