# Problem with my map, and creating a believable world



## ascanius (Oct 19, 2011)

OK the problem.  In creating the map I have done a good bit of research into land formations, plate tectonics, erosion and almost everything else to design a map that conforms to the laws of nature without having a degree in geology that is.  Now, I wanted to place buttes and mesas on an open savanna but the problem is I cannot think of a logical explanation as to how they were created.  This savanna is not a dry arid place with sandy soil but analogous to the African savanna with a large diversity of life.  I had wanted to place them just south of a mountain range and a little south west of a very large lake.  This means that there is not a lot of sand or wind.  From what I can gather buttes and mesas are usually found in dry arid canyon landscapes.  I have thought of moving the buttes and mesas south to an area, that is currently a extremely large desert, that is more suited to the type of land formation that they are.  If I do this it would be easy to bring a water source there creating a fertile savanna.  But if done this would change the a lot of aspects of a semi nomadic people that inhabit the bluffs to the east while creating an even larger open plain between north and south.  It would make no sense for them to stay in the bluffs without water when they could move to the lower lands where water is more available, which would essentially be below them.  Another problem is the inhabitants that would life among the buttes would be competing with these people for resources.  What I wanted was for them to fare enough away where they could trade and have amicable relations without being in direct contact, the difference between a couple of days and many weeks of travel.  Now if a leave the buttes where I had originally intended this would essentially cut the continent in half with a mountain range starting in the north west corner of the continent going south east.  Then the buttes and mesas continuing across the open plain to a large bluff canyons that also go south east finally ending half way between east and west.  Does anyone have any suggestions that I may have overlooked?  Also and more importantly how much of the world has to be based on fact.  For me I really don't like reading books where the laws of physics are completely ignored without some logical explanations as to the rules of that particular world. If a mountain can float I want an explanation.  If it is a super dense lode stone with an extreme repulsive force, fine.  In these situations I tend to analyze this to the point of why don't people cut chunks from it to use in flying ships and the like, I do this a lot with movies too.  If the physics don't make any sense I tend not to like it.  If magic is used as an explanation it needs to be a damn good one that conforms to the rules of magic in the book while terminating to some extent, ie why don't other people use magic to do something similar.  For me if something breaks a pattern I will dwell on it for an explanation and if none are presented the book looses it's savor.  
So to summarize how could I explain the formation of these buttes that somehow suddenly appear on a grassy flat plain.  And second I realize that not everyone is like me so I am wondering what is the limit to everyone elses' "leap of faith" and do minute details really even matter.  In all likelihood the explanation will never make it into the story but for my sanity, I at least need to know this stuff.  I have 38 pages of notes which I consider to be a condensed overview compromising only maybe 5% of the details and information I have floating around in my head.  Or am I just crazy?
Here is a address for the pic, and the password is guest12345 http://s1108.photobucket.com/albums/h406/ascanius1/
In the upper left hand corner is an arrow designating where I wanted to put the buttes.


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## Eimingami (Oct 19, 2011)

Your dedication to realism and detail amazes me... Your lack of paragraphs confuses me. Please rearrange your post and I promise I'll be able to read it over, think about it, and give you a decent suggestion.


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## Johnny Cosmo (Oct 19, 2011)

This is interesting, but as Eimingami said, that wall of text is making it hard to respond.


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## Linqy (Oct 19, 2011)

I can only get through the first lines (which make it sound like you DO know what you're talking about) before my eyes start to scramble everything into a big blur XD

Paragraphs please!


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## Xavorn (Oct 19, 2011)

Hello,

As the others already said it before me, paragraps, or there's no reading it through. 
But nice realistic map... Perhaps too realistic?

-Xavorn


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## The Blue Lotus (Oct 19, 2011)

Heres the thing, And I can read your posting so  


You have to take into account a few things: 
1) Age of your planet
2) geological movement happened long before you and your people arrived. 
3) if something does not fit go the "Pangaea" route. 

The plates are constantly rising and falling, oceans rise and fall as well. Not to mention "Drift" which seems to me your biggest issues at the moment. Drift can cause plates to smash together (Mountains), or parts of the plate to sheer off where eventualy they will met other plates ( californiaesq ) It will also cause vallies, etc. 

Subduction would hide some of this from us ( the whys and hows leaving you with something that just "is". )

Volcanic action forms new landmasses all the time. This problem that you have seems to me could be solved with a better understanding of the (your) locations history. (Millions/Billions of years ago) 

Water carves out all types of formations. 
In New Mexico we have Buttes and mountains together... I have no idea how they were formed however. You could look into it. 

