Writing exercise: maps

Warm up: photograph

Look at or think about an old photograph of yourself. It could be an official document, like your passport, or a favourite photograph. What does that image say about the current version of you? Describe attributes in the photograph that might tell something of what was to come in future.

Brainstorm: mapping the future

“Map out your future – but do it in pencil” – Jon Bon Jovi

Think about all the different kinds of maps there are – from maps of a single room to maps of the whole of earth to the largest maps of our known universe. Writing often serves as a verbal map too, guiding the reader through a town or place, explaining what they might see along the way.

Maps also serve as a marker of where the mapmaker is in a moment in time. As soon as a map is made, it will begin to date. Things about it will eventually be wrong in the future. Think about how maps tell us about the past, and how maps may have hints of the future in them.

Start writing

• How does this early map of Scotland (Robert Gordon, Scotia Regnum 1654(this will open in a new window)) reflect your understanding of our nation? What is missing? Write about how you or those you love might or might not fit into it. “What is missing from this map is my family home, the street lights at night…”
• This map (Ordnance Survey: Ten miles to the inch. Local Accessibility North Sheet 1955(this will open in a new window)) is meant to show progress. Write a map in words that shows the progress of things around you during your lifetime. What you seen? What will you see in future?
• Look at an online map of where you live now and write about how things have changed or will changed. “When the school was built, they built a new road along the path the kids used as a cut through…"
• This map (Survey Atlas of Scotland, 1912(this will open in a new window)) is more recent. How and where would you place yourself on it? How would you describe where you fit or would want to fit in the future?

"I need two markers, one in Dumfries where I live now, and one in Inverness where I am going, however slowly..."