Home » Writing & Publishing » Fiction Settings » Building The Archaeological Remains

Building The Archaeological Remains

© Dee-Ann Latona

While some might only need to go straight to the existing continents, others need to start by populating their initial large landmasses. This second option is a factor if you want to use a lot of archaeological or even geological information, or if you want to show relationships as your characters move from one continent to another. So, let’s take a look the two initial landmasses that we met in the previous article.

The Highs and Lows

Once again, we need to determine what kinds of highs and lows to expect on these continents since these will effect what kind of weather patterns exist, and the patterns effect what kinds of flora and fauna exist, and the types of flora and fauna plus the weather determine what kinds of creatures you’ll find there. To determine these factors we need to look at how the plates are moving. This time, I’ve included the arrows I had on my hand drawn version so you can see what plates are moving where.

One simple way to approach this issue is to say that where plates are pushing against one another, mountains or at least large hills form. Where they’re pulling apart from one another, perhaps a low plain or a gorge forms. There might even be rivers or lakes where holes have formed. For an example, here’s something that might have happened as a result of our plate activity. Notice that there are mountains (that’s what those jagged brown parts are) both in the water and on the continents. Some of these underwater mountains may stick up a bit out of the water to make islands and some might not. I’m not going to go into that level of detail here, but depending on what you’re doing it might be something to consider.

Weather or Not

Now we need to know how the winds blow. Keep in mind that while you’re looking at a rectangular map, you actually would have to print it out and curl it around to form a ball if you wanted to see it properly, as a planet. Weather is a process that’s fed by the sun. Our planet has a single sun just like the Earth does, and its sun puts out the same amount of energy as the Earth’s sun. To ensure that things are as similar to Earth as possible, let’s also say that the planet’s total size is the same as the Earth’s, it’s on the same tilt as the Earth, and has the same rotation around its own center, and around the sun. Putting all of these variables together means we can use Earth’s weather information to help us figure ours out. The major differences are this: our planet has 30% more water than the Earth, and our planet has two moons.