Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36201
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36201
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Here's an important thing to remember: at the heart of your novel are the characters. Nobody is going to read something that looks and feels like a history schoolbook, only it's "alternative" history. So the first things you have to figure out are **who your characters are** , and **what's their story**. The parts that make your story "alternative history" aren't enough: they're worldbuilding. **Once you've built a world, someone has to live in it**.

Now, of course you want to show off your different world. So you'd want a character who is engaged with the world in a way that shows off its difference from RL. A baker's life would not be particularly different whether Napoleon's troops froze in Russia in 1812, or never went there in the first place. The life of a French diplomat, on the other hand, would be quite different.

The second important thing is, you don't want to surprise your readers with history going into an alternative route halfway through your story, where up until then they might have thought their reading some sort of straight historical fiction. This means that you should **introduce straight away** either the point of divergence, or something that's significantly different from our world (in which case you make the readers curious as to how the divergence happened).

For example, Susanna Clarke, in _Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell_ introduces straight away the point of divergence. Her story is about the Napoleonic wars, with magic.

> Autumn 1806-January 1807  
> Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.

While Philip K. Dick in his _The Man in the High Castle_ starts with something that's different from our world:

> For a week Mr. R. Childan had been anxiously watching the mail. But the valuable shipment from the Rocky Mountain States had not arrived.

The point of divergence in his case is that

> The Axis won WW2.

To make a long story short, the **"alternative history" is the setting**. In this setting, you still need to write an appealing story.

Original score: 2