Adapting extant maps

So Na No Wri Mo is coming up, and I had the idea to just use a map this time instead of the usual making spatial relationships up as I go along.

Any tips on how to do this, specifically in making a tiny area larger for the story?

Write down the differences—scales, travel times, any weird magical patches—and keep it in an easily-labeled document or a cheat-sheet.

Don't push the particulars, rather, address the specifics as they come up.

making a tiny area large?

use small characters, a house may as well be a country for a mouse, heck it may as well be several countries.

...and now I realize I should have phrased it differently .

I meant, if I just multiplied all the distances between locations by 10, would that effectively turn Rhode Island into New Mexico (1,214 and 121,589 square miles respectively)? I ask because I'm aware that I haven't cracked a Geography textbook since college, and I need confirmation that I'm not going to torpedo my story because I missed a minor point.

@Shar (Aznable^note been sitting on this joke for a week or so. I mean no disrespect by it) - the idea is that the map itself is going to be the cheat sheet this time.

@Beli - ordinarily, that's what I'd do, and that's what I've been doing. But I decided that this would be this year's thing for me, so I'm sticking with it.

@Dragon - would you believe I actually did that for 2008? It was a Mobile-Suit Human scale story I can't use anymore because friggin' Attack On Titan is popular now.

I don't see the point behind that, but just doing that does some strange things to your new location in that everything get scaled up equally.

Lakes get ten times bigger, elevation gets less extreme as locations get *Smeared* to be longer and wider, city's get ten times more spread out, ectra.

yes you could just multiply everything by ten, but that brings up some other issues assuming your accounting for everything instead of just ignoring the inconvenient parts.

I still hold that making everything smaller might work, humans are 5.6 feet tall, times 12 inches for 67.2, divided by ten for 6.5 inches, or half a foot. Same effect on distance (everything is perceptually ten times further away) and you won't have to remake the maps.

Also: my advice is ignore whats popular, if you want to do a mobile suit human story do it, who cares what attack on titan is doing, there are only so many ways to tell a story who cares if a trope your using has been used by a more popular media. Use it your way, and give it your own unique speed. (gets off soap box)

edited 24th Oct '15 12:18:31 AM by dragonkingofthestars

The point, at least for me, is to have something pre-made that I can refer to (unlike my usual practice of "this place is next to this place, oh crap I've been putting the plot-relevant mountains in the plot-relevant ocean, guess everyone's Merfolk now!") without having to spend even more time coming up with a map. The island I'm going to use is of interest to me generally, and I happen to have a map/guide book of it.

(And there are some physics and energy requirements that Square-Cube wrecks havoc with, so I can't change the size class anyway.)

I'd forgotten about the lakes and mountains. Guess I'm cubing a lot of stuff as well as squaring it. I live in the Pacific Northwest, so distances and perceptions are old hat to me... Least I got one thing down.

I have some experience writing on a teen site. I assure you, having to read the same obviously derivative story elements over and over gets old fast, and it's something I like to avoid personally. But I agree - it's the execution that matters, not the story elements or plot devices. It's just that it's better if your story can't easily be described as "[popular-ish franchise], but written by [author] instead".