Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Cartography of Mother's Gate: a mapping directory

This post is part of a series to augment the Codex of the Known World available for free download.

The best and latest cartography resources are gathered here at www.DNFrost.com/cartography.

Find more worldbuilding content in my Codex Directory.



Also check out the maps for the TotKW Saga at
www.DNFrost.com/maps.



What is Cartography? On this website, the cartography tag refers to ideas about making maps, especially regarding fictional maps.

The cartography resource series focuses on my Known World, and the cartography workshop series focuses on your own world.

Read more about this tag here...



Codex of the Known World: a free download

Immerse yourself in the Known World with this collection of notes and resources.

You'll learn about the world's cultures and prophesy, plus magic, language, and maps.

Read more about this download here... Soon.



Download your worldbuilding guide Codex of the Known World here.



How to Make Fantasy Maps in Photoshop

This exclusive guide provides step-by-step instructions for making maps in Photoshop.

It also provides some great information on how to build a realistic world.

Read more about this exclusive here...

Download How to Make Fantasy Maps in Photoshop:



The cartography apprentices


Scribe Ascribed: free prologue of the First Chronicles www.DNFrost.com/Prologue1 #TotKW An exclusive prologue by D.N.Frost @DNFrost13 Part 1 of a series.
This ongoing post series tells the stories of the novice map-makers illustrating the saga.

The original story is Scribe Ascribed, relating how the apprentice Farwen is asked to scribe the tales of his old cartography master.

The other posts focus on each subsequent apprentice, who is charged with the task of creating the maps for one of the books.

Explore more posts here:



Cartography of Awakening


Planning the Cartography of Awakening: what lands to map and what to omit www.DNFrost.com/cartography #TotKW A mapping resource by D.N.Frost @DNFrost13 Part 1 of a series.
This 3-part post series details the ideas and procedures for making the maps in Book 1.

It starts with Planning the Cartography of Awakening and expands into designing the old-world style of the maps, as well as the story of the apprentice who makes these maps.

Explore posts 2-3 here:



That's it for this post! Check out the latest cartography resources for more.

Download the Codex of the Known World here, or start your adventure below.






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Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Your Font Matters: a cartography workshop

This post is part of a series to augment The Worldbuilder's Handbook available for free download.

This and other world workshops are gathered in my Worldbuilding Directory for you to explore.

Find more map-making content in my Cartography Directory.



When mapping your world, a few factors impact the overall feel of your map. Visual cues communicate information about your world at a subliminal level, and your readers absorb this information within moments of glancing over your map for the first time. While your colors and mapping style create the general atmosphere for your map, your font is what really embodies the spirit of your world.

It can be tempting to pick ornate fonts with grand details, but fancy fonts rarely work for cartography labels. Ornate fonts are often obscured at smaller sizes, so your best bet is to select a simple font that's easy to read. A map can backfire when the font is too hard to decipher. If you have your heart set on a particular font that won't work for small labels, use it for the largest labels and pick a simpler font for the rest.


Check out The Worldbuilder's Handbook for more free resources!


In addition to simplicity, your font style needs to convey the spirit of your world. Curly fonts often seem cheerful and provide for an idyllic feel, whereas Gothic fonts can feel gloomy and impart a sense of danger or foreboding. Scripts that resemble handwriting elicit an older setting than modern fonts, which evoke a sense of technological advancement. To portray a medieval or ancient world, try fonts that appear to bleed into parchment or be carved into stone.

Combined with astute color selections and the style of your map, the font you select establishes certain expectations in your readers. With the free exclusive How to Make Fantasy Maps in Photoshop, you can decide upon the colors, styling, and font for your own maps. By choosing a legible font that captures your world, you can prime readers with the right expectations, so they can experience your work as you intended. A spot-on map will also draw the right interest, from people who will enjoy and share your work.


That's it for this post! Check out the latest worldbuilding workshops for more.

Download The Worldbuilder's Handbook here, or start your adventure below.






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Wednesday, January 11, 2017

A Worthy Re-Read: inspiration & spark

This post is part of a series to augment the Author's Manifesto available for free download.

This and other inspirations of mine are gathered in the Spark Directory for you to explore.

Find more prophetic poetry in my Portents Directory.



Some stories rely on plot twists to keep readers guessing, but there are better ways to create suspense. Instead of keeping you in the dark, dear readers, I encourage you to see the convergence. I want you to anticipate things happening in advance. My goal is to make the unfolding story so breathtaking that you have to read it anyway. It grips you. It sculpts your experience. It builds your anticipation, then not only sates it but goes beyond your expectations. You are wowed by the nature of the tale you were expecting all along.

That's what builds for you as you read. It is your expectations being right, but also delightfully surprising and satisfying, as the story unfolds. Once you decide how a story's going to turn out...don't you want to see if you are right? And don't you love it when you also discover thrilling and unexpected additions to the story's equation? I know I do. That's why I write, to create the story that brings you to fruition. Put the clues together! I tell you what's going to happen, but I tell you in a different place.


Check out this Author's Manifesto for more of my inspirations!


You're supposed to see it coming. You're supposed to think about how desperately close everybody is to their destiny, the chance meetings, the timely happenstance that brings the ship of destiny. That's what prophesy is all about, right? You see it coming, but you still can't stop it. But instead of boring you into a sense of predictability, it thrills you. You're excited for the convergence, and can't wait to see how it unfolds. I want you to literally get thrills as you read it. Everything you expect turns out so blissfully unexpected that you crave one more page, every time you try to put it down.

