Lesson in Map Reading

Maps are an author's best friend. They give the author a bird's eye view of the area he/she is researching. Turning to maps before doing any other historical research lets the writer build a solid foundation for future investigation.

When I started writing The Drop Of The Hammer, I spent three weeks reading maps of the area. I compared old maps with new ones, studied roadmaps to get to Creppe from every direction, poured over natural resource maps to identify the lead lodes, and examined topographic ones to get a better feel of the difference in elevation between Spa and Creppe. My area became real.

Walk the Road
There's a trick to studying maps in historical research.
To understand a map, the researcher has to step into it and walk around. In true life you wouldn't flutter from one place to the other. You can either go forward or back, left or right. If the traveler decides to go forward from point A toward B, he will not end up in A. It's the same thing when you walk a map. Don't flutter. Travel across.

How To Step Into The Map
1) Start your journey from a city or a corner of the map.
2) Imagine you are walking or driving a car.
3) Follow the road.
4) Visualize the hills, the flatlands, lakes and mountains you are passing.
5) If something looks interesting, stop and look at it. Maybe you have a travel book or brochures with pictures of these places. Look at them. Read about them.
6) Use your five senses. Smell the cut hay. Taste the salt in the sea breeze. Listen to the birds chirping in the trees. Feel the breeze caressing your skin. Touch a monument and feel its texture.

The 3-D Exercise
This type of exercise helps the author turn the area into reality. The writer can now mentally walk around the area where his/her characters are going to live. If the author does not know the area inside out, he/she is not going to be able to get it across to the reader. If the author can't do it, he/she might as well write about a box of cornflakes.

Assignment
1) Take a couple of maps. One map should be of a known area and the other of an unknown area.

2) Known area:
Imagine yourself walking the streets. Use your 5 senses.
Write down what you saw, smelled, tasted, touched, heard, and saw.

3) Unknown area:
Imagine yourself walking the streets. Use your 5 senses.
Write down what you saw, smelled, tasted, touched, heard, and saw.

Check out my article on visualization: Using Visualization in Historical Research.