{"id":796,"date":"2010-06-18T18:58:09","date_gmt":"2010-06-19T00:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=796"},"modified":"2010-06-18T18:58:09","modified_gmt":"2010-06-19T00:58:09","slug":"plotting-the-map-mapping-the-plot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=796","title":{"rendered":"Plotting the Map, Mapping the Plot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someday, maybe even tomorrow, there’ll be another picture of the map progress.\u00a0\u00a0 It won’t look like much, but that’s because today I erased about a quarter of it.\u00a0 Luckily for me (and you, in the long run) what needed erasing wasn’t inked yet.\u00a0 Now it is.<\/p>\n

The saga of the past couple of weeks has been one of recurrent frustration.\u00a0 First there was the discovery that the partly drawn master map was even more “partly” than I remembered,\u00a0 and then the frantic search for the missing detail map, and then the frantic attempt to get the detail map in the computer to print at the same scale as the master map, and then the rediscovery of the detail map.\u00a0 WHEW.<\/p>\n

Then the attempt to flatten the detail map (curlier than the main map) and position it under the master map very precisely, which didn’t quite work.\u00a0 Not on both ends.\u00a0 You pick your battles; I picked the best fitting spot and started tracing in what I needed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Then I had to decide on where things were in areas I’d never written Story in (Pargun away from the Honnorgat and away from the border of Tsaia,\u00a0 for instance, also Kostandan, Dzordanya, and Preal\u00edth, ) and start penciling that in.\u00a0 Tributaries of the Honnorgat, where (mumble-mumble) is, etc.<\/p>\n

Then I had to get the pens in shape.\u00a0\u00a0 The old Rapidograph pens.\u00a0 The old Rapidograph pens I had not (ahem!) cleaned out after last year’s map work.\u00a0 Ahem indeed.\u00a0\u00a0 I got what I deserved, which was solid blocks of dried ink inside tiny little spaces where ink must flow or the pen doesn’t work.\u00a0 It took days of hands-on, fiddly work to get them going again (because, until I finally looked online, I didn’t know they could be disassembled any farther than the way my mother did it–the woman who never, ever left her pens or her paintbrushes in a sticky mess, so she didn’t need<\/em> to take them that far apart.)<\/p>\n

I found this site<\/a> very helpful, should you ever have that problem–and yeah, having the water hot helps.\u00a0\u00a0 Once you’ve got the worst crusty bits out of the very tiny fine threads of the inner parts of the nib (for which an old toothbrush is helpful),\u00a0 plain old dish detergent and hot water, alternating soaking and shaking and brushing anything with a thread until not one more little ooze of aged ink comes out in the soaking water, will restore function.<\/p>\n

So then I got the working #2 Rapidograph thoroughly clean and loaded up with ink, and started inking what I was sure of.\u00a0\u00a0 There are lots and lots and lots<\/em> of mountains to be sketched and shaded.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u00a0 will be spending days just on mountains, by the end of this thing.<\/p>\n

But I was still not happy with the west end of the Honnorgat.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Something Was Wrong.\u00a0 I couldn’t really define it, except it “didn’t look right.”\u00a0\u00a0 In reconstructing the original master map, henceforth OMM,\u00a0 I had to use enlarged versions of the maps in Surrender None<\/em> and Sheepfarmer’s Daughter<\/em>…maps not originally printed in the same scale, and (lacking the original master map) quite likely not scanned into the computer at the ideal sizes or printed out on my printer in anything like matching scale.\u00a0\u00a0 Moreover, they didn’t overlap, or even touch at the edge.\u00a0 I tried, of course, but 20 years–too many for measurements to be accurate in map scale–were in between now and the last time I saw the OMM.<\/p>\n

The OMM will no doubt surface after this one’s all done, and not match<\/em>!!\u00a0\u00a0 I will protect you from the horror by now sharing it with you.<\/p>\n

I had gone on and penciled onto the new master map (NMM)\u00a0 the line of the Honnorgat and its tributaries, but hadn’t inked them because of this “not right” look.\u00a0 Today was the day for figuring out what was wrong and how to fix it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I had given up on finding the OMM,\u00a0 and was more concerned with how to make it look reasonable to me.\u00a0\u00a0 I stared through the top layer of vellum to the printout of the Surrender None<\/em> map.\u00a0\u00a0 Then I untaped the top layer (partly) and untaped that detail map from the next layer down and slid a hand under to move it around.\u00a0 Here?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 There?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 It needed to shorten the distance from A to B about that much.\u00a0 Where could I excise a section of the river?\u00a0 I slide the under-map around.\u00a0\u00a0 And then the lightbulb flashed.\u00a0 It needed not only a horizontal move but a rotation.<\/p>\n

As I did that, I remembered why it was the way it was (sound geology, but not the only sound geology) and found a position where it looked right and taped it down.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And if that was right, then the mountain chain needed to rotate to compensate.\u00a0\u00a0 Now the other detail map underneath was out of position.\u00a0 I wiggled that one around.\u00a0 Then taped down the whole.\u00a0\u00a0 Then erased all the former Honnorgat-and-tributaries from the west end,\u00a0 annoyed with myself for not picking up a drafting brush while I was in the city (blowing eraser crumbs off\u00a0 is not as good practice.\u00a0 At least I have a proper non-tooth-raising eraser.<\/p>\n

Then I redrew the Honnorgat and its tributaries in pencil, and then inked them, and then drew and\u00a0 shaded some more mountains.<\/p>\n

And then, finally, I could consider the southwest part of the map, which hasn’t entered the story before, and won’t enter it until (if then) later in Book III.\u00a0\u00a0 I think in the OMM, this was labeled “western waste” or something like that and left blank.\u00a0 Well, it’s not blank now.\u00a0 It’s part of a continent and there’s always Stuff on a continent even if it’s not heavily populated by anyone.\u00a0 Anyone human, at least.<\/p>\n

Because the old drafting table (over 60 years old;\u00a0\u00a0 I remember my mother working at it when I was three and four and five…)\u00a0 is both old (and thus not adjustable) and not the right height for me, and inking all those mountains and drawing trails is fiddly,\u00a0 I’m having to take frequent breaks, but it’s coming along.<\/p>\n

And in the breaks, the Story itself is moving along, with some surprises for me and some of what I hope will be exciting bits for you.\u00a0\u00a0 Book III is definitely a hinge.\u00a0 I’ve been spending time with Stammel and Arvid, two of my favorite non-major characters, as well as Dorrin, Arcolin, and Kieri.\u00a0 I’ve had several 2000+ word days and more in the 1500 range.<\/p>\n

If no further problems crop up in the next week, I should finish the map and get the files off to Production, and then roll fast on the story until the proofs of Kings<\/em> come back, when I’ll have to deal with those.<\/p>\n

So…you may have thought I was lounging out by the lily pond with a tall cool one, but actually I’ve been working and not getting enough sleep.\u00a0\u00a0 (And now, back to do a bit more on the map tonight. )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someday, maybe even tomorrow, there’ll be another picture of the map progress.\u00a0\u00a0 It won’t look like much, but that’s because today I erased about a quarter of it.\u00a0 Luckily for me (and you, in the long run) what needed erasing wasn’t inked yet.\u00a0 Now it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,81,5],"tags":[40,54,107],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artwork","category-kings-of-the-north","category-the-writing-life","tag-artwork","tag-map","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":797,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}