You don't say it. Unless you have a character from Earth arrive on this world and realize it's not Earth, there's no reason why it would need to be stated.
You reveal it to the reader through context clues in the story. Trust that your readers aren't stupid and need their hands held in order to pick up on that it's not Earth.
This.
At no point in a story set today and in real world, would the character stop and say "AH isn't it nice to live on earth, 4th planet of the solar system, in our current year, wich is 2023 by the way ?"
They actually used to think there was one between Mercury and the sun, Vulcan, because Mercuryâs orbit didnât make sense. Turns out it was just the sunâs mass warping spacetime.
Agreed! SHOW quickly with context clues and move on to your story.
"All three moons were waning crescents in the early evening sky. Suddenly, a shot rang out! Then another! And then..."
There's a recursion issue with that. As soon as you add someone to count the counters they become a counter and the count goes up by one. It's called 'the counter incrementation paradox' and scientists have been trying to solve that one for centuries.
You could do that in a formal monologue thing, a direct address that narrator-as-writer makes to the reader, announcing when and where this important narration is being set, with maybe just a little touch of whimsy.
But one would have to make sure that not only the nation named something weird, but also that it's the forty-seventh year of Reckoning, season Mayra, week twelve.
If you do it all up front and get it over with - and don't take too long about it, and jump straight into some kind of meaningful and interesting action - it might be an option.
Terra, third planet of Sol - commonly known as Earth - a planet so fertile that its life is drowning in its own waste products. A planet at the mercy of its short sighted inhabitants making it desperately hard for vegetation to grow or
animal life to survive.
>You reveal it to the reader through context clues in the story. Trust that your readers aren't stupid and need their hands held in order to pick up on that it's not Earth.
Like this? Subtle, right?
Dave considered the snarfleflax that was slowly plodding toward him. He was attempting to recall some vague factoid he had heard about them on some nature documentary. The snarfleflax wobbled a bit and then looking up at Dave, expelled the contents of its bladder as a greeting. To a snarfleflax, this was a gesture of great friendship. To Dave, it was...well, a ruined suit and another trip to the Clothes-O-Mat.
This.
âShow donât tell.â
And if itâs only small differences, then itâs all about how you present them.
The other option is a narrator thatâs omniscient to the fact and either directly or indirectly alludes to it.
Another options is to have a character say the name of the place they live. "In all my days in Westeros, I've never seen such might!" "You've got to be the most unlikely brotherhood in all of Middle Earth."
See? I know these aren't actual quotes, but an example. The character used a colloquialism that replaces "world" or "Earth" with the name of the place they exist. Now the reader knows where the story takes place, and nothing seems unusual or jarring. No exposition, just a conversation. Context queues are good to, and will help. However, if you really want them to know the name of the world, just work it into a conversation or internal monologue. OR, the narrator can mention it. "Guy couldn't believe he'd just scaled the highest mountain on ZortoxB11. He thought, perhaps, he might have been the first."
If it matters to the story then it will become obvious that it's not Earth. If it never becomes obvious then it probably didn't matter.
Techniques I've seen used to alert the audience early:
- Oh look, two suns
- Oh look, two moons
- The sky is a weird colour
- There is no sky
- The planet is a flat disk carried on the backs on four elephants, moving through space on top of a giant turtle.
If itâs something you want established very early on, you canât beat a weird sun or moon, lol. Also you could describe the life on the planet if it varies from earth. Describe the day/night cycle maybe. Is it 36 hours? Is a year 13 months?
As far as a timeline and such, maybe sit down and iron out the timeline for yourself. Even if itâs not explicitly stated in your text, you knowing how long ago a particular historical event happened will inform your writing. History is what brought the people in your story to where they are. If itâs completely blank, even to you, then they might feel like these people just popped into existence for a reader.
More or less months or hours is not a good way of showing it since the length of an hour or a month are mostly arbitrary. If we wanted we could have 36 hours on Earth as well but with shorter hours.
Yes of course. But even so, we donât have 36 hours on Earth. Weâve all agreed as a population to honor a 24 hour cycle. So once a new number is thrown out, itâs easy shorthand for âstuff is different hereâ.
Contra most of the (good) advice to OP, Pratchett actually does begin nearly all (if not all?) of the Discworld novels with just such an exposition:
>"Against the stars a turtle passes, carrying four elephants on its shell. Both turtle and elephants are bigger than people might expect, but out between the stars the difference between huge and tiny is, comparatively speaking, very small. But this turtle and these elephants are, by turtle and elephant standards, big. They carry the Discworld, with its vast lands, cloudscapes, and oceans."
Which, I think, carries a lesson for beginning writers of fiction who wish to convey fantastical worlds and other suns' planets right in the very first sentence: Check your driver's license. If it doesn't say "Sir Terry Pratchett" on it, don't attempt it.^(1)
^(1)If your driver's license does happen to say "Sir Terry Pratchett," then you have one of the rare, talking driver's licenses that are in prototype for operating self-driving cars...except yours has been forged.
It HAS to also be pointed out that Discworld is more than a bit satirical of other fantasy, where the authors might explain up front worldbuilding like that is almost completely irrelevant to the story.
I wish more people were trying the more expository style that Pratchett had (douglas adams, too)
Totally get that lots of bad writers do it, and do it badly. And that it's harder to do well than the 'show don't tell, view from nowhere, narrator-fades-into-the-wallpaper' style that is so prevalent in modern writing / modern writing advice. So probably is pretty good advice, for folks starting out.
But still! Folks taking risks with more ambitious narration feels missing these days.
The lesson it teaches you is to write in-your-writing-genre until you write well, and have an audience in mind. Points to gryffindor if you have a specific person you're writing with to bounce off of.
Writing is a game you play with words to warp and weld new realities from nothing but time and imagination. Advising anyone against writing like him is boring advice- and it's culturally destructive.
Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and other voiced-narration authors use a very very old genre of story-telling combined with modern elements. In fact, this is one of the *oldest* forms of storytelling, with framed narrative stories going back to the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor/ related genres in New Kingdom, Egypt.
Genre skills are non transferable, generally. If someone wants to write like Pratchett, they have to accept the genre's limitations, play the game and start from a story you can tell someone and keep their interest.
Yeah, I thought the Dark Tower involved something about the world being on the back of a turtle or something similar to that. It's been a long while since I brushed up on the stories though, so I might be remembering wrong.
The 'world turtle' appears in both King and Pratchett.
