When a map is a useful tool.

So, if you've read any fantasy novel you've probably noticed Fantasy authors tend to absolutely love maps. They'll make maps of continents, countries, cities, towns, castles, everything.

I personally think some of them go a little crazy with the maps, however. I mean, if you're writing a Fantasy epic like The Lord of the Rings, or something not so epic but still fairly big in scope, with many events happening in several locations but still all tied to each other then yes, a map is great.

Now, the question is why? Why is a map great if you have a story that is what you would call 'big' in scope?

Let me give you a few reasons:

1. It helps you decide how your characters go from one point to the other.
2. It's an awesome way for you to remember plot points and to add them or remove them.
3. It gives you a visual representation of where you are at any given point in your narrative.
4. It offers the readers a chance to become familiar with your world, and to visualize it.

That said, I thought I'd provide an example. As you know, I'm cowriting a Ranma 1/2 story with Daisukifox titled Lost Together, and the story involves several locations in China that are taken from the manga, and a few others that we had to create to help our story move along. Because of the nature of the story, which involves lots of travelling around the region by at least three different parties, a map became a very useful tool when it comes to planning story events.

And so, I decided to create a map for it, which I present below, and if you've read the story you'll see how some of the things 'click' a bit differently now.

Ranma 1/2's Bayankara region in China, the setting where the events mentioned in Lost Together take place.

There are many map creators available online, but I use inkarnate as the interface is the easiest to use in my opinion and the free account, while somewhat limited, does give you many options to customize your map.

Well, all that explained, the last I could say about this is that yes, maps are good tools to help build your narrative, but their usefulness depends entirely on what the scope of your story is.

The elements of style.

So, The Elements of style, by Strunk and White.

This one I'm sure most of us who write be it fanfiction or our own original fiction, have heard about before; maybe you heard about it at school, or you were looking for any source that would help you improve your writing and found it recommended somewhere, or you heard Stephen King claims it's one of the best books on the subject. Either way, chances are that if you write, you've at least heard of it. And that means that I don't need to say much about it, which is a relief.

What can I say then? Well, I could mention my own opinions on it, for one, but that woud take too long so I will settle on telling you only one thing: it is useful, and you should consider reading it.

Fortunately, the book is not that difficult to find, and your local library, or your school library if you're in high school or college should have a copy available.

If you don't want to bother with going there to find one, you can always read it online, I'll even share a link where you can find it:

The Elements of Style (pdf).

Consider giving it a chance, you're probably going to learn something useful, and the book isn't that long either.