I need a Cartographer!

I'm not a cartographer, but I have a suggestion. Use one of the Orkneys or Shetlands and make up a name for it. That'll get you started, anyway.

If it is set in an actual place, then use an actual map. I have read many books that referred to real places, and there were real maps included. The only problems you would have with that would be if you gave the street location as something that exists, unless that it a public building. So you could refer to the post office in Dublin, but mentioning the address of my uncle in Sligo would be a problem.

I have done work as a surveyor and cartographer (years ago). You don't really need a cartographer for what you're doing.

Get a BIG sketch book. Make your own map of your world, layering in details as needed.

EchoLynn said:

Does anyone here work as a Cartographer? Eventually (god willing) when I get these stories published, I want to include lots of details of my story (like family trees, maps etc) into the books. It would help if I had a litteral map of my country, but it really only exists in my head.

At the very least, does anyone know of some kind of mapping software or something that I can use to create a map of my country?

Click to expand...

Holly Lisle has some good ideas on generating maps here. Worth a look.

If you want to spend a little money for a software program to do CAD cartography, Campaign Cartographer is pretty nice. Might be more than you really need though--pencils and paper are cheap and easy to use.

If you self-publish, you'll want clean black and white or color maps, and you'll probably want to shell out money for an actual artist or cartographer if you're not confident your work will stand up to professional standards.

If you publish traditionally, who delivers/handles the maps is usually something worked out in the contract. The publisher might take on the cost and effort to produce the map artwork based off your rough sketches, or you might note that you or your artist will be delivering camera-ready maps to the publisher. Really depends.

Have fun! Map making is a great part of world-building.

IIRC the Civilization games allow you to create your own world maps or modify real world maps. You could use that as a starting point and then build from there. I wouldn't simply use a map you create on their game for your book, you'd be infringing on copyrights.

If you have PowerPoint, you can use that to make a map using the freeform tool. I took an existing map of a state and followed the outline with the freeform tool. Then I deleted the original image and filled in my own details.

You really don't want to get into map making software, trust me. You'll spend hours and hours messing with it trying to get things the way you want. I've used Fractal Mapper before and although it does the job, it isn't the easiest software to use. It's only redeeming feature is it's fractal based automatic landform creation. But once that's done, editing is a nightmare.

I would recommend just drawing it by hand. It will be good enough for you to understand the geographic elements for the story. Once your story is sold, you can get an artist to take your basic sketches and turn them into something worthy.