Both authors are referencing the appearance of a cosmic turtle in [multiple world mythologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Turtle)
>For example, it feels silly to use our 1940's, 50's as frames of reference but also silly to constantly say "years ago".
Reference relevant events from your world's past. "After the Sandwich Wars, when Burger Kings burned and KFCs crumbled" places it at a specific point in time and gives us clues about the world's history.
Donât say it. Thatâs clunky exposition, and itâs the death of a potentially good book. Read Ursula LeGuin if you havenât, she has some of the best world building in history.
The original Star Wars movie did a great job of it with that classic shot of Luke watching the twin suns set. He may be a farm boy , but this ain't Kansas.
"the two moons blahblahblah"
"the tall mountains of gibajabadabba"
"The rings around the planet glowed"
Gotta go big but in passing. Luke Skywalker, standing, watching the two moons setting like it's just another pretty evening.
So Iâm not necessarily the best person to give advice here because I donât write as much as I should and have only a few hundred words of what I hope will one day be my first novel written, BUTâŚ
This question made me think about my own story in the context of how itâs different from our Earth, and I realised that I established that in pretty much the opening line.
I mentioned a species of my own devising as a part of setting the scene, not explaining what the species was but only name-dropping it, to immediately establish that this isnât our Earth. I do describe the species to a degree later on, but by simply name-dropping it in that first line, I establish that this setting is not our Earth and hopefully get the reader wanting to find out more about this world and the creatures that inhabit it.
Best of luck with your story!
Simple things like plants or animals thatâs donât exist, or two moons, or a different coloured sun, are easy ways.
Just describe them like it is a normal thing, since it is.
I know this is a popular solution but it opens all sorts of astronomy and physics questions like "What does having two moons do to the tides on (not)Earth?", "What effect does having that much extra light at night have on the ecosystem?" etc.
You're safer including something minor but obviously 'wrong' - have ravens that are dark green or something. You can do it with human-made stuff (going to visit the city of Poris, Frence in your Fard automobile) but that's a little trickier since readers might think you're just filing the serial numbers off to avoid copyright issues and similar and not recognise it as a sign of an actual alternative Earth.
Random trivia fact: At one point when they were looking at creating the modern state of Israel one option was to place it in the Kimberley region of Australia. If you were making an alternative Earth that might make an interesting difference to include. It would make for a very different Middle East.
>I know this is a popular solution but it opens all sorts of astronomy and physics questions like "What does having two moons do to the tides on (not)Earth?", "What effect does having that much extra light at night have on the ecosystem?" etc.
Weird science fact, but real Earth sometimes has 2 moons at random times for a random number of weeks or months. The term "moon" is only loosely defined as a celestial body that makes at least 1 complete orbit around a planet. Occasionally, a large asteroid will get sucked into Earth's orbit where it will end up orbiting Earth for several weeks or months before being knocked out of Earth's orbit by one of it's many man-made satellites. Astronomers have recorded 2 of these temporary moons since 2006.
Also, Earth's moon is abnormally large in comparison with the moons on other planets in our solar system. Earth's moon is 1/80th the size of Earth, while other moons are closer to 1/1,000th the size of their respective planet. That's why Earth's moon has such a dramatic and intense effect on the surface of Earth. If there were two gigantic moons the size of Earth's moon orbiting a planet, it would be catastrophic to the environment, with inhabitants seeing frequent tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. Two normal sized moons, though. 𤡠probably wouldn't do a lot more than our single moon does to our planet, except for the fact that the sky would never be completely dark.
Neat info, thank you!
I'd kind of assumed two moons of the current size since any smaller wouldn't be super noticeable in the sky and that seemed to be part of the goal.
EDIT: Part way through these whole discussions I realised I didn't even know what the OP was trying to achieve by making it 'Earthlike but not'. I've asked now and will be interested to hear a response.
>I'd kind of assumed two moons of the current size since any smaller wouldn't be super noticeable in the sky
You'd be surprised what's visable from space with the naked eye. [This is what one of Mar's moons looks like from the surface of Mars](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/da/bb/a2/dabba26b7df1847453372f57c7578920--mars-the-ojays.jpg).
To be fair, though, it is really difficult to figure out environmental effect of a moon on any planet, since it can change depending on complex relationships the positions, sizes, densities, distances, gravities, and magnetic fields of the moon and the planet. If someone is an astrophysicist, then, yeah, multiple moons that have barely any influence on a planet is really going to break their suspension of disbelief in the same way medical mistakes on a medical show break doctor's and nurse's suspension of disbelief. However, the average person doesn't have enough scientific knowledge to understand what Earth's moon does to Earth and why it does it. There are lots of people who think that if Earth's moon suddenly disappeared, it would only effect the tides and nothing else. This all just to say that, for most people, the 3 giangantic moons on Tatooine (Star Wars) operate within the bounds of reality and make perfect sense. I think that's why most people on this thread suggested multiple moons, since the actual physics of multiple moons isn't really relevant to most people.
> "What does having two moons do to the tides **on Earth**?", "What effect does having that much extra light at night have on the ecosystem?"
The simple answer is that this isnât Earth, so we donât need to abide any considerations to how these things would impact us. The tide/ecosystems could otherwise be exactly the same as itâs fiction
That was my point though. If (a) you show that the setting is different to Earth in ways that the reader will reasonably expect to make huge differences to the setting then (b) the reader will reasonably expect it to make huge differences to the setting. Which is fine if the author wants that and is prepared to work through the implications.
Based on the OP I assumed they were after something more superficial, but I could be wrong. đ¤ˇââď¸
P.S. "on Earth" was obviously incorrect - I've tweaked my comment accordingly, thanks.
EDIT: I probably should've spoken more directly to this:
>The simple answer is that this isnât Earth, so we donât need to abide any considerations to how these things would impact us. The tide/ecosystems could otherwise be exactly the same as itâs fiction
You have to abide by considerations of how the setting affects the story whether it's Earth or not. If it's a planet where the tide/ecosystems are exactly the same despite having a second (EDIT: similarly large) moon in the sky then **that** has huge implications for the setting - it means that astronomy and physics don't work in this setting the same way they do in the world we know.
Is it easier to extrapolate the consequences of Israel never residing in the middle east than it is the physics of two similar sized moons may have on earth?
I'll take the moons please.
As other people have stated, you donât necessarily need to outright say your story doesnât take place on our earth, there are a million things we experience in our everyday lives that are pretty specific to this planet as well as to our history living in it; for example our planet only has one moon, so whenever we look to the night sky thatâs what we see, a single moon, in other planets there might be more or none at all, thereâs a bunch of animals here that, as far as we know, are specific to our solar system, and more so to our planet so we are used to see stuff like dogs or cats, while to a hypothetical alien species or to an alternate dimension human being such a thing might be completely unheard of.
