Although probably most noted for use with fantasy authors, maps can be a useful tool for any writer. If you are writing a story that takes place in a real place, it’s going to be a lot easier to find a map of it, because if it isn’t real, then you are going to have to design the map yourself. Depending on how detailed you get this can include neighborhoods that don’t exist in cities that do or even blueprints to houses and other buildings if you need the layout for your character’s home, school, place of business or anything else.
Some people are really good at cartography and can make an amazing map with limited additional resources. Other people have an unbelievable talent for making blueprints and know exactly how to layout a building to fit what is needed. For the rest of us, there are some incredible (and not so incredible) tools out there that can help us find the map of our story that we’ve been looking for. This can be anything from finding maps of locations we need that already exist to making maps from scratch of places that don’t to using a real place to create a fictional one. Do you have a favorite tool that you use for this?