I am of the oppinion that if it does not exsist it is just because it is now gone and we can't see it, or we just have not found it yet!

All the best I hope that helps just a little bit.


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## The Grey Sage (Oct 19, 2011)

I find your map interesting. The problems I see currently:
1. the detailing on your mountians is confusing and distracting
2. there are a lot of disembodied lines with no visible purpose floating around
3. in the right hand part you divide the land into countries? but no where else, does this mean those are the only inhabited areas?
As for other feedback, I think the map is coming along nicely. As Lotus says, water might be an agent you can use to carve yourself the formations you need. A useful tip is to use different colors or highlights or fonts when labeling certian parts of the map. For example, you could label all countries with italics and all amd formations in bold. Just an idea. Thanks for sharing such a good map. I hope to see it when close to completion!


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## Fiain (Oct 19, 2011)

I'm fairly new to this whole writing thing, but to me it seems like you perhaps worry a tad too much on realism. I mean, we are all _fantasy_ writers, am I correct? Leave something to the reader's imagination! They honestly are not going to care with how a particular mesa came to be located in a certain area, and if they do, your story should be enough to distract them from any physical strangness your world may have. I know its a bit of a lame excuse, but certain things need clarification, like magical systems. Certain things dont. In my opinion, if you attempt to bog the reader down with this kind of information, they won't be bothered to read much more into your world, which obviously you put a lot of time and effort into creating. The average reader isn't going to bother with arguing about the physics of your world; they'll want the story to be good, creative, and fun; and the world simply has to be the canvas on which you paint your story.


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## The Blue Lotus (Oct 19, 2011)

Fiain said:


> I'm fairly new to this whole writing thing, but to me it seems like you perhaps worry a tad too much on realism. I mean, we are all _fantasy_ writers, am I correct? Leave something to the reader's imagination! They honestly are not going to care with how a particular mesa came to be located in a certain area, and if they do, your story should be enough to distract them from any physical strangness your world may have. I know its a bit of a lame excuse, but certain things need clarification, like magical systems. Certain things dont. In my opinion, if you attempt to bog the reader down with this kind of information, they won't be bothered to read much more into your world, which obviously you put a lot of time and effort into creating. The average reader isn't going to bother with arguing about the physics of your world; they'll want the story to be good, creative, and fun; and the world simply has to be the canvas on which you paint your story.



Now see I disagree.
I think that if you write with all the realisms of our own world, it makes your world that much more believable. 
But that is just me... I have all the talent of a chicken pecking at the keys


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## Fiain (Oct 19, 2011)

The Blue Lotus said:


> Now see I disagree.
> I think that if you write with all the realisms of our own world, it makes your world that much more believable.
> But that is just me... I have all the talent of a chicken pecking at the keys



Haha no that is a perfectly viable point of view; I think there are many differant schools of thought on this, and niether of us is wrong, per say. And maybe I should ask a question: would information like that (as in, why a mesa is where it is) be included in the actual work itself? For me, as a reader, grinding through a text full of geological terms and explanations that really have nothing to do with the story, would bore me. I agree that realism is good to an extent; it just doesn't need to be thrust in the reader's face. Ascanius, I'm glad that you are putting so much detail into making your world; I would just be warry of how much you tell the reader about the reasons behind things.


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## Elder the Dwarf (Oct 19, 2011)

I'm not at all sure of this, but wouldn't a plateau in a grassland just be a hill that has been weathered down over time?  I don't see any reason that there shouldn't be flat, raised land in a grassland and a possible reason for the word mesa only appearing in desert landscapes is that it is a spanish word meaning "table" which (i believe) was used in present day southwestern United States first to describe land features.  This area is mostly desert and that could be where the perception is coming from.

I've had trouble articulating today so I know I wrote that horribly but I hope you can understand it.


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## The Blue Lotus (Oct 19, 2011)

Fiain said:


> Haha no that is a perfectly viable point of view; I think there are many differant schools of thought on this, and niether of us is wrong, per say. And maybe I should ask a question: would information like that (as in, why a mesa is where it is) be included in the actual work itself? For me, as a reader, grinding through a text full of geological terms and explanations that really have nothing to do with the story, would bore me. I agree that realism is good to an extent; it just doesn't need to be thrust in the reader's face. Ascanius, I'm glad that you are putting so much detail into making your world; I would just be warry of how much you tell the reader about the reasons behind things.



