In the course of our careers,
novelists practice many professions—psychologist, historian salesperson, and
graphic designer to start with. But how about cartographer?
Have you ever had your heroine
gaze out her kitchen window to the street in one chapter—and to her backyard in
the next? Or have you ever had the locations of banks and groceries and post
offices shift during your novels? I’ve found these things in my first drafts.
The solution—map it out.
On a small scale, draw floor
plans of homes and other important buildings, including locations of things
important to your story—telephones, kitchen knives, windows. For my novel The
Land Beneath Us, I sketched a floor plan of the heroine’s home and of the
library where she works.
