People/Customs: Exercise for Alternative Earth

I almost didn't make this post. I felt that those who are writing for this setting are basically set. They could use the advice I gave for the real world setting and that would be that. There was no reason and I could take the day off from blog writing and just chill.

Yeah, I realized how wrong I am when I opened Mystery of the Dark to edit it. It opened at the beginning, where I use a setting that is like an AA meeting, that we need to touch on this. So, yes, you can take the real world advice and maybe even the second world advice if you're jumping far into the future, but let's talk about this a brief bit.

Depending on how much you're going to keep Earth the same, we might have the same customs. If you're just adding something, like magic or supernatural creatures, then we might keep a lot of the same customs. There might be more of customs that are not traditional, like Samhain, but you might also have something for vampires like a blood feast. Or the rite of the full moon if you have werewolves. For this, I would highly recommend looking into customs that are not of the mainstream and see if any of them would fit. It would give your novel a bit extra oomph and maybe one that you didn't think about.

For those who are either going into the past to change something or into the far future, you have to think how the actions of humanity are going to change what we do. For example, say that the bombing of Pearl Harbor never happened and we never got into World War 2. We wouldn't celebrate, even the small bit that we do now, Pearl Harbor day in June. Would we still have a Veteran's Day in November? It's some of the small things that you need to take into account when twisting our history. 

Same goes if you're jumping into the future. Is there still the USA and, if there is, do we still celebrate 9/11? Did we forget or is there something else that took it's place? How do we celebrate the long ago wars, like World War 2, or did something take it's place like World War 3? I know these are uncomfortable questions, because I don't mean to make my readers uncomfortable, but you need to think about how what we has now effects our future. It might not at all. You might decide that people still talk and celebrate a lot of what we celebrate now. You might decide that we don't but that's because something new took it's place. Or that it is just so far into the future that we just don't remember why we celebrate, just that we do.

That's some of the things to think on as you continue down this road of world building. It's going to be uncomfortable but that's when we grow as writers. So, until next time, keep on plotting, being uncomfortable, and hopefully, when you can, writing.