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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26496
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I won't repeat [my answer to this related question](https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/10992/how-to-show-that-something-is-different-than-in-real-life/10993#10993) here, but instead briefly remind you that **writing about an alien world is exactly like writing about the real world**. You are stuck on the idea that your readers know nothing about this alien world that you made up, but that they are intimately familiar with this world we live in. But that is not true. Do you know how the school system in France works? Do you know what the current fashion in clothes, music, and food is in Turkmenistan? Do you understand the laws and political system in Burkina Faso? I could go on and on like this, but you get the idea: You can read a book written by an author from Chile or Finnland for a Chilean or Finnish audience and _get it_ without knowing all the plants and animals that live there.

Because people are the same everywhere.

Now you are writing about _aliens_ and you might want them to be different from humans, but for the story to have any relevance for your human readers at all, there must be some similarity, some kinship, something that the readers can relate to in the psychology of those aliens, and that will be the essential core of your story, the premise that drives the plot. **Everything else is just there like spices to tickle your reader's mind.** It is completely unimportant to your story whether that plant is blue or red, so you can

# leave all that detail away.

Just tell your story as if your readers where from that alien culture and intimately familiar with it. If the story works for an alien reader, it will work just as well for us.

Original score: 6