Reader Question Day #40: Jonathan Moeller vs Fantasy World Maps

For both THE GHOSTS and the DEMONSOULED books, one of the most common reader questions is a request for maps in the books.

This is a perfectly valid request, since both THE GHOSTS and DEMONSOULED have large and elaborate settings. In fact, in my most recent book, SOUL OF SORCERY, one group of characters (the Tervingi) undertake a journey of thousands of miles in search of a new homeland. So I can definitely see how a map would be helpful. (The Tervingi would certainly have thought so!)

I’ve played with the idea of doing a map every so often, but I don’t think it would be a good idea. I have two major reasons for this, and four minor ones.

The first major reason is that (for me, at least – other writers may feel differently) a world map would be a creative straitjacket. The problem with creating a huge and elaborate world map is that it gets hard to add things to that map as necessary, because you’ve already established the world. You are, as it were, locked in. That makes it all the harder to think up new ideas for future books in the setting.

The best examples of this are the Malrags and the Tervingi in the DEMONSOULED books. The Malrags first appear in the third book, which I wrote in 2011, and the Tervingi in the fifth book, which I wrote this year. Both the Malrags and the Tervingi have proven to be pretty popular with the readers of the DEMONSOULED books. Yet I wrote the first DEMONSOULED book in 2001, and the second in 2005, and back then I had absolutely no conception of either the Malrags or the Tervingi. Had I created a systematic world map for DEMONSOULED back in 2001, the idea for the Tervingi and the Malrags might never have come to me, because I was locked into the map.

The second major reason is that time spent creating a map would be time not spent writing new material. The thing about being a self-published writer is that there are lots of writing-related things that are important and productive, but not as important as new writing. There are lots of tasks like that – updating your website, improving your covers, updating the bibliography and links in your books, and so forth – but none of them are as important as writing new material.

When it comes down to it, I have about two hours a day I am free to write, and I would rather spending more time writing new DEMONSOULED books than writing about the DEMONSOULED books – and that also applies to drawing maps.

Those are the big two reasons.

The first of the smaller reasons is that I simply don’t draw very well. I’ve tried sketching at various times throughout my life, but I’ve never managed to be more than mediocre. I suppose with enough practice I could get better, but again – that two hours a day.

The second reason is that fantasy maps occasionally bug me with geological and ecological impossibilities. Rivers shouldn’t flow in that direction, mountain ranges very rarely present in straight lines, and in many fantasy maps, there are vast stretches of land that should be barren desert because there’s no way for moisture to get to them. Or a lack of detail – if the US appeared on a fantasy map, it would be a big blob labeled “THE OLIGARCHATE OF AMERICA” with a stylized drawing of Washington DC, some trees in the east, and some mountains in the west. The US is much more complex than that.

Third, Amazon charges extra for larger ebook files (about $0.07 a megabyte), and maps can get pretty big. So the smaller the ebook file, the better.

Finally, the level of detail required would be prohibitive – do I do every village and castle and hill? Plus, there’s that straitjacket thing again – if I leave big sections of the map blank, it looks like a cop-out when I fill them out later.

Some of these problems might be solved by adequate software. Like, if I found a good mapping program that permitted commercial use, I might be able to do a map. But for now, I think it’s a better use of my time to write more, rather than make a map.

-JM