Happy New Year! My three favorite nerdy men are here to tell you to stop browsing the internet, get off Facebook, and get back to writing!

Today I’m excited to share with you 6 questions with fantasy cartographer James Hunter-Shortland! Thanks for sharing with us, James!

Would you please describe what a fantasy cartographer is for people who might not know? Who needs this?
A fantasy cartographer is essentially an artist who makes maps of fictional places or time periods. We’re not to be confused with “proper” cartographers, who create maps of Earth using techniques such as GIS (geographical information systems) – they train for a long time and their work is more of a science than an art (though they might disagree). Fantasy cartographers are mainly semi-professional and self-trained. As far as I know, there are no courses or qualifications you can go out and get if you want to create fantasy maps.

The main communities who need fantasy maps are fantasy authors and RPG companies/creators. Sometimes video game developers will have a need for a fantasy map for their game (think Elder Scrolls, Witcher 3, Dragon Age) but most have in-house art teams who will design those. Recently, another cartographer was commissioned to design a tie-in map for the movie After Earth. I was even contacted by an individual who needed “old map” sets of slides for a corporate presentation. So there are lots of possibilities and you never know where the next request is going to come from.

How did you get started doing fantasy cartography? and Why?
I pretty much stumbled into fantasy cartography out of necessity. I was about twelve when I started writing a fantasy novel and realized I wanted a map to go with it. I had grown up with great stories like The Hobbit, LOTR and a series called Redwall, all of which featured these beautiful old style maps inside. I started out imitating my favorite maps, with nothing more at my disposal than a piece of paper and a pencil. Over the years I started to experiment with graphics software. My earliest experience of Photoshop and GIMP was taking movie posters, applying various effects to them and changing the layout. Eventually, I realised that if I could import my maps into PS/GIMP, maybe I could get a better final result than I could achieve by hand.

I don’t remember when or how, but at some point I came across the Cartographer’s Guild, which is a fantastic online community of fantasy cartographers. There are so many great tutorials on there for all kinds of styles of maps. I started tearing through those tutorials to see what kind of maps I could make. Up until a couple of years ago, I was only making maps for my personal writing projects. It’s only recently that I started to make maps on commission.

What’s the easiest part? What’s the hardest part?
That’s a tricky one! I’d say the easiest part of making a map is working out where everything goes and how it all fits together. For example, mountains are like the backbone of a continent and everything else flows down out of them. Rivers are at the mercy of gravity, so they always take the least difficult path, which is usually downhill and around obstacles, not through them. Forests grow around rivers and lakes and so on. Once you get all the rules straight in your head, it becomes easier to know how everything needs to be set out.

The hardest parts, at least for me, are labeling (place names) and anything that requires me to draw anything more than mountain and tree markers! Firstly, map labels are time consuming as there are usually a lot of them. And drawing – I’m a horrible “traditional” artist. While some fantasy cartographers are also great at painting or drawing, I really focus on using digital applications to achieve all my effects. That isn’t to say I don’t do any manual drawing when I design a map. I do own a graphics tablet which I use to draw in landmasses, create geographic markers and to shade/add in fine details.

What’s the most fun project you’ve worked on recently?
Projects are always a heady mixture of self-doubt, fun and perseverance. There are elements of certain projects I have enjoyed hugely and there are others that I have hated with a passion. There are two projects that come to mind where I really had a fun time.

First was my entry to the One Page Dungeon contest (this year was judged by Ernie Gygax, the son of the late Gary Gygax), “In the Vault of the Howling Palace”. I made this weathered paper type thing that was designed to be a page from the journal of a master thief. Needless to say, I didn’t win in any category, but I really enjoyed designing that page.

Second was a map called Tar Ebon which I made on commission for author Dayne Edmondson. He had this huge write-up for his world that he emailed to me, which I really enjoyed reading and helped me shape his map. I just really love the colors and the feel of that map – it’s a world that I would really love to explore.

How can people contact you if they want to know more?
For more, you can visit my website, The Fantasy Cartographer, or head over to my deviantArt page. I also recently launched my Facebook page so I’d really appreciate some Likes!

What are you currently reading? (Or what’s the last book you read?)
I’m currently reading The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch and really enjoying it. I also devour non-fiction history books – if there’s a castle or a Roman, I’m sold!

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Thanks so much, James!

This post is part of my ABC’s of Writing Well series. We’re skipping O for now and heading directly to P because Point of View is on my mind and I want to talk about it! Ha!

Point of view, when it’s targeted correctly, when the author is truly immersed in the voice and character on the page, can create vivid, emotional pictures like this:

The Quorum chamber is low ceilinged and windowless, like a tomb. Candles flicker from sconces set in dusty mortar between gray stones. A squat oak table fills the center, surrounded by red cushions. The air is thick with unyielding silence, and I feel as though the ghosts of weighty decisions and secret councils press in around me, telling me to hush.

Rae Carson, in The Crown of Embers, pulls on her main character’s skin to conjure up this slice of perspective on a room in the palace. The room feels oppressive, suffocating, not because it actually IS that way, but because of the perspective and the emotional baggage that the main character carries with her when she crosses the threshold. You can feel her dread and at the same time her need to prove herself, to break free of those who want to use her insecurity to control her.

You’ll notice that Carson is writing in first person, a popular method of storytelling in YA fantasy and dystopia these days. First person perspective highlights the advantages of effective point of view in narrative. Using a first person perspective limits your options. You really can’t slip into a minor character’s perspective or cheat and give the reader details that your main character would never know, wouldn’t care about, or wouldn’t notice. You ARE your main character. You see what she sees. You tell us what she feels in the moment, and the effect is that the reader is drawn deeply into the scene and into a relationship with the main character.

The thing that’s REALLY hard to wrap your head around is that, in order to truly find your story’s voice, you have to do those things no matter which POV you choose. Even in third person you can (and should) put on your character’s skin and dip into her emotions, using her past and present experiences to illuminate the scene before you. That is what makes inspired writing.

And now for the obligatory example from the pages of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:

Harry dropped his gaze to the chair in the center of the room, the arms of which were covered in chains. He had seen those chains spring to life and bind whoever sat between them. His footsteps echoed loudly as he walked across the stone floor. When he sat gingerly on the edge of the chair the chains clinked rather threateningly but did not bind him. Feeling rather sick he looked up at the people seated at the bench above.

J.K. Rowling taps into Harry’s memories and emotions to paint a picture of the witness stand in the Wizengamot that chills the bravest, most defiant spirit. You can feel Harry’s anxiety, his powerlessness in the moment. He is at the mercy of people and powers that are at best disinterested, and at worst invested in his destruction. She doesn’t have to tell us these things for us to figure them out. We read it in what Harry notices, what he remembers, and how he reacts to his environment and to the other characters in the scene.

The third person POV advantage is that you can occasionally slip into other characters’ heads and write from their perspective as well. But you have to be choosy. Really examine why you need that character’s perspective to paint your picture. If you can’t come up with a compelling reason for using a character’s perspective, stick to your main character. Otherwise you risk diluting the narrative and losing your reader in the process.

If you’re having trouble with this, if you find that you keep straying from your main character’s point of view into other character’s heads, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the story, up the stakes to refocus your narrative and your main character’s goals, or decide if your main character is really your main character. It’s possible that the story belongs to someone you thought was in the background. Stranger things have happened.