Depends I guess...
With some work such as Earth Children these things were detailed out to help build a picture of the world. 
In other instaces it is left up to the reader to figure out. 
Detail based books have a following of people who enjoy the details alone. Vampires that walk in the day light just won't work for them because it strays too far from a preset rule book. 
Other people like to suspend reality altogether and find this perfectly acceptable. 

In my own work I tend to follow the preset rules with exacting detail, proper names scientific terms etc. 
Perhaps if the OP would be so kind as to give us a bit more information about his type of work that would help a great deal?


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## ascanius (Oct 20, 2011)

Sorry about the wall of text, here it is with paragraphs and some order.

OK the problem. In creating the map I have done a good bit of research into land formations, plate tectonics, erosion and almost everything else to design a map that conforms to the laws of nature without having a degree in geology that is. Now, I wanted to place buttes and mesas on an open savanna but the problem is I cannot think of a logical explanation as to how they were created. This savanna is not a dry arid place with sandy soil but analogous to the African savanna with a large diversity of life. I had wanted to place them just south of a mountain range and a little south west of a very large lake. This means that there is not a lot of sand or wind. From what I can gather buttes and mesas are usually found in dry arid canyon landscapes formed from erosion by water and wind.  

I have thought of moving the buttes and mesas south to an area, that is currently an extremely large desert, that is more suited to the type of land formation that they are. If I do this it would be easy to bring a water source there creating a fertile savanna. But if done this would change the a lot of aspects of a semi nomadic people that inhabit the bluffs to the east while creating an even larger open plain between north and south. It would make no sense for them to stay in the bluffs without water when they could move to the lower lands where water is more available, which would essentially be below them. Another problem is the inhabitants that would life among the buttes would be competing with these people for resources. What I wanted was for them to fare enough away where they could trade and have amicable relations without being in direct contact, the difference between a couple of days and many weeks of travel. Now if a leave the buttes where I had originally intended this would essentially cut the continent in half with a mountain range starting in the north west corner of the continent going south east. Then the buttes and mesas continuing across the open plain to a large bluff canyons that also go south east finally ending half way between east and west.

Does anyone have any suggestions that I may have overlooked? Also and more importantly how much of the world has to be based on fact. For me I really don't like reading books where the laws of physics are completely ignored without some logical explanations as to the rules of that particular world. If a mountain can float I want an explanation. If it is a super dense lode stone with an extreme repulsive force, fine. In these situations I tend to analyze this to the point of why don't people cut chunks from it to use in flying ships and the like, I do this a lot with movies too. If the physics don't make any sense I tend not to like it. If magic is used as an explanation it needs to be a damn good one that conforms to the rules of magic in the book while terminating to some extent, ie why don't other people use magic to do something similar. For me if something breaks a pattern I will dwell on it for an explanation and if none are presented the book looses it's savor.

So to summarize how could I explain the formation of these buttes that somehow suddenly appear on a grassy flat plain. And second I realize that not everyone is like me so I am wondering what is the limit to everyone elses' "leap of faith" and do minute details really even matter. In all likelihood the explanation will never make it into the story but for my sanity, I at least need to know this stuff. I have 38 pages of notes which I consider to be a condensed overview compromising only maybe 5% of the details and information I have floating around in my head. Or am I just crazy?

Here is a address for the pic, and the password is guest12345 Login to a private Photobucket.com album
In the upper left hand corner is an arrow designating where I wanted to put the buttes.


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## ascanius (Oct 20, 2011)

The Blue Lotus said:


> You have to take into account a few things:
> 1) Age of your planet
> 2) geological movement happened long before you and your people arrived.
> 3) if something does not fit go the "Pangaea" route.


Ok I added another map image.  http://i1108.photobucket.com/albums/h406/ascanius1/note.jpg with same password guest12345.  The two arrows with A and B above them indicate the general direction of the plate movement due to continental drift.  It also indicates the two possible areas for the buttes.  For the sake of simplicity I will use the A and B above the arrows as the possible region for the buttes, as indicated.  The region A is where I had wanted the buttes to be but the mountains, yet to be placed on the map, to the north are going to be similar to those found in the Rockies of North America with a nice temperate climate found along the great plains such as in Wyoming, or Colorado.  I don't intend for the region to be arid but to have a moderate amount of rainfall coming in from the west.  I was only planing on having a single large river going north to south from those mountains, yet placed, to the large gulf in the south.  This river was going to skirt the edge of the buttes.  The problem here is that this area is not arid with sandy soil but fertile with granite like rocks.  

