I'm not sure what led you to believe I'd be good with baking or dressmaking metaphors. [ Oh just you wait, Trevor. Just you wait. ] But you're about right, I think. Even if a spell has no other components, I'd need the written part. And the need for it to be written means I'd at least need a surface to write on and something to write with, which means they become components in themselves.

[ He draws a rectangle on the paper. He's not putting any effort into making it a decent match for the shape of the room itself, in part because he can't be bothered but also because he was told not to map the castle. ]

The main components for this are sand, salt, charcoal and water. There's other shit, but it's all more specialized. This, for example- [ He finishes drawing the spell out below his rectangle, then pours sand onto the map, where it stacks itself into two piles, representing himself and Sypha. ] -technically would be much easier with the spell drawn in ink, rather than charcoal. It doesn't make much of a difference at this scale, but if I wanted to find a specific human in the city, ink correlates to human intelligence and invention, where charcoal is the classical element of fire. It would make it easier to use the ink to find a person.