# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > General and Miscellaneous Mapping >  Suggestions/Critiques on first map!

## Knighthood

Hey All,

I have constantly been drawing on this map, removing pieces, adding in things, trying to make sense if the geography would make sense, etc etc... I'm overly critical of my attempts at writing and drawing, and by no means would I consider myself an artist. But I feel somewhat proud about this map I made, I feel it has a lot of potential for growth and design, but I need help/suggestions.

What makes sense? Where should a long mountain range go? Should the water ways change and go entirely different directions? How does the land look from different people's perspective? Does it looks like it would a fertile place, or a massive wasteland?

So I'm curious what others might have to say about this. I'm slowly trying to build this continent, just one part of a larger world, and could use some constructive advice and/or criticism. So please, share your comments below, and thank you!

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## Hai-Etlik

You've got some Rectangularitis going on there;  the shape is clearly fitted into the paper.  Real land forms are not so convenient and it will become more obvious if you ever try to integrate it into a larger map.  If you want to do a larger map you should also have an idea of the projection you are using with this one.

You have several features that appear to be intended as rivers? While extremely exaggerated river width is a viable way of drawing maps, it's best to do so as part of a final map, not while you're still planning things out.  If those aren't rivers then they really make no sense.  It's best to plan rivers after mountains and climates as both of those have significant impacts on river formation.  Also keep in mind that further up a river means higher elevation while the elevation along the oceanic coastline varies very little so if the upper reaches of a river are near a coastline, you have a steep gradient which a river 

The large water body in the middle sort of makes sense as a flooded rift valley something like the Red Sea, but the shape looks more like a fjord or ria, except that neither could be that big, especially without a much larger area upstream as a watershed/iceshed.  For a rift valley it should be less "sinuous" and more "blocky" and it, and any branches, should align with other features rather than alternating with them: for instance, the large bays along the north coast are between the branches of the rift rather than lined up with them.

Keep in mind the extent of the thing you're creating and draw things on it that make sense for that extent.  Fjords the size of seas and rivers with deltas bigger than their watersheds don't make sense and will look off.

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## Knighthood

Thank you Hai-Etlik!

You're right, my thought process was from the ground (water) up and not the other way around (climate-> higher elevation -> lower elevation -> sea level). I never had considered the gradient variance with how close a river way was to the coastline and how that would impact the overall "flow" of things. 

So starting from scratch, I'll be better prepared to think top down. My overall plan is to design a land mass, small but much larger than a solitary island, sizing somewhere in-between Japan and New Zealand (so around 300k KM). The overall size should be able to contain many large medieval sized cities, but it will only have a few spread across due to natural obstructions like mountains and rivers (that's what I had originally been stuck on thinking about because I couldn't think of how I wanted the mountains to be arranged), but due to these natural obstructions it would lead to many valleys and large plains fields and thick/lush forests. I also envisioned a very unforgiving coastline that prevents many entry points onto the land mass, i.e. reef structure and rocky/high coastlines, therefore filtering where civilization would develop. I figured the climate would be temperate to allow for mountains to potentially have snow caps.


That is what I had envisioned in my mind.

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