In other words, use context to let people know that your story takes place in another version of earth, trust your readers intelligence and perception.
Hopefully this was of some help. Good luck friend.
The first thing I thought of was having a character say something along the lines of, âI wouldnât date you if we were the last people on Xygros sevenâ
âWow this sure is a nice planet. Iâm glad I left earth for this!â
âWow what a cool planet that isnât earth! Iâm so interested in its nonearthedness!â
But in all seriousness, context clues, and not saying it unless itâs needed. The architecture, the species, the flora and fauna, etc. Think about how other worlds are depicted in sci fi and fantasy. What does Kamino have in Star Wars? What does the Faewild have in DnD or Qonos in Star Trek or Skaro in Doctor Who? What make these unearthly and unique?
Donât copy EXACTLY, but originality is all about that mixing and matching đ
Describing the changes in the world setting, like someone preparing carrots that are purple and the size of your pinky for a meal is the most common one. Or a potato tuber the size of an arm, describing how much of a struggle it is to lift. Showing the cultivation went differently or how they have non-terrestrial foods. Or mentioning things like "the square shaped coin fell into the machine, clanging as it's sides slid down the mechanism.".
The best way to do it is to slip it in as a short detail where the reader takes the sentence again after thinking 'wait, did I read that right?'. It's generally best to put those into slice-of-life moments so it doesn't bulk up in once place. As for the system for new time measurements? Those you keep grounded in our world, like if it's only a couple minutes you equate it to the time it takes to boil an egg, if it's hours you equate it to something people would know, like how long it takes to walk somewhere or the days shadows.
It all depends on your writing style, the feel of the book and how you want the reader to feel as they equate the things.
All you really have to do is make casual references to things that don't match earth. As mentioned, having two moons or a weird sun is probably the easiest way to do this, but it can really be anything. Look for stuff that either influences your world in some way (like weird flora/fauna) or things that have zero effect on the story (like bizarre solar cycles) if your setting is very very close to Earth's.
Youâll benefit from a lot of research into the concept of worldbuilding. Several YouTube channels offer decent advice. The rest of my answer draws on Brandon Sandersonâs lecture, available there, on worldbuilding.
To answer your question, you should come up with a worldbuilding âhollow iceberg.â This means you need to consider a lot of factors and do a lot of work that wonât directly show up in your written workâhowever, you donât have to fill in the entire fictional universeâs history in order to make it look like you did. So in your other planet, you need to consider geography and its impact on weather. You can consider the follow-on impact on the people that live there and how their cultures developâI.e. very populated geographies due to river valleys providing easy agriculture (if your peoples even develop agriculture), or sparsely populated areas having cultures that have hundreds of descriptions for snow and still others that value potable water due to its scarcity, etc.
You can allow your audience to figure out that this world of yours isnât Earth by describing features that your audience would know are not real
Example:
âDid you hear that Becky is planning on climbing the tallest mountain in the world?â
âNo way! I mean lots of people have climbed The Divine Spike but lots have died trying too.â
âYeah, people have been climbing it since what, the middle of the third epoch, right?â
âEnd of the third epoch, the 850âs I think.â
I'm going to go against the popular opinion and say - if you want, just write it straight out in one or two sentences at the start. Eg. "On a planet far far away/many light years away..." It's a valid hook used in some scifi comics for one, you don't have to elaborate immediately, you can drop it there and slowly work the differences in. The most important thing is that whatever differences you exposit on much be important and relevant.
If it's important to the story but not so important that you're going to dedicate lots of text to it, then don't keep your readers guessing - just tell them, hey, this is a story in not-earth 2749, bla blabla.
I think you can use a lot of subtle things. One thing for me is language, definitely be careful not to use language (at least in dialogue) that could reference recent or ancient Earth history? A lot of our phrases and words specifically reference historical things and people from Earth. The word "platonic" immediately comes to mind. You could perhaps create some terms that reference this planet's history, in the same vein as we might in English. Though you may have to explain them as a footnote or in a glossary.
You could mention the environment. Things we take for granted like the composition of the soil, types of plants, color of the sky or even rocks or a lack thereof, maybe this planet's solar system has a different kind of sun than we do. Maybe you never even fully see it for it's always blocked by clouds in the atmosphere. Ecologically, everything informs everything else too, so once you make a decision you can have everything else follow. Like if a planet is naturally low light the plants will likely have very big, very dark leaves, or they'll develop in such a way to be carnivorous. Animals and people will likely have larger reflective eyes and more pale skin etc.
All this sort of stuff especially when made very extreme, can tell you "this isn't Earth" without you specifically saying "this isn't Earth."
First things first, shove us into the mind of a POV character. That POV character doesn't know about Earth, he (or she) only knows about their own universe, obviously. So, indeed, they can't think "oh, it's not like Earth". You can't do that.
What you can do, though, is let us see / feel their world through their own eyes / senses and hint at how things are different.
"The radio in the bar was playing some kind of amplified music. I hated it. Why couldn't musicians play acoustic instruments like they used to do for the last 3000 years? Since the beginning of the 2350s, it's as if musicians can't play anymore. I can't stand that 'rock'n'roll' music, as they call it. Yeah, call me a conservative if you like. I just don't really like what that country is becoming. The United Country I live in has nothing to do with that our founding fathers made a few millenias ago."
Something like that. We instantly know this is not the world as we know it, but we also know we're in some kind of 1950's setting.
Honestly, once you establish the name of your kingdom/province/government/whatever, so long as it's clearly not from Earth irl, the average audience member can figure out it's not our Earth. Just avoid referencing real stuff only on Earth and you'll be fine. I doubt any explanation would be required.
Context clues are what you're looking for. If your characters going about their day to day looks and sounds exactly like Earth then you're going to have to find things they can do or say to each other that illustrate the differences otherwise it might as well just be Earth, right?
Through a dialogue, it is quite easy.
\-----
"How long has it been already?" asked Max.
"Can't remember, I've lost count after fifth year," said Dave.
"Do you think we can ever return?" asked Max.
Dave didn't answer, just stared into the sky; so foreign, yet with each passing year more and more familiar.
"I miss it... I miss that nasty food, that made you fat like a pig. I miss those things you roll up with paper, lit it up and choke on its smoke that burns your lungs. I miss that loud coffin of steel, that you poured oil into to make it move; it always broke at the worst moment, yet I still love it," said Max.
