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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/39700
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I have a problem writing my alt-history story. It's a story about basically World War I. Yet, I wish not to convey ideas of the time, like how which country was bad, which country was good. Indeed, my main characters are fighting in opposing sides, and they are not particularly patriotic themselves.

As I wanted to create some distance from our world, I had the idea to change some names like country names. However I wanted historical realism, and did a lot of research to make my story as close as possible to what it was at the time.

However, my proofreader felt disturbed by this point. Like how I used idiomatic expressions using some real world country name inside the narration, while this country probably shouldn't exist in this universe. Or how the names of equipment is based on real world gear that was used during the war.

What do you do when writing this kind of alternate history scenario? Do you change everything, even if that means losing historical accuracy along with some pretty nice idiomatic expressions? Or do you modify these expressions, hoping your reader will understand?

Original score: 6