The part labeled B is the other location that would fit better with what I have read about the formation of buttes, arid, rocky.  The entire area of B is where I wanted a vast desert to be located.  To the east of be are a network of canyons that would be similar to the Grand Canyon in the Midwest United States, to some extent.  The formation of these buttes would be easily explained in this location and would make perfect sense.  However it means that I will have to rethink a lot about the two cultures seeing that I never intended them to be so close together.  



The Grey Sage said:


> I find your map interesting. The problems I see currently:
> 1. the detailing on your mountians is confusing and distracting
> 2. there are a lot of disembodied lines with no visible purpose floating around
> 3. in the right hand part you divide the land into countries? but no where else, does this mean those are the only inhabited areas?


1.  There not mountains but canyons, with a line running through them to note the location as a note.  Zooming in it is more apparent.  
2.  The disembodied lines are notes for various aspects of where certain things are located, and usually toggled off.  I left them on to help explain a few things.
3.  The parts with labels in the east are the semi completed parts, the majority of what I have shown is not finished.  



Fiain said:


> Haha no that is a perfectly viable point of view; I think there are many differant schools of thought on this, and niether of us is wrong, per say. And maybe I should ask a question: would information like that (as in, why a mesa is where it is) be included in the actual work itself? For me, as a reader, grinding through a text full of geological terms and explanations that really have nothing to do with the story, would bore me. I agree that realism is good to an extent; it just doesn't need to be thrust in the reader's face. Ascanius, I'm glad that you are putting so much detail into making your world; I would just be warry of how much you tell the reader about the reasons behind things.


I don't plan of having a large amount of details about the geography, this is purely for my sake that I want to know this stuff, it helps with my sanity.  Everything that I include in the map has a reason as well as a geographical basis based off of research of what is geographically possible.  until I came into this problem.  I cannot think of any geographical basis to have the buttes in the north labeled region A without having a large river cutting the terrain into the buttes and changing the soil type into sandy soil that is easily cut by the wind and water.  I suppose I could have the buttes be very old but the question I ask myself is why didn't they form the way the mountains did to the north, they are close enough together that they should have formed in a similar manner.  
Basically I want the buttes to make sense in the region they are located.


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## Ravana (Oct 20, 2011)

I'm all for detail, and I'm glad to see someone putting serious effort into research. 

As for what you might have missed: yes, one thing. Igneous intrusions. They can be solidified lava cores of volcanoes that otherwise spewed mostly ash, which could have easily been eroded away in a (geologically) short time. Devil's Tower may not exactly sit in the middle of the Great Plains, but it isn't all that easy to get a mountainous backdrop in a photo of it, either. (For that matter, even igneous extrusions can work in some instances: basalt can make for some pretty spectacular formations.) Volcano-producing hot spots can occur anywhere–very often in the middle of a continental plate: this is why Hawaii is where it is. And while Mount Kilimanjaro is too young to have experienced the required level of erosion yet, in a few million years or so it's going to be one _huge_ mesa sticking up in the middle of nowhere (as opposed to one enormous mountain sticking up in the middle of nowhere)… barring further volcanoes forming nearby, at least. 

What you're not likely to be able to do in that situation is justify much soil cover on top of the mesas. As long as you don't mind them being relatively infertile outcroppings (I don't think you specify), there shouldn't be a problem.


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## The Blue Lotus (Oct 20, 2011)

Ravana, 
Could he not just go with continetial drift, There was a river there way back when the plates were arranged in another way?

It seems to me that would work, perhaps what is left now are Buttes, but back then as you pointed out in your post they could have been mountains.

Vocanic formations is also another way around the whole sticky issue. Good point 

As to the O.P. you point to directionality of plate drift in your map, however what you fail to take into account is that your world is a round object. Gravity, magma, direction of spin/speed of spin, even the tilt of the axis all play a part in how the plates move. 

But go back to a globe, look at the formation on our own planet, things are moving east, west, north, and south.  
They will have to collide somewhere on the opposite side that they started on. Where they will again start the process of pulling apart. 
Why can't your world have the same basic theory?

Here is an example of what I mean. 650 Million Years in 1 Min. and 20 Sec.*Video

Now another way to deal with you problem is glacial movement, as the glaciers retreated they carved up all kinds of things, Lake Tahoe, New York, just to name a few. 
Something to think about.