The whole point is to see it coming. My prophesies share the sense of what's going to happen, but without enough explanation for it to spoil the story ahead. And even if you happen to decode the prophetic riddles, the way I tell the story should be so good that the unfolding delights you anyway. I can write twenty riddles of what's coming next, confident that even if you figure them out (some are tough, I hope!) you'll still love reading the story.

Don't you think you deserve a book you can read again and again? I'm crafting my Tales of the Known World saga to account for multiple read-throughs, after you discover secrets hidden within the novels. I write my stories to be just as enthralling to re-read as they were the first time. I've designed the story to seem one way on the first read, and once you learn more of the secrets unveiled across many books, the story changes for you, and there is a newness to the old books again. I want your perspective to shift as you learn things. If the place from which you enjoy the tale is different, the tale itself will read differently.

I've crafted my story to grip you on the first read, but I've added clues that won't have meaning until you unveil connections in later chapters. I've included Easter eggs inside the books, trifling details the first time around that thrill you with a secret tip-of-the-hat when you re-read the novel. I want the layers of meaning to keep building, to keep enthralling you, rewarding you every time you decide to re-enjoy my books. To show my appreciation for your readership, especially for reading my stories more than once, I took great care in adding wonderful secrets for us to share.


That's it for this post! Check out my latest inspirations for more.

Download the Author's Manifesto here, or start your adventure below.






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Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Humble Beginnings: inspiration & spark

This post is Part 1 of a series to augment the Author's Manifesto available for free download.

This and other inspirations of mine are gathered in the Spark Directory for you to explore.

Find more prophetic poetry in my Portents Directory.



I wrote my first poem in 5th grade, an entire year before I wrote my first story. It rhymed, but I wasn't impressed with it. I felt it read like a kid wrote it! (Imagine that.) The poem was a homework assignment, and before I turned it in, I had very little sense of what the poem's message was.

But when my teacher encouraged me to put in an extra line at the end to make the message seem more finished, I was indignant. I didn't like that she was making me change my poem, even though the day before I'd judged the selfsame poem sub-par. This, I suppose, was my first brush with criticism, and with external editing. Since then, I've come to understand that indignation as the resentful smothering of creative expression, which I'm convinced all humans share to some extent.


Check out this Author's Manifesto for more of my inspirations!


I realized later that the whole poem celebrated the beauty in life, but the last two lines ended with a sort of haunting rejection of the human condition. Years passed, and the unaltered poem was selected for a Poetry.com anthology I never bought a copy of. Thus I became a published poet as a teen, albeit an unpaid one. Even as my rumpled feathers were soothed, I didn't understand why they'd selected my very first, sub-par poem over newer poems I liked better. My current guess is that I'd shifted into non-rhyming poetry, and it resonated with fewer people.

In retrospect, my 5th grade teacher might have felt unsettled by the poem's conflicting messages, and wanted to teach me to be more consistent. Or maybe she figured a child wouldn't intentionally assert what the poem asserted, and endeavored to help me make the message more positive. To be fair, I hadn't intentionally created a message at all, not that it stopped me from rejecting her critique. Whatever her motivation, she convinced me that I should tack on a final non-rhyming phrase to wrap up the poem's jarring end.

After reluctantly hand-scribing a few silly parting words onto the construction paper mounting this cloudy jewel of a poem, I shrugged it off. Apparently, poetry was not my strong suit. This conclusion didn't trouble me. I was ten, and had better things to occupy my time. Since this was well before my Tales of the Known World saga, I saved the poem out of some mystical sense of self-duty, the same way I imagine scrap-bookers feel compelled to preserve their memories. Then I tucked away my predilection for rhyme to go read and watch Ninja Turtles.


That's it for this post! Up Next: Developing notions of meter and rhyme...

Download the Author's Manifesto here, or start your adventure below.






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Sunday, January 1, 2017

Portent VII of Broken: a riddle in rhyme

Portent VII of Broken: and quell the wailing of the sea www.DNFrost.com/prophesy #TotKW A riddle in rhyme by D.N.Frost @DNFrost13 Part of a series.
In the novel Broken, there are 24 portents fortelling the events of the unfolding saga.

Start with Portent I here.

These and other riddles in rhyme are gathered in the Portents Directory for you to explore.

Enjoy!


Farewell the bonds of timeless sight
Unlauded lowly left for right
To walk the earth they oust the night
And win the sunny vale

The timeless forced at last to see
For all that was now cannot be
And quell the wailing of the sea
By recognition pale.


Can you decode the future Tales of the Known World?

Share your interpretation!
Comment below with your take on this portent.


A pair of scenes early in Broken begin with quotes from this portent. Though short, this prophesy foretells the chilling end of an ancient civilization.

Who are the timeless forced at last to see, and what unlauded lowly do you think triggered their downfall?



Download the Prophesy Appendix:

The merfolk culture is built on the prophetic Gift. Nearly all men produce a portent every twenty days, and they devote their lives to interpretation. For more about the role and inner workings of prophesy, check out the Prophesy Appendix above.



Alongside every prophesy is an attribution block. This block contains a byline giving the name of the person who said the prophesy, and a dateline giving the day the prophesy was first said. Here is the attribution for this portent:
Dynvyi Lannwe Kaedya I
2:3:1:1/5, III:IX
The portent attributed here has not yet been interpreted. It was said recently, and it will be repeated every twenty days until either it is correctly interpreted, or it comes to pass.


That's it for this post! Up Next: From ashes cold flames overdue...

For the Prophesy Appendix, enter your email above.






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