They do way more work than simply look cool

If you write any genre of historical fiction, and that can include romance, fantasy, etc… you already know the power of a great map. Maps aren’t the only visual elements that you can add to your story, but they make it…

  1. Way more visually appealing and/or interesting
  2. Easier to write

We’re heading back to A Gentleman in Moscow, because of course we are. By the time I’m through with all this teachin’, you’ll know that book up one side and down the other. Just like the structural breakdown, this book does a ton of great work when it comes to adding visual elements to a story.

Load Bearing Imagery

I love maps so much that I have a giant book of rare and antique maps that I have to pack in a special box every time I move because of its gigantic irregular size. Worth it.

Yes, maps are cool and loads of fun to look at, but they do more for your story than simply give your reader the lay of the land. They can help us to visually understand distance and scale, the separation of class or social hierarchies, and see what’s important to the society. Open spaces, town wells, and alleys all give us a sense of what this place is like.

This is the opening page to AGIM. Most people would argue that the first page is the court transcript that immediately follows the map. Don’t be fooled. Because the first words we read in this story are right at the top of the map.

And just like that, we’ve established the Time and Place. It will be confirmed in the court transcript on the following pages, but right here, a ton of your work has just been done for you.

Visual Way Marking & Prioritization

While maps can tell us a lot about the society we’re about to immerse ourselves in, your novel’s map can also prime your readers for what’s to come. Notice the handful of places that are marked and named. Only the ones that are mentioned in the story and have relevance to Count Rostov, The Gentleman’s, life get a mention.

By marking these places, you familiarize your reader with your character’s world before they’ve stepped one foot into it. This is done remarkably well with the expanded inset map. We can see where the Count will spend damn near every single page of this book, and how so many amazing places are right there in the neighborhood.

Sourcing and Making Maps

You don’t have to be a cartographer, or lug around a giant volume of antique maps, in order to have a map of your own. Now if you’re writing historical fantasy, making the map is half the fun. However, we focus on historical fiction and romance here.

Sourcing

  • The David Rumsey Map Collection contains over 200,000 maps from the 16th-20th centuries. Mostly of places in North and South America, but there are also maps from all over the world in this set, and that were created outside that timeframe. It’s worth a search.
  • Don’t sleep on Wikimedia Commons and searching within their collection. They have millions of free images for use, including some maps.

Creating

You can also create your own map like AGIM’s.

  • MapChart online helps you create custom maps for your project
  • Canva also has a map generator
  • I’ve taken a map of Vienna from 1830, pulled it into ProCreate on my iPad, and traced an outline of the parts of the city that I needed. I even made an inset map.

If you’re attempting traditional publishing, having some semblance of a map is helpful. It will probably be redrawn by an artist or graphic designer. If you’re wanting to self-publish, you’ll need to provide the map yourself.

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