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## Ghost (Oct 21, 2011)

ascanius said:


> So to summarize how could I explain the formation of these buttes that somehow suddenly appear on a grassy flat plain.



I'm no geologist, but I'd like to help.  I didn't understand some of your requirements. You need mountains to bisect the continent. In the northern part, west of the mountain range, you want buttes and mesas in a fertile savanna? I'm not sure why the buttes are even necessary. At first, I thought you were using them to impede travel (lol), but I gather that's why you want the mountains and distance from the southern people. Is there a cultural reason for the buttes? Is there a reason they couldn't be kopjes instead?

I know you've already mapped your tectonic plates, but maybe the mesas could be the result of thrust faulting or a rift? Unfortunately, I can't find results for this sort of thing bordering a grassland. I thought a volcanic field would work instead of buttes, but they seem to be worn away in flat locations, like the Raton/Clayton Volcanic Fields and the Monaro Volcanic fields. But I managed to find something interesting called the Pawnee Buttes. I'd read the See Also links at the bottom for more similar formations. So there can be buttes on a flat terrain with less precipitation, but it doesn't look like you'd get many of them in a small area.

I don't think you'd get that sort of formation in a fertile savanna like the Serengeti. The soil is different, as well as the precipitation. (I'm not sure if the Serengeti or Masai Mara was the type of African savanna you were going for.) Volcanic fields, a series of massifs (like AÃ¯r Mountains), or an escarpment would fit in with that type of savanna. Something like the Caprock Escarpment would be okay. Googling does pull up some escarpments in the places like the Serengeti. The more fertile escarpments appear to be covered in trees. If that doesn't bother you, you could have traps made by volcanic activity a long time ago, like the Deccan Traps. I'd also look at places like Grand Mesa.



ascanius said:


> And second I realize that not everyone is like me so I am wondering what is the limit to everyone elses' "leap of faith" and do minute details really even matter. [...] Or am I just crazy?



Well, as a reader, I'd be confused about buttes in a fertile grassland, but that may be due to personal associations since I grew up near a set of small buttes. It wouldn't stop me from reading. It's the same way I keep watching a movie with terrible police procedure. There's a twinge of annoyance, and I move on. Unless the whole story is idiotic. I do think it complicates things, deciding what people go in which part of your map and where buttes and mesas should be then sticking the realism in afterward. I'd expect a lot of backtracking to make the appropriate adjustments.


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## Queengilda (Oct 22, 2011)

I'm afraid I have to agree with Flain.  Too much description does tend to bore me. However, I think the Map is absolutely fantastic, and the amount of work you have put into it and the amount of research into land forms and how they are generated is a work of art!  

Ascanius you obviously feel very strongly about creating a believable correctly formed land mass.  I'm wondering if as this is a different planet, if there might be different geological situations that might explain the topographical features you need.  I'm not a geologist, but with all your research maybe you could come up with something interesting to explain them.


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## Devor (Oct 24, 2011)

Fiain said:


> I'm fairly new to this whole writing thing, but to me it seems like you perhaps worry a tad too much on realism. I mean, we are all _fantasy_ writers, am I correct? Leave something to the reader's imagination! They honestly are not going to care with how a particular mesa came to be located in a certain area, and if they do, your story should be enough to distract them from any physical strangness your world may have. I know its a bit of a lame excuse, but certain things need clarification, like magical systems. Certain things dont. In my opinion, if you attempt to bog the reader down with this kind of information, they won't be bothered to read much more into your world, which obviously you put a lot of time and effort into creating. The average reader isn't going to bother with arguing about the physics of your world; they'll want the story to be good, creative, and fun; and the world simply has to be the canvas on which you paint your story.



People don't know what they care about until they read it.  Maybe your readers or the gamers at a place like WoW don't notice that the geography doesn't make sense, but when all of a sudden you read about a mesa that was once crushed on all sides by a now dead ocean, you begin to appreciate some of the detail that's included.  Also I find that reading and understanding what happens in the real world helps to expand what I include in my world, and that was true for mapmaking as well.  You get to learn about rivers that run underground, or why a waterfall might be followed by rapids and a whirlpool - and suddenly you find that your river systems just got a lot more interesting.

I think most people on this site are worried about info-dumping, and I don't think anyone is arguing for presenting your readers with an essay on the topographical construction of the terrain.  But absolutely there is a great deal of value in learning what you know - and don't know - about how the real world works.


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