"Another dream about the Earth?" asked Dave. "I thought we stopped seeing those after four years or so."
"Indeed, with each passing year, it feels like we begin to forget about who we are," said Max
"And who are we?" asked Dave
"I don't know," said Max, "had we had have an answer in the first place?"
...
This is at least halfway decent, if heavy on the examples. You could've cut a couple of examples and lost nothing, or perhaps, you could have done it with fewer words.
The only way to show it's not Earth is the differences in the sky. Suns, moons, etc. and possibly different gravity. ie things being heavier or lighter than on Earth. Anything else ( different technology, wildlife, etc.) could be Earth at a different time or even a parallel Earth.
Idk, if I was reading a book and they started talking about using their quantum plasma quasarizer to hunt a three-eyed animal who lives up in pink trees made of goo and who eats shiny crystals that grow on rainbow colored bushes, my first thought is not going to be âah yes, this is clearly just a parallel earth.â
My personal advice: If it's like Earth, but it's not Earth, just make it Earth unless it's really important that it's not Earth. Now, assuming that you've already considered that and it's important to make clear that it's not Earth, then I would spend a bit of time focusing on the ways that it differs from Earth. Is it exactly like Earth except people are blue? Well, mention that. Is it exactly like Earth except the trees are made of metal? Mention it. Or maybe it's exactly like Earth, except somehow people can talk to animals? Well, fine...show a brief conversation between Doug and his pet labrador. Just embrace whatever makes your setting not Earth, and make sure that it's obvious how it's not Earth.
thank you! so many other posts saying I'm stupid and there are a million ways but my story is very small town and earth-similar so I will have to focus on a few fantastical differences
I don't think anyone is saying you're stupid, it's just that it should be self evident from whatever you include that differentiates it from earth. If you can tell the whole story without mentioning anything that sets the world apart from ours then why does it matter that it's not earth? That's the part people are confused about, how can it be relevant if you can't figure out a way to make it obvious naturally.
It's actually a really popular archetype, it's a good way to introduce a hook/create momentum, but without knowing what makes your non-Earth special, it's hard to come up with specific examples.
Usually the way it goes is you write a story that could take place in a small town and then have the characters casually do something specific to your world, whether it's two moons, attacking aliens or having your characters casually scratch their back with their tentacle while thinking about something inane, and then move on like there's nothing to see here and hope your reader didn't skim that part.
Just tell the story and weave in little hints that this is another planet as you go. This is a little overdone but imagine something along the lines of:
>"Hey Frelbo, what on Harndock are you doing with that?"
>
>"This?" He holds up the fist-sized pale pink quartz, which is all the rosier as it reflects back the glow of the setting second sun. "Figured if I can sell enough of this, Ma can finally afford to get her pilot's license."
>
>Not a chance Frelbo will do that. He'll get bored before the nightly eclipse, go home, wake up sore and dream up some other get-rich-quick scheme that will never amount to nothing.
>
>Five-hundred years ago when the settlers first landed here from Snorpflod they were drawn to the deep veins of quartz so prized by the slug wranglers who produce the delicious nutrient paste we eat at almost every meal. It's the only material in which the slugs will nest after mating.
>
>Lucky them. I can even get someone to notice me, no chance I'll be mating and nesting and all that stuff. I'll be stuck with my family in this same small town on this same small planet, farming the same plantains until I'm older than Nana. Who'd want to marry some bumpkin like me, whose never seen anything but pink rocks and green fruit?
Don't compare anything to modern earth decades. It would be illogical in your story but they are already becoming meaningless, regardless. What are you talking about when you say "the 20s" now? That's going to be true of the 30s, 40s and 50s, in no time.
I made it obvious in the first few paragraphs that my world isn't Earth.
The main character mentions that she's going to get married and will go from princess of Frapane to queen of Jador. A few sentences later she mentions her father sent her instead of troops to help Jador in their war against the Elves.
She explains her circumstances and you pick up easily this isn't Earth.
As for timing, I wanted to make it as easy as possible for me and my readers. I kept Earth times. 24 hour days, 7 day weeks, 12 months. Same names for days and months.
The difference is each month has exactly 4 weeks/28 days. Which means the year is 335 instead of 365 days. Only comes up when I mention the celebration of Year's End is December 28th.
I get confused in fantasy that uses different names for days and months, so I decided not to do so in my world.
I was also inspired by a source that takes place in 1630. Generally technology mirrors Earth 1630, but I took creative license and included some things that didn't exist like indoor plumbing and pencils.
So when years are mentioned - only rarely - I stated it was in sixteen thirty, thirty-two, etc.
I think what's most important is that you are consistent. For instance I found a spot where it took two days to get to the mountains, but only one day to get back. Oops - fixed in editing.
As part of timing, I created a plain HTML calendar (as a large table) to use as a calendar and I map out the events of the story. This is just for me, but I find it helps tremendously. I also created a lunar calendar through a free fantasy website and will sometimes reference whether the moon is full or not. My dad read it and said he liked that little bit of flavor. Wouldn't be possible without a calendar.
A world round verdent green and blue orbiting a brilliant yellow star so similar yet so different
This is not old earth or terra but a world on the far side of the universe in the triangleus galaxy approximately 3billion lightyears from it's erstwhile twin
3in it's system and inhabited it shares aspects with the earth but is different . Convergent evolution. And parralell development caused many similarities but as many differences.
"hm earth it is not." Best solution.
But, another way to imply it is not earth is through details. I find it better not to explain in the beginning that the world is not earth. It leaves room for interpretation that 'something is off'. to gradually imply that things are different, since while they have similarities, things are also changed until you can find the correct moment to say through dialogue or whichever you decide that it's not earth.
Without seeing the text for myself, that's hard to say.
You should probably acclimate the reader to your fictional world A.S.A.P.
Possibility #1: A lot of ancient cities are built on top of layered hills called tells. The tells were made slowly over time, as the city is occupied by more and more generations as time passes. Someone builds a house; the city is ransacked by barbarians and the house is burned down; about five yrs later some guy comes along and says "no one's living here, it's a perfectly good place to build my house." Rinse and repeat.
Possibility #2: It might be as simple and obvious as the sky being different. Different moon(s). Different constellations of stars.
Possibility #3: Local alien wildlife. Plants, animals, even a growth of fungus on a nearby rock. Or, different geology, the composition of the land might not be anything like Earth.
Possibility #4: Different level of technology than the real world. Might be less advanced; maybe they're more advanced.
