Does your novel need a map?

This post was originally published on the Enterprising Artists blog. Read more of my Enterprising Artists blog posts here. 

I love Twitter. Yes, to begin with I showed my usual resistance to anything popular or fashionable, but a wily friend suggested it was the way to meet other authors of YA novels and sell some books, so I signed up. I sought out other writers – I even bought their books. I don’t think anyone bought mine but by the time I realised that, I was hooked.

I’ve not encountered the worst of Twitter – in fact, the nearest I came to being trolled was when someone objected to my confession that I don’t much like Jane Austen’s books. He called me an effing moron – but couldn’t spell moron. I took a teeny pedantic pleasure in pointing out his error. I have, however, encountered the very best of Twitter. The well-informed; the pithy; the interesting; the heartfelt; the scurrilous and the funny serve to brighten my days. Among the wonderful people I’ve met is the Australian poet Neil G. His sparse, elegant verse delights me (though I don’t share his passion for the macabre). Late one night I couldn’t sleep. I was tweeting my long-lost cousin and somehow Neil G joined us and we conversed into the small hours and three years later we continue to do so.

Neil G said he’d love to read my first YA novel, so with indecent haste I sent him a copy of Forget Me Knot. His suggestions were really helpful and encouraging – all bar one. He wanted a map. My heart sank into the (unmapped) Swamp of Gloom.

Does it really need a map?

Maps generally baffle me. I write as someone who had 4% for her mock Geography ‘O’ level. Before the tyranny that is sat-nav entered our lives, I refused point blank, if a passenger, to navigate on car journeys.  For a start, I had to turn the map round to align with the direction of travel and for some reason that invites scorn from the map-savvy. As a driver, the best I could manage was to pore over the map beforehand, in secret, and write down a list of important places on the journey, and significant road numbers. The problem with that came to light on my first drive to Cornwall. Instead of driving in the direction of Okehampton, Launceston and Bodmin, for example, I drove through them, magnificently ignoring the fact that the A30 was expressly designed to stop you having to do that.

So, my heart does not leap with joy when I see a map in a book, and yes, that goes for Lord of the Rings, before you ask. I hastily turn the page and never refer to it again. I explained all this to Neil G. He countered my mulish reluctance with impeccable logic. ‘What about the vast number of people who love maps?’ he asked. ‘If you include a map, they will be overjoyed – and people like you can just ignore it.’ He helpfully pointed out that I’d written that my main character’s father had done a sketch map for her of the disused Underground stations and Deep Level Shelters where my heroine is doomed to spend most of her time.

I was cornered. The only thing I remembered with pleasure from Geography lessons – and preparation for my Girl Guide badge – was studying the symbols on Ordnance Survey maps and creating imaginary locations. (In the discussions I’ve had with other writers for and against the inclusion of maps, it turns out that other Geography-phobes liked that.) Out came the crayons, and I immersed myself in charting Jo’s journey.

To my amazement, I was enjoying myself. Then came the cherry on the cake… Jo’s parents were avid fans of Bob Dylan, so in a flash of inspiration I decided to pepper the map with song references. I did some little drawings – a Slow Train Coming – and saw straight away that it would enhance the book – for some people. A friend said recently that she couldn’t believe I hadn’t included a Watchtower, so I might need to revisit it.

Paul’s Map – a map created by my character Paul for his daughter

Is it OK to include song lyrics?

A word of caution about including quotations from songs. It will cost you. I discovered this when I wrote to Sony about using some lines from Dylan and Leonard Cohen. They were very helpful and sent me the relevant forms for printed and electronic books. The dozen or so fragments I wanted to use were brief and in my ignorance I thought fifty quid would probably cover it. I was wildly wrong, gentle reader. The bill ran into thousands of pounds, or it would have done, had I not spotted a potential loophole. I am not renowned for swiftly thinking on my feet, but for once I surpassed myself. I asked if the title of a song was subject to the same restrictions… and apparently it is not. Fortunately, both writers go in for eloquent titles, particularly Dylan, so I made the necessary adjustments and dodged the bullet.

Back to maps. Confession coming up. I secretly thought that the liking/loathing of maps was largely a male/female divide, but I was wrong.  My writing groups – all women – cover all bases. I was intrigued to know that several of us who are cartographically challenged do, nevertheless, sometimes look at a map after our journey, to get a sense of where we have been. Even I can see that’s odd – and I’m someone who does exactly that! One writer said her dad papered the loo with maps when she was a child and she became fascinated by them as well as gaining a painless grounding in Geography. Another worked at the Hydrographic Office in Taunton and loves maps passionately.

Suddenly it seemed churlish to not include a map if it would bring pleasure to perhaps half of one’s readers.

How about a family tree?

That being settled, our discussions then turned to character lists and family trees. Both have their staunch defenders while others are happy to approach books in a vague mist of their own imagination. One woman spoke of how much she had enjoyed a book she had not understood, because it affected her emotionally in a way she enjoyed. She was not alone in that observation.

The longer we talked, the more we surprised each other with our diversity as readers and writers. One of us described having to work out the pronunciation of unfamiliar names before she could enjoy the story, while others saw the shape of a name (begins with G – ends with L) and were content with the image that word evoked in their imagination. If you said ‘Galadriel’ to them, they would look blank. As a reader, I incline to the image of the character more than the sound of their name BUT as a writer, I take great care with naming my characters and would be disappointed if my readers missed out on the subtle layers of meaning.

In the light of our differences best-selling local author Judy Leigh suggested that anything the writer could do to ensure as many readers as possible were able to enjoy a book was worth doing. If the price of doing that is knowing that some of our creativity falls on stony ground, well, c’est la vie.

To return to Twitter – today, ‘best-selling author of dark things’ Dea Poirier threatened: ‘One day I’m gonna write a book about a recipe blogger who confesses to murder in every single recipe on their website but they never get caught because no one reads the twelve pages of text before the recipe.’

It’s salutary to consider that, like those recipe bloggers, we may find that not all of our peerless prose and carefully crafted creativity is going to be rapturously received. However, if people like our work enough to engage with it, welcoming our characters into their heads and hearts, we have no grounds for complaint if they do a bit of judicious skipping. And it’s always possible that after a first read, greedy for the story to unfold, they might return to it for a second, more leisurely reading. Many readers did that with A.S Byatt’s Possession, reading it once for the story, twice for the poetry. She understood the skipping of passages, but when her American publishers wanted to take out the Victorian poetry, she wept. Fortunately, the poems were not cut, and they remain, giving the reader the choice to chuck or cherish.

If something interests you so much that you work hard to turn it into a story, a poem, a play or a song, then the probability is that others will be interested. Anything you can do to enhance their enjoyment is worth doing. Even maps.