I love a good map. I like looking at older maps or fantasy maps, working to understand the old roads, territories, and what was considered important to the cartographers of the day. How a place is illustrated and navigated can be as telling as any other artifact. When forests, roads, and cities can be so easily simplified, these places’ stories beg to be told. How did this town come to be? Why did they avoid this forest? What made this road necessary?

I know authors who will start their stories with a map. Sometimes it’s a map of a town or city, sometimes the entire world. Maps of real and fantastic places at the beginning of a book always make me a little bit giddy because that’s the first indicator that the writer has put time into their worldbuilding, which is a sign of a good story. Having a good map can really immerse your readers into a fantasy world as an artifact they can refer to.

I love starting with a map. I feel like just knowing the geography can help create the story. Are the characters sea-side folk, used to a cool breeze over sandy beaches? Are they from the far northern mountains, dressed in thick clothing to keep the chill and the cold away? Or are they from the far inland desert, forged in scorching sands and treating water as more precious than their gold? Here are a few of my thoughts on some of my favorite fantasy maps.

1. Narnia – The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis: From the humble Lamp Post to Cair Paravail, Narnia is rife with adventure. The major landmarks that will become familiar are easy to see and the locations are easy to find. Reading these a child, one can hop quickly from place to place, even recognizing the familiarity after thousands of years (or 20 if you pick up the books again after a very long time).

2. The Stillness – The Broken Earth Series, N.K. Jemisin: The first thing that really struck me about this map was the marking of plates. Knowing what little I did stepping in, it makes perfect sense that the maps of this world would care about the location of tectonic plates. It’s a simple thing, but it tells so much about the story. There are a few important cities marked, but most of the story takes place on the road, so knowing the major areas take precedence (and even then, more for understanding where people are from rather than where they are). As we learn where the characters are in relation to one another, the scale of the map really makes the journey that much more incredible.

3. Earthsea, The Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. LeGuin: Even in a land predominantly made of water, maps are crucial aspects of storytelling. When hopping from island to island, knowing the relative location can tell a reader so much about the area, the alliances, and distances between areas. Especially when you consider that clashing wind and water currents make for storms, all these islands can make for death traps when they constantly break against the islands.

4. Middle Earth, Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien: I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say that this probably inspired my love of maps. Like Narnia, it’s easy to track the journey of our heroic hobbits. Being able to see not only the kingdoms, but towns and cities within the kingdoms makes the battles easier to track. It’s east to feel the fear as the forces of Mordor press further into Gondor and threaten the Shire. And with so many adventures going on, it helps to see where all our heroes are throughout the series.

Maps are a powerful tool for enriching the story for readers. Maps add an element of reality that can bring the story to life and–quite literally–put you alongside the heroes in the tale. Knowing how close they are to danger can make the risk that much greater and seeing how close they are to their goals really makes the anticipation for success (and fear of failure) that much greater.

What’s your favorite fantasy map?

A story’s core comes from the plot. Whether it’s a story about characters or a story about events, a true story begins with something happening. It can be as simple as a character has their wallet stolen or as complex as an attempted assassination of a young monarch. Even if the character doesn’t do anything beyond sitting at the kitchen table contemplating their lost wallet, it’s still a story instigated by something. If nothing happens in a story, there is no plot. So, where does plot come from?

For me, plot comes from conflict and breaking of usual patterns. It comes down to finding the one thing that can make the character’s day, week, or life worse and pulling at that thread. What they do from there becomes the plot. They could make allies or enemies, find a clue or get more lost, succeed or fail. The inciting incident is the plot, but the character’s choices are the story.

A good story has a “Try-Fail” cycle, where even if a character succeeds, they find their in a new circumstance. But the plot comes from the character trying, failing, trying again, and failing again until they succeed. Plot points are choices and their decisions and reactions create more plot points for them to choose between!

Recently, on my twitter, I started playing a Choose Your Own Adventure story that I wrote out. Combining the challenge of interesting choices and hyper-short format, I find that the most interesting thing is what people choose. Sometimes, it’s an undisputed agreement. Sometimes, people will lead one way or the other (requiring me to make a coin flip to decide where the story goes). It’s fun to think about how this is all spreading all the way that people naturally want to explore the space of a story.

What makes a good story for you? Does the character need to succeed after a certain number of tries or does the uncertainty make you want to keep reading? Is the hope of success enough to overpower the fear of failure?