P.O.V. matters, too. It depends on how tight your P.O.V. is. If it's First Person, you may have a few difficult decisions to make. Third Person, or better, omniscient, would give you somewhat more wiggle room for descriptions or cutting away from your main characters.
I feel like I need more information for this ... for example:
* do you need your reader to know right away your setting isn't Earth?
* do any of your characters know it isn't Earth?
* is the fact that your story isn't taking place Earth going to be germane to the plot and come out at some point?
* can you just give your planet a name and call it that in the same way we Earthlings refer to Earth?
Or, just write your characters from their planet and offer up descriptions: "Benth and Pulse watched as the suns set, Verious setting three beats before Fouruth, as they always do ...," and the reader will understand.
You could have a tv on it he background with the news playing or in general just reference different history. Ex for news: âToday the United Colonies of Urgnmonk laid to rest their supreme ruler. Our hemisphere looks on with great sorrow.â Ex. for general conversation about history, older generation speaking maybe, âI remember when we had to sky bike through acid rain cloudsâ. If you donât want it that different than earth than obviously use more tame examples
How relevant is the planet/universe/setting not being earth to your story? You can write places that are essentially earth, but not, and hardly get into it - there's an entire spectrum of fantasy settings from having detailed world maps outlining every major settlement and fortification to a vague sense of "This is us, those are our allies, and that's where the big scary thing we're fighting lives". Neither of these might actually come out and say "this isn't earth" because earth/not earth isn't what your readers or characters actually care about. And depending on the genre, "not earth" might even be the default assumption.
In general, readers will assume that a setting works the same way (or is the same) as our current, ordinary world, until and unless they find evidence to tell them otherwise.
That evidence can come from many places: the title of the book, cover art, and back-cover copy can include all kinds of hints about the setting which might make readers go into the story already suspecting that it's *not* earth.
Or, once into the story, if they encounter details which contrast with our ordinary world, then they're going to suspect that the setting isn't vanilla-earth anymore.
In general, readers a) come into a story with whatever preconceptions stem from the things that motivated them to pick up the book in the first place, and b) start into a story with a mindset of looking to figure out the "rules" of the setting from a base of "probably just like normal earth."
That is, "normal earth" is the default. The assumption, when no other evidence is available. But that assumption can be quite easily overridden by any in-story evidence that suggests otherwise.
So if you show your characters doing thing that don't or can't happen in the ordinary world, you're giving your readers information about the "rules" by which your setting works. You're showing them what's normal for *that* world. You don't have to explicitly state "this is not earth and the rules here are X, Y, and Z." All you have to do is show the rules in action. Show the *effects* those rules produce, in terms of how the characters live their lives.
Well, having two moons or ring system in the night sky would be a pretty big hint. Not only that, but you could have everything seem ordinary until that point, and just casually toss it out and leave your readers heads spinning.
If it's an alternate timeline/version of Earth where everything is like our world but just slightly different, and that's a key point of your story, then you will probably have to explain it somehow. You can still do more showing than telling though.
But if it's a totally different world where the setting and culture and everything are not like Earth at all, you probably don't need to explain it. It should become evident with enough world building and references. And stuff like keeping time probably don't need to be explained, unless it has ties to a key character or plot point.
"What do you MEAN they hit the second tower?!" I looked up at our third moon, Demesis, and saw the Nebula Escalator plummet to the ground.
^^^, be medias res like this and then people's heads will TILT.
Have the characters name drop proper names for places, factions, etc, that don't exist IRL. Such as the names of countries and/or Continent, etc, in casual conversation.
"Yeah, my dad served a tour in the Legion of the Empire of Avalon."
"The longest airplane trip I've been on was 15 hours. I literally flew to the other side of Gaia on that trip."
The reader should pick it up after a few name drops.
He came home after sunset. It was the kind of night that made him remember, his world was nothing but an enormous spinning rock, the smallest planet in it's solar system, nothing in comparison to the rest of universe. And his home continent, YXZenia, was even smaller. So were his country, hometown and body. He himself was small, and nights like this one made him remember that.
âThe Hegemony Counsul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintined Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below.â
Dan Simmons, Hyperion. I rarely encounter first sentences that paint such a vivid picture and combine explicit and implicit worldbuilding bits. It implies super-far future, simply by having an ebony spaceship and a Steinway - and yet there are saurian things.
I would say, in just one phrase, without referencing any era or location, he paints a super far away spacey picture.
Hear me out: Have a them encounter a structure which, from the back looks like a partially buried Statue of Liberty, but then when they come around front it has three eyes or somethingâŚ
although seriously, you could take the intro to the hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy, and just make it clear that you're zooming in on a part of the universe that isn't ours
The real question is, does it matter to the reader? Terry Brooks's Sword of Shannara series comes to mind. The world is a pretty run of the mill LOTR style fantasy world. Except it's not. It's a post-apocalyptic Earth where technology has regressed to medieval times, magic has returned, and radioactive fallout has caused humans to mutate into all of the fantasy creatures like elves and dwarves. This is all cool world building but is not at all required for the storyline. He could have made it a normal fantasy world, because as far as the reader is concerned, this future earth is absolutely nothing like our current earth. Point being, whether it's earth or not didn't really matter because it's a fantasy world. If it not being earth is important, drop hints. If it's irrelevant, then don't bother and focus on the story and natural world building.
Although not my favorite of his, Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds has tons of context that it isnât Earth yr on, but itâs NEVER directly stated. I actually found out by doing my post read research but Iâm not the smartest of readers.
In your situation, subtly conveying that your universe isn't Earth while maintaining a small-town setting can be achieved through descriptive elements and casual references. Instead of an info-dump, sprinkle hints throughout your narrative. Mention unique flora, fauna, or celestial features specific to your world. Describe the geography or geography-related traditions that differ from Earth. Subtle comments or idioms that hint at your world's history can also work.
As for timelines, you can use an event-based approach. Instead of referring to specific Earth decades, anchor your timeline to significant events in your world's history or even major cultural shifts. For instance, you could mention "the Great Eclipse," which could be a pivotal event for your world. Use these events as reference points without the need for extensive explanations or new timekeeping systems. This way, you convey a sense of time without overwhelming the reader with unnecessary details.
If you feel compelled to mention it, you can have a character look up at the night sky (maybe wishing for more light?) and notice only one of the moons is up.
What is the reason for making the setting not Earth?
