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.

Setting: Exercise for an Alternative Earth Setting

Okay, time to give some of our AU Earth setting writers some love. Okay, well, we have with both past exercises, as they can use some of both, but we're going to dive into the idea of just how far you're alternative setting is going to go.  Let's dive in.

The first type of alternative Earth and one that people really like is taking a part of our past and twisting it. What if we never got into the second world war (Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick)? What if we never set off the nuclear bombs and we never entered the nuclear age? What if the cold war never ended? Those are a lot of more recent history changes, along with the assassination of JFK (11/23/63 by Stephen King), but that's not to say you couldn't go back farther. What if Rome never fell? What if Cleopatra never took her own life and Egyptian culture had a resurgence? We have a lot of history that, if you have a favorite time period, you could go back and twist something to write a plot from there.

The second type of alternative Earth is taking something we do not have - magic, mythological creatures, etc - and bringing them into the world. Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series has a mage detective working in Chicago. That's still the real world but it's urban fantasy due to the magic and supernatural creatures in the world. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to use the age we're in right now for your story. You could set it back in Elizabethan time and have a magic user who was in service of the Queen to take out her enemies. Or something else. You're not restricted to the time period of the here and now. Next week, we're going to be diving into different cultures and the rule of magic that will help those who want to write in this type of setting.

The third type of alternative Earth is where you go into the near or distant future. What do we have that we don't have now (flying cars anyone)? Are we still the same with slight differences if you're just going a small jump in the future? For me, as I have a novel that I'm working with the near future, is that we still have a lot of the same things. Racism isn't as prevalent as it is now and there's different types of it woven into the novel (half supernatural beings looked down upon). We still have the tech we have now but it's many numbers ahead of what we have now. Think Samsung Galaxy Note 20 instead of Note 7. So you do need to think of what we have different, what we have the same, and how long you are jumping. If you're jumping into the year 3000 or beyond, you might want to look into doing a bit of the second world setting plotting because culture will probably change a lot. We might have different beings that have evolved into living alongside humans. So keep that in mind when you're doing this type of AU Earth.

So those are the three types and the challenges and differences of each. I really like working in the third type, especially for the novel I'm writing now, but that is not to say that the second and third do not blend. None of these are set apart from each other. You can use all or none or some in each of them and come up with a great novel. Until next time, keep on plotting (and writing)!