Alternate History General Discussion

[Ricardolindo]

I mean we have had essays written here about how you should always take things to the present. I think it's nonsense but it's also unsurprising considering how many people in the genre don't really think about work as lit.

What essays?

 

[napoleon IV]

I would think having a definite end point is important when planning alternate history stories. This ain’t DBZ or Naruto, you ain’t gonna make any money writing this for five plus years unless you’re gonna get it published or have a Patreon account.

I agree with your general thrust, but I don't think most online AH writers are interested in making money. People who spend years and years writing timelines do so because they enjoy it. This makes sense when you consider that online, TL-style AH simply isn't a genre that makes a lot of money, even if you're one of the biggest sellers on SLP.

 

[Gary Oswald]

I would think having a definite end point is important when planning alternate history stories. This ain’t DBZ or Naruto, you ain’t gonna make any money writing this for five plus years unless you’re gonna get it published or have a Patreon account.

I agree with your general thrust, but I don't think most online AH writers are interested in making money. People who spend years and years writing timelines do so because they enjoy it. This makes sense when you consider that online, TL-style AH simply isn't a genre that makes a lot of money, even if you're one of the biggest sellers on SLP.

Got to disagree with both of you. The reason I bought up never ending franchises is because I think the same motives apply.

Christian is right that with Disney etc. it's a financial decision. If you release Iron Man 38 or James Bond 56, you have a baked in audience and so it's a safe bet you'd get your money back. And nobody will lose their job for greenlighting a franchise movie, even if it does bomb. Whereas if you try an original stand alone, you don't have an audience to point to so financially it's more of a risk so you're sticking your neck out.

You're both right that there is no financial motive like that in amateur writing. I love how eager people online are to write without expecting money from it and so that calculation in terms of money never crosses their mind.

Where I disagree is that this means they write purely for the love of it and so will go where the story demands rather than the audience does.

Because no, you're still getting something from the audience. It's not rent money but it's likes and comments and interest and the feeling that you're not shouting into a void but that people enjoy your work. And that's something that is chased.

I think the reason an amateur writer would rather add another chapter to their 3,000 year timeline rather than end it and try something new is exactly the same reason hollywood would rather greenlight a new batman movie rather than something new. They want their existing audience and are scared of losing them.

 

[Talwar]

I don't know that I could start a project without having some sort of pre-defined ending in mind - or at least options to introduce an ending when I start to tire of the project and want to wrap it up. I'd much rather end something a little soon than draw it out indefinitely or just stop because I'm sick of it.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

It's nonsense on stilts. Even if one is writing a history without concern about the literary side, well, one doesn't read a history book about the Hundred Years War that goes on to the present day.

Timelines and stories are not the same thing - i can read an alternate history book like For Want of a Nail or Look to the West without expecting a beginning, a middle and an end, but a proper novel should be at least reasonably focused on a single story.

On the other hand, Schooled in Magic started as 7 planned books, then 14, then 24 (plus various spin-offs). Who am I to talk?

 

[Masteroftheuniverse]

I think a lot of TLs do have planned endings (even if it's just "stop writing when I reach the present day") they just never get finished. Like pretty much every form of serialized internet fiction, TLs have a strong tendency to end because their author stopped working on them for whatever reason.

 

[Jared]

I would think having a definite end point is important when planning alternate history stories. This ain’t DBZ or Naruto, you ain’t gonna make any money writing this for five plus years unless you’re gonna get it published or have a Patreon account.

Speaking purely from my perspective, I've always had an endpoint of sorts in mind for every timeline I've started.

Decades of Darkness was always planned to end the timeline proper in the 1930s. Lands of Red and Gold has a general endpoint in mind (though I don't have many of the details worked out) - but admittedly the time it's taken me to write that so far probably means that people aren't sure where the endpoint is. The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea was a small timeline which always had an endpoint in mind. My other timelines have always had a planned endpoint in mind, even where those timelines have been abandoned indefinitely deferred.

That said, I'm always open to revisiting even a finished timeline if I find a further story worth writing in that universe. But the further story, too, will be one with a planned endpoint.

 

[Japhy]

Have we had that on here? That does surprise me. I'd expect it on other sites but the emphasis on publishing and vignettes/tliad over long timelines here encourages a different culture.

Thande has written about it. I don't agree with it but I guess, hey, it works in LTTW.

 

[Coiler]

Time to do an AH where Saddam Hussein ends up as owner of the Detroit Lions.

 

[Yokai Man]

Time to do an AH where Saddam Hussein ends up as owner of the Detroit Lions.

It does suffer a little from the fact that Saddam doesn’t care that much about American Football. Or know that it exists.

A basketball team however…

 

[Coiler]

A basketball team however…

As if the Bad Boy Pistons weren't loathed enough IOTL...

 

[Matt]

Time to do an AH where Saddam Hussein ends up as owner of the Detroit Lions.

Does it have to be the Detroit Lions? I had an idea similar to this bouncing ‘round the old warped noggin, but with a different infamous world leader with a previously known interest in American football. Mind if I use the premise you mentioned as part of my idea?

 

[Coiler]

Does it have to be the Detroit Lions? I had an idea similar to this bouncing ‘round the old warped noggin, but with a different infamous world leader with a previously known interest in American football. Mind if I use the premise you mentioned as part of my idea?

I don't mind at all, and it can be whatever team you want. Who's the leader in question?

 

[Matt]

I don't mind at all, and it can be whatever team you want. Who's the leader in question?

I’ll PM you! If you don’t mind, that is.

 

[Coiler]

I’ll PM you! If you don’t mind, that is.

Don't mind at all.

 

[lerk]

I was going through old threads on AH.com, and I found one "DBWI: OJ Simpson doesn't catch the real killer", and the first post is like a couple paragraph long summary of events, the second post says "he wouldn't have become a state senator", and the third post says "or become President in 2016", and I feel like that was just a microcosm of everything wrong with DBWIs. Further I just find it funny that a high-profile celebrity turned hero would just become a state senator, you'd think he'd go for governor or senator or maybe that go for the Presidency itself.

 

[napoleon IV]

I was going through old threads on AH.com, and I found one "DBWI: OJ Simpson doesn't catch the real killer", and the first post is like a couple paragraph long summary of events, the second post says "he wouldn't have become a state senator", and the third post says "or become President in 2016", and I feel like that was just a microcosm of everything wrong with DBWIs. Further I just find it funny that a high-profile celebrity turned hero would just become a state senator, you'd think he'd go for governor or senator or maybe that go for the Presidency itself.

DBWIs are interesting in theory because they can serve as a tool to examine the assumptions that underpin a lot of AH. In practice however it's a shared world, and shared worlds only work if people can broadly agree on what the scenario is and there's someone to moderate. DBWIs have neither, and so it's basically just a bunch of people talking over each other.

 

[Coiler]

DBWIs offer the biggest temptation for what's a common online AH problem-the desire to put your stamp on a TL.

 

[Talwar]

I avoid DBWIs like a plague*. Any collaborative timeline project, really, for exactly the reason @napoleon IV mentions. They just degrade into a big mess.

*May or may not include denying that it exists and refusing to be vaccinated for it.

 

[Talwar]

There is, I guess, a time and place for those scenes in a "Self-Insert" story where the self-insert's adversaries think about how awesome and dangerous and mysterious the self-insert is.

But the vast majority of them really just seem like fan service.