NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) kicks off tomorrow and I think I’m finally ready. The final piece that I needed, but didn’t realize it, was a solid vision of the world map for my series. I kind-of-sort-of knew where things were in a vague way. If I was going to have the characters like Cori travel in this world, however, I needed to have a real world map from which to work. So great, what do I know about map-making?

Start With What You Know

So I started from what I knew. I needed a large land mass that I could work with in the beginning. A short google search, and looking at real world maps gave me the idea of chopping off part of Central Asia. The challenge was that I still needed a map that wouldn’t be instantly recognizable to people who knew their geography. India is a pretty recognizable peninsula.

I decided to do something daring and do some image manipulation. I flipped the continent upside-down. Voila! Instant fantasy world map of the continent. I spent some time drawing in the country borders based on my vague world view of things and the result is a world I can work with.

We’ll discover it together as the writing starts tomorrow morning, first thing. I’ll eventually get a clean version of this map from a designer to place in the books. You get to see my world with my chicken scratch lines and notes first. Just look here below. You can also check out the story with daily (usually) updates as I complete chapters of the first draft of “Legion On The March.”