: Re: For Fantasy Stories, Should You Include a Map At the Beginning of the Book? If you're writing a fantasy novel, would it be best to include a map of the geography that the story takes place

@Lengel543

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If you have a big universe and plan on having multiple stories, then a map is a nice touch. Bout it's also limiting. If your first book only focuses on a small part of the world and you include a full world map, then your second book has more constraints to it as you can't just invent another continent, at least not without a good explanation.

Of course, showing only a region or simply retconning the map are options, but the former is more a "nice bonus" as regional maps shouldn't be needed to understand the story, and the latter is just bad for a reader (I know, retcons aren't unusual, but I hate them)

So only put a map if either a) you carefully planned the contents and know it won't have to change a lot in future stories or b) it just looks badass and is something the reader will just want to experience as a piece of art.

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