Google Maps for Urban Fantasy Writers

Parametric · Jan 8, 2011

At Bristolcon 2010, I attended a great talk by Eugene Byrne on the weird stuff you can find in Bristol: urban myths, fictitious streets, wandering statues, etc. Just to add a feather to the cap of awesome, he used a customised Google map with little pointers to show us where to find everything.

I nearly fell off my seat. Customised Google maps are brilliant for anyone writing an urban fantasy set in a real city - mine is set in Bristol. I made it my mission to figure out how to create my own. Now I can share with you!

Go to Google Maps (US, UK).
Click on My Maps in the left-hand corner of the blue menu bar.
Click on Create New Map.
Give your map a name and optionally a description, and choose a privacy setting - I set mine to private so that only invitees can see it.
To add placemarks, grab a blue placemark from the top left and drop it on your chosen location, which you can find using the search bar. You can give the placemark a name and a description, and you can also tag it with photos and video.
To show a journey your characters take, use the line symbol to the right of the blue placemark.
When you want to save, click Save on the left-hand panel. You can now find your map listed under the name you gave it whenever you click My Maps.

Have fun mapping!

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?hl...542505472635043885.00049843d53a49774edd1&z=15

Oberon89 · Jan 8, 2011

This is awesome, thank you! I'm going to go play!

WritingDemons · Jan 8, 2011

Like I needed something else to distract me from writing.

hillaryjacques · Jan 8, 2011

Oh, this is great fun. Thanks, Para!

GenevieveGoth · Jan 27, 2011

That is mildly awesome... especially for those who might need a little visual guidance with things. Like me!

Sagana · Jan 30, 2011

OH, and here I'm wasting all this time hand-drawing maps. This is soooo wonderful. Thank you!!!

bySD · Feb 12, 2011

Sweet! I've been needing something like this.

tarak · Feb 17, 2011

This is wonderful! My WIP is set in part in Erie, PA. I have no desire to drive there and research it. Especially in February.

bettielee · Feb 17, 2011

Yeah. I really want to use San Francisco for my setting... but I feel so uncertain using a real place. I've never done it before!! *quakes*

This could help... but I still have some very specific settings, I don't know if I can find real places to slip in place of them...

but thank you.....

tarak · Feb 17, 2011

bettielee - you could try a mapeasy guide to San Francisco. They're hand drawn (I think) maps of the city with shops, restaurants, etc. plotted in.

BradCarsten · Feb 18, 2011

tarak said:
This is wonderful! My WIP is set in part in Erie, PA. I have no desire to drive there and research it. Especially in February.

another great idea is to use google street view, where you can literally walk down the street, and view all the shop fronts and houses.

artemis31386 · Feb 20, 2011

That is so cool. Very helpful for crafting worlds.

Oberon89 · May 13, 2011

Hee!

I made one for my book and it really is pretty easy! Also made one for book two and traced out a chase route—that was way cool! For people who want to visit the setting of a book, this sort of thing would be so much fun!

Satchan · May 13, 2011

Why hello there, London.

Yāoguài · May 13, 2011

Oberon89 said:
Hee!

I made one for my book

Don't you have three of them? Probably hoping to protect us from spoilers, I guess. I'll take a look at the map once I've finished reading the book, either today or tomorrow. (It's a fun read, by the way, and thanks.)

You're right though, about the books and series. It'd be wonderful to have an online geographical tour of the cities where my favorite series are set.

Yāoguài · May 13, 2011

As far as the mapping goes, I prefer flashearth.com . I don't think you can customize the locations, but I like the representations of the buildings better, and I like the visual inclusion of data (such as arrows pointing in the direction a one-way street goes).

Anne Lyle · May 14, 2011

Not just useful for modern-day stuff, either!

I use Google maps a lot in my writing, mainly the satellite stuff. I find it essential for plotting distance by non-modern methods - like how far it is along the Thames by boat from Westminster to Richmond, or even how far from London to Venice by sea via a particular route.

Cae-sar · May 14, 2011

oh wow thanks a bunch! this is brilliant.

juniper · May 20, 2011

Cool, but I wish there were a version for non-real places. My primary location is all fictional. I've drawn a rough map, to keep me from moving the spots around, but a Google map would be so much more fun.

Anyone know of a free or very low cost map drawing program? For Macintosh.

Paul Anthony Shortt · May 21, 2011

As far as I'm aware the Google Maps function can be used on custom-designed map images. I saw one done with a map of Middle Earth once, I just can't remember where or how it was done.

TAndry · May 21, 2011

I'd love to have a way of building a fictional city for my stories. Just to keep things straight.

Yāoguài · May 21, 2011

Paul Anthony Shortt said:
As far as I'm aware the Google Maps function can be used on custom-designed map images. I saw one done with a map of Middle Earth once, I just can't remember where or how it was done.

Looking around, I found this, but I haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

Anne Lyle · May 21, 2011

juniper said:
Anyone know of a free or very low cost map drawing program? For Macintosh.

Sorry, no - I did look hard a while back, but the only decent fantasy mapping program I could find is Campaign Cartographer, which is Windows only. I used it with Fractal Terrains on my son's PC for a while to auto-generate some whole-world maps.

On the Mac, you're basically stuck with regular drawing programs. I use The GIMP for most of my image-manipulation - it's a port of the Linux program, so doesn't work quite like a native OSX application, but on the plus side it's free. No idea what it's like for drawing maps, though.

TAndry · May 23, 2011

Anne Lyle said:
I use The GIMP for most of my image-manipulation

Ack...The GIMP is a good description. I used to use photoshop and I've never been able to get GIMP to work correctly. I constantly feel like I'm banging my head against the wall with that program.

missouridalton · May 25, 2011

I just used google maps to build a murder map... It's super useful because now I know it works out the way I wanted and isn't completely stupid--though I admittedly felt strange plotting out murder locations on google.

Google Maps for Urban Fantasy Writers

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Reclusive doesn't begin to cover it

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for certain qualities of "sane"

I'm a sparkly fairy princess!

for certain qualities of "sane"

practical experience, FTW

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Propoganda wrapped up in a scarf.