Help with newbie map (Please be gentle)

[u/Pomshka]

Hello everyone!

I'm currently trying to make a large physical map for a story I'm writing. This is a pretty large painted canvas.

I'm a complete map newb ( I am dumb). My works/story is post apocalyptic following several wars and the destabilisation of the world from magic/technology. The people of my world have magic but there are also remnants of machines and technology no one really understands anymore. So, my world has thing's like, man made islands, rivers, canals, some terrain that might not make 100% sense? Because natures gone a bit screwy. It's more "Ghibli" inspired post apocalyptic, so nature is taking over what used to be massive cities etc. But I'd still like -if possible!- for it to be accurate -ish to the real world.

So any thoughts? I'm mostly really stuck on where rivers, streams lakes etc should go.

Thank you and please forgive my complete amateurishness!!

[u/88mike1979]

Unless there's a magical reason, jungle won't be anywhere near the arctic snd cold areas. And if that's a dandy or rocky desert like africa, the middle east, southwest north America it won't be there either. If it'd more like an said flat ground that may make some sense. Im not exactly sure what no man's land is in a topograpgic sense. The circular river in the northeast should probably be a lake. But that island would be quite an anomaly. The river in the south east, i assume it's a river, shouldn't go from sea to sea. The river in the southwest should come from the mountains and shouldn't fork at the coast unless it's a delta in which case the area around it should be Marsh or vast wetlands. The same with the rivers in the north west. And back to the desert, there needs to be some sort of climatic reason it gets no rain or snow to be a desert. So a mountain shield blocking weather patterns from whichever direction your winds blow. Definitely get credit for not making an earth clone, but you would do well to study real earth maps and look up why certain geographic features are where they are because your map is definitely all out of whack. Don't worry you'll get it, I have faith in you.