maps and building a world

[Gandwarf]

The maps I have done are all for the fantasy world I created. I have been writing a story since 2002 and I started mapping out stuff later. I only had a couple of rough sketches.

Don't name everything, a lot of places in my world don't have a name either. You don't want to clutter your maps too much anyway, unless you are going for an atlass style map. I found naming stuff difficult as well. That's why the names of places of interest in my world have simple, logical names, like "Greenwood" for a city located in large woods and "Northgate" for a town that lies to the north. I also used the fantasy name generator to get some more exotic names:

http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/

Oh, and I cheated a bit, as the overland map I needed didn't have any continents or seas

[bernvill]

Personally I love placenames and I have studied mainly English names which I find very interesting. I am personally somewhat tired of all these fantasy-style names although I found that fantasy name generator intriguing. I am very much on Tolkien's side, that a name should not be given randomly. All geographical have some kind of history and usually on a very local level. A name like Oxford is comparatively clear and means just that 'ford used by oxen'; Use your imagination and make up a little story about the place you want to name, even if it's just the name of the man (or woman) who lived there.
All this said, I should add that my fantasy world is probably more modern than most fantasy world.

[robb75067]

I'm not a veteran but I'll throw in my 2 cents.

1. Determine size
2. Sketch map on graph paper, just rough outlines
3. Scan in and trace in Photoshop (zoom more when tracing to add more detail)
4. Add grid line, legend, all that stuff
5. Analyze where I want mountains (they determine where everything else can be)
6. Think about the basics of climate to determine where other things can go
7. Place rivers, marshes, forests and deserts
8. Add place names
9. Clean up map (erase grid lines that I don't want etc)