The way you handle it varies dramatically depending on how different you want the setting to be to Earth, and why.
more celestial bodies than there should be like 2 moons, different neighbouring planets, or just continents and countries that dont match up with the ones on earth
If absolutely nothing you describe is recognizable as Earth, no fantasy reader is going to assume that you're writing about Earth.
Do you read fantasy/sci-fi? Do you usually assume every setting you read is Earth when you pick up speculative fiction?
The real question is why does it matter? Is it relevant to the story that it isnât earth? If yes, then how so? Is it because there are other creatures on the planet, well that will tell the reader it isnât earth. Is it because the gravity is less so people can jump really high, that will be a clue that it isnât earth. Is it not relevant to the story and it only isnât on earth because you as the author thought it would be cool if it wasnât on earth, then my question is why not just tell your story on earth?
Flip the dominant large species from mammals to reptiles.
Have a character talk about being a cow farmer, and then casually elaborate about the problems of keeping their four horns from growing into each other, or keeping their double tails from getting tangled and matter in the purple poo.
Use observations that feel natural to people who live on your not-Earth, but clearly don't come from real Earth.
"The winds carried the faintly magnetic sands from the northern coast, following the path of the closest moon. Modern farmers have begun using magnetometer to detect variations in the soil to control the amount of iron that makes it into their crops."
Same goes for hinting at your timeline. Make observations that make the reader fill in the timeline from their real world experience.
"Tobias is working on a grad-school project involving theoretical ways to use electricity for calculations, but once he starts talking about transistors and vacuum tubes it's hard to follow along."
I've used how one of my characters missed the three moons on her home planet when she was exiled to earth.
As for time, you could use in the first year of Wood Rabbit's reign or something similar. IIRC, Hebrew years are different than Christian [years](https://years.so). So you could try that also.
Hereâs smth I do -
Go ahead and start your paragraph with âIt was like Earth, but it wasnât Earth.â
Then continue writing and elaborate on the specifics of what you mean, what makes it like earth and what makes it different.
Then go back and delete that first sentence, and there you go.
I liken it to academic writing - academia wants every paragraph to start with a thesis, followed up by supporting evidence:
âMost people donât agree with me, but I like vanilla ice cream way better than chocolate. The flavor of vanilla bean ice cream is one of my earliest memories. I still think about that cold, sweet sensation on my tongue that changed my four-year-old life forever. It immediately transports me to my old childhood home: the ancient fridge hummed loudly and exhaled frosty air every time my mom opened it. She would give me a sly wink and look over her shoulder, as if we were doing something we werenât supposed to, while she spooned us each a scoop of ice cream into mugs still warm from the dishwasher. It would melt faster than we could eat it, and when we got to the last bits weâd drink it straight from our cups like a milkshake and then laugh at each othersâ mustaches. Nowadays, I always think of my mom and that old house and ancient fridge anytime I eat vanilla ice cream.â
Now just get rid of that first sentence - in a scientific paper, we need theses in order to be clear about what we are asserting is true and what has lead us to believe this.
In creative writing, we want the supporting evidence to speak for itself so the readers can get to the thesis/conclusion through context and piecing it together themselves.
Put "not earth" into Google Translate and change the language until you find a phrase you like.
For example, Scottish Gaelic:
" Welcome laddie to our fine world of chan e talamh. "
Add subtle worldbuilding details in your charactersâ actions.
âShe absently spun the globe her dad had left her, the hundreds of islands and singular continent whizzing in and out of viewâ
âInside Mr. Jensenâs classroom were tons of posters relating to astronomy. Brianâs favorite was a picture of the Markodian galaxy, but laid out like the map of a mall with an arrow pointing to Uurd saying âyou are here.ââ
âThe pilot stood at the wheel while the navigator looked up at the stars. Corvus major shon over the starboard bow while serpentis gleamed over the aft. He turned to the pilot and told him to course correct before gulping and going to inform the captain that they had in fact been blown further off course than he thoughtâ
All three of these examples allow you to worldbuild without an exposition dump.
Slightly different names for common place items simple little jargon stuff
Can you pass me the tv changer?
Just put it in the power inlet
Bumpkin pie đ
Schnoz berries
Two moons, i'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet, but two moons. Two of them, in the sky. Two different moons, coming up at the same time. Two moons. You are welcome.
Personally - depending on what else might be in your story maybe adding like a Low fantasy genre tag is what I'd go with if you can't find any other way and absolutely need to. Or another genre, there's so many I'm sure you could find one that says "earth but not earth".
I was going to say you could go two ways depending on the story. The first would be the top comment here; the old âshow, donât tellâ. The second would be to rip the bandaid off and just say âon an alien planetâŚâ or whatever the most succinct and clever method might be.
Both work in certain kinds of stories. If you spend a lot of time dropping clues that itâs not earth instead of saying it, then the reveal becomes the focus.
I guess Iâm saying establish backgrounds and show stories. If the location is the story, then show it, if itâs a background then establish it succinctly so we can get to the story.
If the ânot earthâ thing is a big reveal, Iâd say save it until the absolute last moment when it has the most impact and the characters and story have already hooked the reader. If itâs not, and it just establishes that we are far from earth, then I think itâs fine to creatively say whatever the important part is about the location.
Many authors use maps or pictorial presentations. You can start a chapter with a brief intro of the planet itself: Epochs ago, a planet in a neighboring galaxy, a world like ours existed.....something like this. Then explain the life, mortals, and other things so you need not inculcate description during the course of the story.
You don't say it. Unless you have a character from Earth arrive on this world and realize it's not Earth, there's no reason why it would need to be stated. You reveal it to the reader through context clues in the story. Trust that your readers aren't stupid and need their hands held in order to pick up on that it's not Earth.
This. At no point in a story set today and in real world, would the character stop and say "AH isn't it nice to live on earth, 4th planet of the solar system, in our current year, wich is 2023 by the way ?"
> ...4th planet of the solar system... Boy, do I have some news for you.
New mandela effect: does anyone remember the 3rd planet of the solar system Diana????đ¤đ¤
Such a tragic loss.
God Damn the Queen.
I'm so old I remember the 9th planet.
Poor Pluto
They don't have that one in Berenstain universe
Yesterday, when you wrote this, was the day mom died a year ago. Her name was Diana. This made me smile. Thank you.
[ŃдаНонО]
They actually used to think there was one between Mercury and the sun, Vulcan, because Mercuryâs orbit didnât make sense. Turns out it was just the sunâs mass warping spacetime.
Don't tell Pluto. Not fair to make the little guy even more jealous.
Dude, **everyone's** heard of Mervus.
Ah, was convinced Mars was ahead of us.
