5 Tips to Easily Begin Improving your Mapmaking

My favorite worldbuilding activity is mapmaking, but still, I usually find that getting started is most difficult part. As I have worked on improving my mapmaking over the past several years, I have discovered the 5 helpful tips outlined below. These ideas have been a great help for my journey in confidence, not only for mapmaking, but also for art and worldbuilding in general!

1. Just Start

First, the best tip I can give is to just start. Whether you’re drawing digitally or on paper, don’t be intimidated by a blank page. Put something – anything – on that page. You can change it later. If you’re on paper, use a pencil and a good eraser. And remember, paper grows on trees.

This is something I always struggle with. My perfectionism often gets into the way of putting things down on paper. Sometimes I fall into the trap of thinking that if I use more than one sheet of paper, I have failed. But that’s not true. It means I have improved my idea, and I’m ready to learn from my mistakes.

2. Begin with a Specific Feature

You might be unsure the shape your map will take. But you might have a certain feature in mind that your world simply must include: a location, a theme, an event, a character, or anything else. Begin with that feature. Decide whether that feature is central to your world or more off to the side. If your feature doesn’t seem geographically related, then think about how it might affect other aspects of the world. Would it affect the culture, the people, the politics? How might those aspects would shape the world’s geography? Once you have related that feature to your map design ideas, you can begin laying out the rest of the world around it.

Here I would like to insert an honorable mention tip: get an outside opinion. If you’re still struggling with relating your feature to your map, ask someone else – a friend, a mentor, or even us here at Square World Portals – if they have ideas. Maybe something they say will cause a spark of inspiration!

3. You can Draw

If you think you can’t draw, rest assured that it is a learned skill for most of us. Thankfully, the level drawing skills needed to draw most fantasy maps is typically minimal. There are plenty of resources on the internet outlining good ways to draw mountains, forests, cities, and anything else you can think of. If you have a cool idea but aren’t sure how to draw it, find a tutorial online of something similar, and simply practice until you’re confident in the way it looks. Practice new things with every map, and I’m sure you will be surprised at your progress.

4. Be Confident in Your Style

Your drawing style, your design style, your worldbuilding style, these are the things that make your worlds and maps uniquely you. Don’t be discouraged if your map doesn’t turn out quite the way you envisioned it, or like that cool map you saw online. Understand that while you’re seeing all the “flaws,” everyone else is seeing all the beauty and majesty of your unique style. Remember, if the final product truly does not reflect your vision, you can always try again. But be confident in your style!

5. Practice!

Of course, I must recognize that each personal style builds up and changes over time. When you practice mapmaking often enough, this creates a groundwork for you to evaluate your style and find areas to improve.

In the image to the right, you can see where I began and how far I’ve come in mapmaking, from Nass (the square world) to a more recent project, Salog Kar. Since starting Salog Kar, I have continued to work on improvements, for instance, in drawing forests. But if I hadn’t been confident in my style at the time, that map would not exist at all, and I would have missed vital legs of the journey of practice.

Conclusion

There are many ways to improve your mapmaking. These are only 5 of my top tips that I have learned over the years. Since starting is often the most difficult part, I advise you to just start now and make changes later, and start with a specific feature in mind. Be confident that you can learn to draw, and be confident in the value and uniqueness of your personal style. Finally, the more maps you practice drawing, the better you’ll get. With every map, you will discover ways to improve, implement new ideas, and be inspired to create new worlds.

If you would like to hear more ideas on mapmaking or worldbuilding, you might be interested in my weekly email newsletter!