FIND YOUR SPACE
Top tips for researching locations from Tarja Moles
RESEARCH TIPS
Tarja Moles
Maps are great resources for learning about different places. For example, physical and topographic maps can help you find out about the physical aspects of a landscape while political maps show you territorial borders. These can be helpful for nonfiction pieces or writing about your fictional characters’ travel adventures.
Thematic maps focus on specific topics, such as population density or average distribution of rainfall. They are, in essence, graphic essays about different geographical areas and can help you understand a theme within the context of a particular location. Maps can also help you make sense of the past: they chronicle how political boundaries have changed and how world events, like wars, have developed.
If you couple information found in maps with additional spatial data (ie information that has a spatial component or that’s connected to a place in the Earth), you can learn a lot about a specific area. Therefore, even if your research focus is not geography-oriented per se, you may benefit from incorporating some map or spatial data exploration into your research plan.