Worldbuilding: An exercise in excess: Geography part 1 Suppliment

Worldbuilding is a fun and rewarding exercise, even when done for its own sake. It presents a great opportunity to learn so much about the way the world around us works, from geography to the formation of states, history to religion, trade to warfare.

We could then take what we learn, and push it even further, creating great opportunities for story telling about the human condition, and human behaviour when things are slightly changed from normal.

I would argue it is possibly the strongest selling points of most speculative fiction. From Fantasy and Sci-fi to dystopian, the possibilities created when we break the shackles limiting our imagination to earth are endless.

From Westeros to Middle Earth all the way to Harry Potter’s England. From Dagobah and Tatooine in the Starwars universe, to the vast Star trek Universe, there is something about these worlds and the people who inhabit it that keep us wanting to know more.

I began this series where I begin all my worldbuilding, with the map. I find that the map helps me understand the region or whole world better.

Looking at the map, the history of the region begins to write itself. By drawing the landmass, and placing down important geographical features you begin to figure out the borders of the states that inhabit the region, as well as possible sources of conflict.

When it comes to drawing maps, I tend to default to drawing the coastline first. I have however seen many people leave that step till towards the end, and both methods have their merits.

In addition to the technique I used for drawing this coast, for people who have troubles creating random coastlines, there are some techniques which could help generate different looking maps time after time.

1. Scatter small dots around the page, and play connect the dots. This method works great if you already have an idea of what you want it to look like, but are having trouble getting a realistic looking coast. The randomness of your dots will give you a nice random coastline.
2. Scatter sand/grains/beans/dice on the page, and trace them. This works when you want a truly random landmass. I can assure you no matter how hard you try, you wont have two land masses that look alike. If you don’t like it, you could always try it again.
3. Take coastlines/borders from earth, and just flip them sideways, or upside down, invert them if you’re feeling adventurous. I can assure you next to no one would notice if you took the outline of lake Michigan, the amazon forest, or the Indian subcontinent, and just flipped around.

As far as mountains go, there are many different techniques for drawing them. From top down views to simple inverted V shapes, shaded, or snowcapped. It is mostly a matter of preference how you choose to draw them.

You have to remember though that:

1. The map is a representation of the area, it isn’t perfect. You do not need to get the scale of each mountain perfect, nor do you need to know the names of every mountain on the map.
2. Mountains often have many peaks and valleys, and it is difficult in reality to say where one mountain ends, and the next begins. in reality, it it the peaks of many mountains that are named, not the base.
3. While unlikely, it isn’t impossible to find isolated mountains. These could be as a result of isolated volcanic activities, or a thin crust in the area. Besides if you’re building a world for speculative fiction, there are always other reasons why geographical features are where you wouldn’t expect them.
4. Because the plates move, there are older mountain ranges, where two plates once interacted, but no longer do so. So don’t be afraid to put mountain ranges in places where it there is little seismic activity.

Those are all my thoughts so far on mountains and coastlines. To get a context for everything in this post, watch the video above where I begin building a region.