Using Maps to Visualize My Story Settings

The_Commander

@MahalaErotica
Joined
Jun 24, 2020
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Greetings from Japan... Long time author (only wish I could have been more consistent in my younger years) and first time poster here.

The reason for this post is to sound out and seek feedback on world building. I am presently retired here in Japan, and in my previous life, was a navy intelligence officer and a real life Lt. Commander. Thus I have a lot of PowerPoint skills that were, up until this week, remaining stagnant, until it hit upon me that I could actually help readers visualize a plot location, which in my stories is usually the fictional country of Kukuanaland, in what in real life is the real world Congo province of Lualaba. The idea for Kukuanaland for my stories comes from the H.Rider Haggard novel "King Solomon's Mines". I find the fictional Africa to be a wonderful setting for stories (in the real though, well, Africa is not pleasurable setting) because much of it is an unexplored setting, not just in erotica, but even in normal fiction. Which brings me to my next piece of world building, and that is the Mahala fruit (though I have sometimes referred to it as a plant or flower), with potent aphrodisiac properties that, in my stories, are usually found in wine, and which also has been weaponized by the Soviets, in the form of Mahala X and Zeta, with Zeta being at present the most powerful. Of course, in Africa I intend to draw all my heroines to the underworld, where time will essentially stop in the real world for them, so that when they return, no one will know they were gone. It's in the underworld where the non-human erotic kicks in, though on the surface in Kukuanaland, because of both the Soviets past experiments and the radiation mutations to the fauna and populace, there is non-human danger lurking for all the heroines when they stumble off the safe path and are led by the evil scientists and villains down perilous paths, like Lake Moreau, where the aquatic life and fauna have taken on a life of their own.

Love to hear any feedback :)

The_Commander
 

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The premise sounds very promising!

If I may give you a tip, though, I'd leave out the map. Overall, fantasy readers are quite happy to infer relative locations from a few words or descriptions. The more effort they put into visualising your world, the more ownership they'll feel, and the more likely they'll be to keep reading. Too much detail forces them to adjust the pictures that they've formed in their mind, which takes effort. Mostly they'll just ignore anything that doesn't match the images in their head. At best, that's wasted effort on your part. At worst they'll resent you for it and nope out of the story.

Also, maps and other details tie you down. It's OK to have them fixed for yourself, as a guide, but once you share them with your readers you're stuck to them. Future adventures might require your heroes to cross a river or a swamp that's not on your map, or you might want them to be heading west into the setting sun but according to your map they should be heading south.

The basic question to ask is always: "Do my readers need to know this right now?" If not, leave it out. Readers want action, dialogue, character moments. They don't care about your world beyond as background scenery and a source of adventure.

I hope this hasn't put you off. Like I said, your premise sounds intriguing and I hope you publish it!
 
The premise sounds very promising!

If I may give you a tip, though, I'd leave out the map. Overall, fantasy readers are quite happy to infer relative locations from a few words or descriptions. The more effort they put into visualising your world, the more ownership they'll feel, and the more likely they'll be to keep reading. Too much detail forces them to adjust the pictures that they've formed in their mind, which takes effort. Mostly they'll just ignore anything that doesn't match the images in their head. At best, that's wasted effort on your part. At worst they'll resent you for it and nope out of the story.

Also, maps and other details tie you down. It's OK to have them fixed for yourself, as a guide, but once you share them with your readers you're stuck to them. Future adventures might require your heroes to cross a river or a swamp that's not on your map, or you might want them to be heading west into the setting sun but according to your map they should be heading south.

The basic question to ask is always: "Do my readers need to know this right now?" If not, leave it out. Readers want action, dialogue, character moments. They don't care about your world beyond as background scenery and a source of adventure.

I hope this hasn't put you off. Like I said, your premise sounds intriguing and I hope you publish it!
Thanks for the feed back. Your ideas and thoughts are right on the money. As a result I am launching a new website her very soon in which I basically am creating a fictional governmental task force that will be tracking all of the adventures of my heroines whose adventures are fueled by men and woman using it as mind control to lead them into some pretty perverse and taboo situations. One of the first things I will be doing will be giving a history lesson on Kukunaland, and using old pictures, maps and folklore, after which I then create a history up to the present day of this fictious country. Fortunately the being an intelligence officer in the navy means being well versed in the region and its history :-(
 
It's an intriguing premise and I'd definitely read it.
It was serendipitous that I stumbled upon the right web site template to come up with exact look and feel for what I am trying to accomplish. I’m retired, so I have quite a bit of time to have some fun with this for a very long time. Beats the hell out watching the news from where I sit on the far side of the world :)
https://mahalaerotica.com/https://mahalaerotica.com/
 
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