Post #225 August 17 2020 “Writing the What-if? Historical Novel” Alternate history novels, sometimes called what-if historical novels, are always great fun. My next novel, The Eureka Gambit, will be this type of story. I’ve written three already: The Eyeball Conspiracy, The Peking Incident and Final Victory. In fact, the book description for Final Victory reads like this: In August 1945, the U.S. used two atomic bombs against Japan. But a third bomb was also built. What if a special ops team from Japan and the Soviet Union had managed to steal the third bomb? Japanese leaders wanted to end the war, but not on America’s terms. To get better terms, a plan is developed to seize the third bomb and threaten San Francisco with it. The story of the Imperial Japanese plan for Final Victory ranges from Tokyo to Tinian Island, Moscow to Alaska, from Los Alamos to a stolen B-29 winging its way toward the City by the Bay. Only Army counter-intelligence agent Colonel Wade Brogan can stop the plan. The top practitioners of this form of storytelling—writers like Harry Turtledove (How Few Remain and many others), Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle), Robert Harris (Fatherland)—are some of our best-loved storytellers. So, what makes for a good alternate history novel? Below, I detail four observations about this genre that writers thinking of wading in should consider. 1. Do your homework. Do the basic research. Don’t write about a certain time or certain events and try to change them for the story, or try to introduce a new factor, without knowing pretty solidly what actually happened. This should go without saying. Nothing destroys an alt-history story faster than obvious factual errors. 2. Select a good pivot point. By pivot point, I mean a place in time where your story diverges from the historical record. Think of it as a sort of hinge. In my three published alt-history novels mentioned above, all three deal with some type of atomic bomb terror that could have happened if events had transpired just a slightly different way. The book description above for Final Victory explains just what had to happen to make my revised story work. 3. Ensure that your alteration could lead to something dramatic or even catastrophic if it had actually happened. This is just good storytelling. Don’t introduce changes only to have Aunt Martha’s pet Pekingese die a few days earlier as a result. Only Aunt Martha would care. Your proposed alterations to history have to lead to something bad, or momentous or earth-shaking. 4. Plot plausibility. Could what you’re changing have actually happened? Don’t forget to connect the factual, historical dots. Think of my above premise for Final Victory. What if I had introduced Martians landing on Earth at the same time? In and of itself, that’s an okay factor, but it completely changes the story. It also makes the story harder to take seriously. The author Charlie Jane Enders has provided us with a nice list that should be considered by anyone trying to work in this vein: The 10 worst mistakes that writers of alt-history often make. This comes from the website gizmodo.com. 10. Failing to bring it up to the present. 9. Not recognizing that some historical developments were probably inevitable. 8. Ignoring historical factors that were important at the time, even if they aren't important to your story. 7. Not accounting for even the most obvious ripples from one big change 6. Concentrating too much on the one changed event, instead of all the events that led up to it. 5. Mixing up urban legends with actual history 4. Assuming that nothing will change besides your one big alteration — or that everything will 3. Making the story go where you want it to go, instead of where your altered history will support 2. Explaining too much 1. Forgetting to tell a good story Developing and bringing off a good alt-history tale takes work. A lot of work. For an author, who loves history, the preparation can be its own intrinsic reward. And if the story comes out well, it can be thought-provoking and memorable as well as entertaining, which should be the goal of every practitioner. Study the masters—there are many—to learn how they go about their craft. Alt-history is a rich literary vein. Properly mined and executed, you may just come up with a few gold nuggets nobody’s ever thought of before…a tale that has readers scratching their heads and saying, “Wow! I never thought about that before.” The next post to The Word Shed comes on August 24, 2020. See you then. Phil B.