When reading the Lord of the Rings (or A Wizard of Earthsea, or A Song of Ice and Fire, or many others), one of the prime joys is turning back to the front of the book and look at the maps. To properly evoke the imagined land of the book, these maps must be works of art in and of themselves. Here’s more from Go Teen Writers:

If you’re writing an alternate history story or something that takes place in the future on earth, you can use real maps as a starting point. That’s what I did with my Safe Lands map. I drew the map over top of the ski resort map for Crested Butte, Colorado. Brandon Sanderson’s map of the American Isles from The Rithmatist is a good example of an alternate history map.

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A few months ago, I wrote a series of posts on the topic of geography. Thinking about tectonic plates and mountain chains can help you decide the initial shape of your map and where to put forests and deserts and such.

See and learn more!