Hello. I'll try to make this as to the point as I can.
This is a map of a fictional country I made when I was young. Since then I've used it for many roleplaying games and such. I've plotted close to 100 cities, given it history, created the cities in sports games, etc. I've grown to love my fictional country.
However, over the years it's been bothering me that my younger self obviously didn't understand where water comes from nor where it goes. Now my goal is to make it a bit more realistic without having to change TOO much by moving major features.
I know that I need to fix the issue that I have rivers that start at the ocean and end at the ocean. I also realize that I have too many rivers flowing in and out of lakes, rivers forking off all over the place and nearly everything is linked together.
My biggest question is in regard to the giant lake in the middle. I have the main river flowing into it and a river flowing out of it. Does that even make sense? Is that plausible?
So, here's a copy of the map that I've jotted down some feature labels and marking some things I'm aware need fixed. And yeah, it's very derivative of North America. Younger me wasn't quite as imaginative I suppose. In terms of size, I suppose it's relatively the same size as North America or a bit smaller.
Overall, the elevation of the land is higher in the north/north east. As for the coloring, the darker green was indicative of thicker forests, but I think part way through I started equating it with higher elevation. so that's a bit...blurry. In it's fictional lore, there IS a lot of rainfall at least.
The red circles are places where I started a river at an ocean. I figured around these parts I can move the start back from the coast a bit and taper them off into tiny tributaries pretty easily.
I figured maybe I could disconnect the central river (H River) from the northern lake (N Lake) and then clean up some of the random forking from N River.
Not sure what to do about the whole mess that is Lake M and the rivers around it. It's supposed to be a waterfall on it's eastern side, but again, I realize that there's just too much stuff connected there.
I think for the most part B River in the west is okay, just disconnect one of the outlets?
Again, the big question is the big central lake, G Lake. Is it plausible? Should I disconnect the H river flowing into it, and wrap it around it's eastern side, and have it link up with F River, flowing out into the western gulf? Should I disconnect both rivers? Then what explanation would I have for a massive lake?
For anyone who reads all of this crap, thank you very much.
For anyone who has advice or suggestions, thank you very, very much.