How to draw a map you have no idea how to start?

[waldronate]

You should be able to do a bit of worldbuilding to answer questions about the major players and how they relate to each other (which ones are oceanic superpowers, which ones are sharing a land border for conflict, who's allied to whom, where have recent large wars been fought and between who, and so on). Then pick up any fractal world generator, generate some coastlines until you get something with about the right number of major landmasses, draw in your major countries and cities, and finally plop down some mountains and rivers as barriers and transport corridors. Finally, add some roads, railroads, and any world-specific transport systems. Doing things in this order lets you keep things at a very high level while maintaining your necessary conflicts. The rough map will suggest additional conflicts that can lead to good stories (how to build a new port to support extraction of good mineral deposits in otherwise undeveloped lands, how to prevent your enemy from doing that, how to dam up/divert a river to reduce navigability of lower areas or destruction of an important endorheic lake, and so very many others...)

If you're doing an alternative history sort of thing, there are many, many Earth maps available. Slight changes in historic circumstances would likely make huge differences in the layout of today's world. Plus, such maps are usually fairly plausible.