: 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

@Jamie945

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Skip the map. Maps in books are pretentious and dumb.

If you have a passage like, "...and so they travelled South, crossing the Mountains of Grimstorm at Thousandwolf Pass then bent their way Westward to the Parchnoth Desert," and a reader gets upset because he doesn't know where all those places are, then don't worry about that reader. Maybe he thinks there's going to be a quiz after he finishes the book.

It doesn't matter where those places are. What matters is that the characters crossed some mountains (story) then changed direction (story) and headed for a desert (more story). In a story what matters is story, not maps or illustrations or how it's bound or whether the title is embossed on the cover.

To put it another way, if the story is weak then a map isn't going to help it. If the story is great then your fans will create maps and post them to their fan blogs.

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