Problem with story: Geographical inconsistancies

[Bobtheduck]

I'm having a problem that I never anticipated. I was worried about character development, personality consistancy, pacing, excitement, continuity and such, but i completely ignored geographical consistancy. I was working on a map and realized that I couldn't figure out how to get it to work with the descriptions I had made... I wish I had done a map a long time ago to get my mind wrapped around the whole thing, but now I have some major searching and correcting to do...

Do you pay really close attention to your geography? Has anyone one else in here stressed over that?

[PotBelliedCow]

No...I've never really worried much about geographical consistency too much. Getting from one place to another is an important thing, especially with those "quest" stories where characters must venture through many obstacles to get from point A to Point B. In my opinion, being correct in history or location isn't really the important thing, it's the story and the characters...if you have everything else strong enough, the reader won't notice the mistakes...

What's your story about, Bobtheduck?

[Bobtheduck]

It's a science fantasy story about... Well, centering around 3 stories in the first book...

1. The 2 primary plots center around people on a colony on an asteroid. The primary story is one where the Main character had been sent back in time to watch the events that led up to where he was at, and even to take part in them. The Title of the first book, "Diamond Spearhead", has to do with the five computers that control the colony's functions. There is a war between the followers of the two that started the colony, who's names were Gregora and Keygos. The Main Character, Intrex, was trying to retrieve the Diamond Spearhead when it was destroyed and it sent him to an earlier point in the history of the war. He's working with some of the Gregorans in that time to retrieve the Spearheads, or the separate pieces of the controls.
2. The second story in Book 1 intertwines with the first, and that's of a nurse named Elen. It's about her being pursued by her father and the mysterious dealings that he's been involved with. In addition to that, she is also being hunted by someone very dangerous who is very infamous for the things he was capable of.
3. The third story (or the first, if you consider the fact that the beginning of his story is told in the Prelude) is about a College student (on earth) who is hired to, along with several friends, help excavate a society that had been mostly wiped out and their island sunk to the bottom of the ocean near California. The Characters, including the primary character of this arc, "Guy" never cross paths with Intrex, Elen, or anyone else from the Asteroid story (both because of time and location... The events in the asteroid for book 1 took place from the mid 1800's to the mid 1900's)

The primary focus of my books, at least this branch, will be Intrex. Guy Peppertif was invented to cover up my bad writing skills when I wrote the original prologue (which now appears in the Appendicies because I'm so embarassed by it) but has developed into something I'm happy about. Elen was always meant to be part of the story, but the separation of her story from Intrex's has been sort of a recent development. The time travel thing, though it sounded cool at the time, is now beginning to give me grief, but I have a plan on how I can fix it and I hope it surprises everyone... I don't know if it has ever been done before, actually. Even if it has, I still think it's a cool concept and have hope that others will think the same thing since I acquired the idea based on pure embarassment and wanting to fix what I thought was a doomed story.

Anyhow, as of now my big problem is geography. I have to make everything consistant in what I have allready written and make sure I make a map (minus the towns) before I continue so that I won't make that same mistake again.

This story is probably PG-13 (I say that about a LOT of things, don't I?) and contains dialogue that many in CAA won't approve of. I am considering two releases: A full force one, and one that softens the dialogue and some of the violence. This is not for sure, however.

[SwordSkill]

Once I made a map of a fantasy world for a story I was doing. Drew and labeled the bodies of water, the land formations, and the kingdoms. I think it took about three sheets of long yellow pad which I eventually compressed. It looked pretty crude (rough draft it was) and my friend spruced it up by lettering and inking a new copy for me because she had nothing else better to do (and because she has better handwriting and she's a neat freak). XD Then I lost the confounded thing.

(Even did a chrnological timeline of the royal families. Thankfully that one's still around. Even though it really has no use to me at all now, it's still pretty fun to look back).

One time I did a rough sketch of a few systems and galaxies for a Kenshin AU sci-fi fanfic I was writing.

I think it's important to have a good grasp of background information for out-of-this-world settings. That way you don't go trivializing over locations later on, which really is a pain because sometimes you end up contradicting yourself and confusing the reader (or yourself). Besides, it makes the world much more real to the author, which I do believe will eventually show in the writing that you're confident of the world you created. That way you really do have well-defined cultures and societies instead of having them all in a nebulous cloud.

Btw, how much of your story have you written, Bobtheduck?

[Bobtheduck]

I'm on 107 pages at 12 pt print and minimal margins (1/2 inch I think) and 5x7 paper. I have halted my writing because of the probelms I just mentioned... I'm going to take some time tomorrow to read over my book and compare it to the map I've been drawing, and hopefully be able to fix some of my mistakes...

[Technomancer]

While I don't write fiction, I do need consistent geographies for D&D campaign worlds that I make. I usually start with the physical geography, since that will also influence the politics and history of the world as well. I'd recommend picking up a text book on physical geography from your local library, and maybe one that deals with the human impact of it as well.

[true_noir_chloe]

Recently, around last year, I wrote a script with a fantasy world and what I did was place all these sheets of paper on a globe and wrote the regions, what plant life each region had, topography, took into consideration the equator and the elements that would affect each region, etcetera.

For a fantasy fiction - with an entirely different world - you really have to do a lot of pre-construction of that world. I like Swordskills comment on how she drew a map on the legal pads. I do everything on legal pads too, but for the world in my story, which is a quest that goes over all these regions (continents) I needed to use the globe to actually see what was going on.

>>Besides, it makes the world much more real to the author, which I do believe will eventually show in the writing that you're confident of the world you created.<<

That's for all your writing. You really need to be confident and well-researched, or you let your readers down.

I'd guess you're at around 25,000 words right now, am I right, Bob? So, that's around less than half a 60,000 word book. I don't think you're too far to go back and fix everything. ^_^