Mapping

I finally gave in this morning. If Jenn is going to insist on walking around the city, then I need to have a map, even if it's rough.

It's an interesting process committing an imaginary place to paper, or screen. Partly because I don't have any software to help draw up towns :( I do have a home architect for buildings, which is handy.

I start with rough sketches on the back of a piece of paper, to get an idea of the relationships between things. It's not just a matter of drawing a rough bay and sticking a river in the middle. That puts the industrial area alongside the rich quarter. Cross out. If I move the IA to the other side of the river, the city is now split in too, and there needs to be bridges that can still allow water traffic. Try again. If the main north road is there, then that put the shops in the middle of the city, and separates out the IA and RQ, and then the river can come around like this...

It's this process of discovery that makes mapping both fascinating and frustrating. It has to fit into what I've written so far but, just like the people, the place has it's own character that won't come out until it's committed to paper.

The one building I've planned out for this world is the guard house. I got to a point where the relationships between the rooms mattered so I did a plan. I thought it was a simple place, with the front room, a barracks, a bedroom/study at the back and some storerooms. I took many pieces of paper to get building to fall into place. When I did, I discovered it had been built many years before to protect the entrance into the city. Originaly, there were 3 rendered-stone buildings -- a small guard house at the front, a barracks & a long room at the back -- all surrounded by a high wall, but over the years additionally timber rooms have been added (kitchen, storerooms etc) that connected the original three together. Very interesting. I don't know if any of that will appear in the novel, but I do have a layered, colour-coded plan showing the buildings as they are and as they were.