Quote Originally Posted by landorl View Post
This is a new map showing the general lines of the major faults in the world. the red lines mark the faults. I have put an arrow showing the general drift of the plates. In general everything is drifting away from a central range of mountains that mark the spine of the world. I have placed in a blue line where the deepest ocean trenches would be, and in a brown line (which is hard to see) where some undersea mountain ridges would be.

I am not sure that the trenches are in the right location though. I don't know exactly which side of the fault that a trench would form on.
What RPMiller said! Also when two plates are sliding past each other, you have a fault zone (earthquakes and the like) but tend not to get mountains or canyons forming.

A good (but somewhat simple explanation) is here: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/tecmech.html

In most current theories (afaik) a planet will start up with one big "land mass"/"hight spot" as it cools, near the equator, due to centripetal force and tidal actions of the sun/moons. This one mass will start to fracture into various plates due to convection currents in the aesthenosphere, pumped by radioactive decay.

I am not sure how you came up with your continent layout, but it could be tricky to apply a techtonic model to something not started with one. I am not sure if any of the "world building" softwares support a plate tectonic model, as the (free/demo) ones I have played with tend to use things like ridged multifractals, plasma models or the like.

-Rob A>