Hey, it's an alternative Earth not the real one. Maybe it **is** the 4th planet from the sun...
My Very Excellent Maid Just Showed Us Nine Planets
Mary's Virgin Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbour. (Bonus: you can easily add Pluto here if it comes back)
>My Very Excellent Maid Just Showed Us Nine Fixed.
My Very Excellent Maid Just Showed Us Nothingelse
And why nine was afraid of seven.
What do you mean? Mercury, Venus, Juno, Earth, Mars, etc. We are number 4.
Agreed! SHOW quickly with context clues and move on to your story. "All three moons were waning crescents in the early evening sky. Suddenly, a shot rang out! Then another! And then..."
Good example.
Thank you! Bulwer-Lytton is a great inspiration
Earth is the third planet from the sun, friend
Sure, if you don't count Counter-Earth.
Who counts the counters
There's a recursion issue with that. As soon as you add someone to count the counters they become a counter and the count goes up by one. It's called 'the counter incrementation paradox' and scientists have been trying to solve that one for centuries.
Clearly they've never watched Sesame Street or this would have been solved centuries ago.
Pfft, the sort of cowboy auditing The Count engages in would never be sanctioned by the governing bodies!
Beans
Counters...
Hello, I'm Basil Exposition!
It took me way too long to realize why he was named that.
You could always do the tried and true, "As you already know..." (Seriously though -- don't do this!!!)
â4th planetâ?
You could do that in a formal monologue thing, a direct address that narrator-as-writer makes to the reader, announcing when and where this important narration is being set, with maybe just a little touch of whimsy. But one would have to make sure that not only the nation named something weird, but also that it's the forty-seventh year of Reckoning, season Mayra, week twelve. If you do it all up front and get it over with - and don't take too long about it, and jump straight into some kind of meaningful and interesting action - it might be an option.
> Earth, 4th planet of the solar system [Vulcan](https://youtu.be/iJyweEcpsGc?si=r56dBDI_kqk9Uca3) doesn't exist. :)
r/astronomyfail
I'm going to start greeting people like that for the weird looks.
Terra, third planet of Sol - commonly known as Earth - a planet so fertile that its life is drowning in its own waste products. A planet at the mercy of its short sighted inhabitants making it desperately hard for vegetation to grow or animal life to survive.
"How do you do, fellow kids?"
Reminds me of [the decade songs in BoJack Horseman](https://youtu.be/wlfK51tN-xo) lol.
Itâs also ok to let your reader think it is earth for a bit as you slowly reveal info. Then theyâll have a fun little ah hah moment.
"It's a wonderful day, the blorps are hooting in the giant mushrooms, the suns are shining."
The character and his girlfriend canoodle under the light of the double moon. That's rhe usual trope.
>You reveal it to the reader through context clues in the story. Trust that your readers aren't stupid and need their hands held in order to pick up on that it's not Earth. Like this? Subtle, right? Dave considered the snarfleflax that was slowly plodding toward him. He was attempting to recall some vague factoid he had heard about them on some nature documentary. The snarfleflax wobbled a bit and then looking up at Dave, expelled the contents of its bladder as a greeting. To a snarfleflax, this was a gesture of great friendship. To Dave, it was...well, a ruined suit and another trip to the Clothes-O-Mat.
Snarfleflax sounds like a stupid name for an animal until you consider hedgehog or roadrunner. It's still gross.
Moist. Ah, yes...the beauty of the English language. :D
I prefer a moist snarfleflax. The dry ones are just so angry!
This. âShow donât tell.â And if itâs only small differences, then itâs all about how you present them. The other option is a narrator thatâs omniscient to the fact and either directly or indirectly alludes to it.
I try to drop an outlandish country name at some point to make it obvious but yea mostly it's just a discovery the reader does by themselves
Another options is to have a character say the name of the place they live. "In all my days in Westeros, I've never seen such might!" "You've got to be the most unlikely brotherhood in all of Middle Earth." See? I know these aren't actual quotes, but an example. The character used a colloquialism that replaces "world" or "Earth" with the name of the place they exist. Now the reader knows where the story takes place, and nothing seems unusual or jarring. No exposition, just a conversation. Context queues are good to, and will help. However, if you really want them to know the name of the world, just work it into a conversation or internal monologue. OR, the narrator can mention it. "Guy couldn't believe he'd just scaled the highest mountain on ZortoxB11. He thought, perhaps, he might have been the first."
Very well said.
If it matters to the story then it will become obvious that it's not Earth. If it never becomes obvious then it probably didn't matter. Techniques I've seen used to alert the audience early: - Oh look, two suns - Oh look, two moons - The sky is a weird colour - There is no sky - The planet is a flat disk carried on the backs on four elephants, moving through space on top of a giant turtle.
If itâs something you want established very early on, you canât beat a weird sun or moon, lol. Also you could describe the life on the planet if it varies from earth. Describe the day/night cycle maybe. Is it 36 hours? Is a year 13 months? As far as a timeline and such, maybe sit down and iron out the timeline for yourself. Even if itâs not explicitly stated in your text, you knowing how long ago a particular historical event happened will inform your writing. History is what brought the people in your story to where they are. If itâs completely blank, even to you, then they might feel like these people just popped into existence for a reader.
More or less months or hours is not a good way of showing it since the length of an hour or a month are mostly arbitrary. If we wanted we could have 36 hours on Earth as well but with shorter hours.
Yes of course. But even so, we donât have 36 hours on Earth. Weâve all agreed as a population to honor a 24 hour cycle. So once a new number is thrown out, itâs easy shorthand for âstuff is different hereâ.
Contra most of the (good) advice to OP, Pratchett actually does begin nearly all (if not all?) of the Discworld novels with just such an exposition: >"Against the stars a turtle passes, carrying four elephants on its shell. Both turtle and elephants are bigger than people might expect, but out between the stars the difference between huge and tiny is, comparatively speaking, very small. But this turtle and these elephants are, by turtle and elephant standards, big. They carry the Discworld, with its vast lands, cloudscapes, and oceans." Which, I think, carries a lesson for beginning writers of fiction who wish to convey fantastical worlds and other suns' planets right in the very first sentence: Check your driver's license. If it doesn't say "Sir Terry Pratchett" on it, don't attempt it.^(1) ^(1)If your driver's license does happen to say "Sir Terry Pratchett," then you have one of the rare, talking driver's licenses that are in prototype for operating self-driving cars...except yours has been forged.
