World-Building Workshop ~ Terrain and Maps

AUTHORS:

This is the second posting in this series.  To read the first post, click here:

Naming Your World and Choosing a Heirarchy

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TERRAIN AND MAPS

After you name your world and think of it's government (you don't need to go into details right now, just decide if it's a monarchy, a democracy, a dictatorship, etc...), then you need to think of the terrain.

One of the easiest things to do for this exercise is to literally draw yourself a map. Now, since no one else is going to see this map, you don't have to worry about it being artistically perfect. :) All you want to do is lay out mountain ranges, rivers, oceans, lakes, and maybe the locations of some cities.

Now you can name these as you go, our you can name them at a later date, but terrain can give you some wonderful ideas on your world's history, as well as trade routes and port cities.

In my world's terrain, I have two mountain ranges.  One is named the King's Mountains and the other range is called The Mountains of the Night. This mountain range is also known as The Dragon's Death Mountains. Now, my second mountain range has two names due to some local folklore, which you can think of later when we cover your world's history. But for right now, I want to give you some ideas of what I've done.

There's a road in my world of Lyndaria called the Merchant Road, the main road that leads goods from the coast inland to other cities, branching out in all directions. The castle sits on the top of high cliffs that overlook the pounding waves of the Silver Sea.

Names of my cities include:

Marynville

Stollinshire

Breckenwood

Winterborne

Tabrinth

Korenth

Krey

You get the idea. Names of cities don't have to be all that spectacular. Some of the cities named above are actually small villages. So you can decide whether they are large cities or small hamlets. I also have a few lakes and rivers dotting the landscape. You're going to want to plot out your world so you can better understand distances between two points if your characters decide to travel and also to know where they are going.

Don't worry about naming your terrain at the moment unless you want to. I know some people are horrified at the thought of naming even their characters!  :)  But just do a sketch of your world's terrain so you can better understand your world and invent a history and customs and peoples. Names can come later.

So bust out the blank paper and colored pencils and start coloring! Decide where you want your terrain to go and then we can move on to the next step!

~~Becka

http://www.rebeccagoings.com