Quote Originally Posted by Gidde View Post
Now that I'm on the computer and can actually look up the link, this is a closer fit to what I was talking about (although I clicked one link from your link to get there, so the short answer is "close enough!"):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_geography
That's the one I found, and as I said, its extraordinarily helpful. Thanks a bunch.

Quote Originally Posted by jwbjerk
A big part of the trick to making them look realistic is avoiding uniformity. A real continent/island will probably have very jagged and very smooth parts. It would almost never be uniformly jagged all the way around.
As I study real world maps, I'm starting to realize this. I think my coasts are improving as a result; I'm certainly not throwing as many maps away. Though the maps still need work.