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job is to ask questions: Why is there no major city along the banks of the largest river? Who controls the islands off the west coast? What are the isolated people of the southern peninsula like? What is the climate like in each region and how does it affect the people? What is the country that is entirely made of mountains like? Who trades with whom, and what do they trade? What routes do they take? Who is at war with whom? Why? These questions can go on and on - and any world you create will be the better for it.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
You have a map, you've named all the countries and cities and peoples, you know who's fighting with whom, who's in league with whom, and what the weather is like at any point on the map. You have a world now, right? Not so fast. This is only a starting point - you're quite a ways away from a world yet, much less a story. But you have a seed, a thing to spark your curiosity and get you to ask the questions that need to be asked. And you have to ask a lot of them.

Orson Scott Card used this technique in conceptualizing his novel Hart's Hope, and he often doodles maps to spark ideas. If you've hit a block in your story, drawing a map of the places involved can be just the thing you need to open up the blockage. You can map out whole continents, or just a country, or even just a city or village - maybe even just a castle or mansion, if that's what seems to have captured your fancy. You don't have to create cartographic masterpieces, but if you can jump-start your creative process and have fun at the same time, that's a masterpiece in itself!

Learn more about this author, Jennifer Doneske.
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