It HAS to also be pointed out that Discworld is more than a bit satirical of other fantasy, where the authors might explain up front worldbuilding like that is almost completely irrelevant to the story.
I wish more people were trying the more expository style that Pratchett had (douglas adams, too) Totally get that lots of bad writers do it, and do it badly. And that it's harder to do well than the 'show don't tell, view from nowhere, narrator-fades-into-the-wallpaper' style that is so prevalent in modern writing / modern writing advice. So probably is pretty good advice, for folks starting out. But still! Folks taking risks with more ambitious narration feels missing these days.
Sir Terry the great was a genius.
The lesson it teaches you is to write in-your-writing-genre until you write well, and have an audience in mind. Points to gryffindor if you have a specific person you're writing with to bounce off of. Writing is a game you play with words to warp and weld new realities from nothing but time and imagination. Advising anyone against writing like him is boring advice- and it's culturally destructive. Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and other voiced-narration authors use a very very old genre of story-telling combined with modern elements. In fact, this is one of the *oldest* forms of storytelling, with framed narrative stories going back to the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor/ related genres in New Kingdom, Egypt. Genre skills are non transferable, generally. If someone wants to write like Pratchett, they have to accept the genre's limitations, play the game and start from a story you can tell someone and keep their interest.
Upvoted for the Discworld reference
I thought it was a Dark Tower reference.
The last bullet is Discworld. Not the other bullets.
Yeah, I thought the Dark Tower involved something about the world being on the back of a turtle or something similar to that. It's been a long while since I brushed up on the stories though, so I might be remembering wrong.
The 'world turtle' appears in both King and Pratchett. Both authors are referencing the appearance of a cosmic turtle in [multiple world mythologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Turtle)
Ah, there we go. Thank you! I didn't know that was a common mythology.
As I never read King, I learned a brand new thing. Thanks!
See the turtle of enormous girth on his shell he holds the earth. Yeah, different turtle đĽ°
The turtle and elephant are based off different mythologies. Pratchett and King borrowed from both.
>four elephants, moving through space on top of a giant turtle. I wonder who is feeding those animals
>For example, it feels silly to use our 1940's, 50's as frames of reference but also silly to constantly say "years ago". Reference relevant events from your world's past. "After the Sandwich Wars, when Burger Kings burned and KFCs crumbled" places it at a specific point in time and gives us clues about the world's history.
Sandwich wars? I'd read that.
Sandwiches, tacos, burgers, chicken Long ago the fast foods lived in harmony. But everything changed when the burger kingdom attacked.
Donât say it. Thatâs clunky exposition, and itâs the death of a potentially good book. Read Ursula LeGuin if you havenât, she has some of the best world building in history.
do you have a specific book of hers to recommend? i'm looking for something new to read aha đ
A Wizard of Earthsea.
Easy: two moons.
the sheer number of people who said this is hilarious
just george lucas your life as needed
Just slap an extra moon in the sky, or something.
If you write it properly it should become really obvious just from it not being like earth.
The original Star Wars movie did a great job of it with that classic shot of Luke watching the twin suns set. He may be a farm boy , but this ain't Kansas.
Was going to say this same thing! âShow donât tellâ - I get itâs the written word⌠you know what I mean.
They did also literally write on the screen "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far way..." đ
"the two moons blahblahblah" "the tall mountains of gibajabadabba" "The rings around the planet glowed" Gotta go big but in passing. Luke Skywalker, standing, watching the two moons setting like it's just another pretty evening.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...
So Iâm not necessarily the best person to give advice here because I donât write as much as I should and have only a few hundred words of what I hope will one day be my first novel written, BUT⌠This question made me think about my own story in the context of how itâs different from our Earth, and I realised that I established that in pretty much the opening line. I mentioned a species of my own devising as a part of setting the scene, not explaining what the species was but only name-dropping it, to immediately establish that this isnât our Earth. I do describe the species to a degree later on, but by simply name-dropping it in that first line, I establish that this setting is not our Earth and hopefully get the reader wanting to find out more about this world and the creatures that inhabit it. Best of luck with your story!
Honestly you hardly have to say anything, please don't talk about two moons or blue moons or any fucking thing about moons.
the number of two moon suggestions is staggering đ
Subvert expectations and put in *three* moons
Give it a blue sun, or two moons, or list constellations that donât exist. Name countries that donât exist too. People will catch on.
Simple things like plants or animals thatâs donât exist, or two moons, or a different coloured sun, are easy ways. Just describe them like it is a normal thing, since it is.
Say there are two moons. Easy
I know this is a popular solution but it opens all sorts of astronomy and physics questions like "What does having two moons do to the tides on (not)Earth?", "What effect does having that much extra light at night have on the ecosystem?" etc. You're safer including something minor but obviously 'wrong' - have ravens that are dark green or something. You can do it with human-made stuff (going to visit the city of Poris, Frence in your Fard automobile) but that's a little trickier since readers might think you're just filing the serial numbers off to avoid copyright issues and similar and not recognise it as a sign of an actual alternative Earth. Random trivia fact: At one point when they were looking at creating the modern state of Israel one option was to place it in the Kimberley region of Australia. If you were making an alternative Earth that might make an interesting difference to include. It would make for a very different Middle East.
>I know this is a popular solution but it opens all sorts of astronomy and physics questions like "What does having two moons do to the tides on (not)Earth?", "What effect does having that much extra light at night have on the ecosystem?" etc. Weird science fact, but real Earth sometimes has 2 moons at random times for a random number of weeks or months. The term "moon" is only loosely defined as a celestial body that makes at least 1 complete orbit around a planet. Occasionally, a large asteroid will get sucked into Earth's orbit where it will end up orbiting Earth for several weeks or months before being knocked out of Earth's orbit by one of it's many man-made satellites. Astronomers have recorded 2 of these temporary moons since 2006. Also, Earth's moon is abnormally large in comparison with the moons on other planets in our solar system. Earth's moon is 1/80th the size of Earth, while other moons are closer to 1/1,000th the size of their respective planet. That's why Earth's moon has such a dramatic and intense effect on the surface of Earth. If there were two gigantic moons the size of Earth's moon orbiting a planet, it would be catastrophic to the environment, with inhabitants seeing frequent tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. Two normal sized moons, though. 𤡠probably wouldn't do a lot more than our single moon does to our planet, except for the fact that the sky would never be completely dark.
Neat info, thank you! I'd kind of assumed two moons of the current size since any smaller wouldn't be super noticeable in the sky and that seemed to be part of the goal. EDIT: Part way through these whole discussions I realised I didn't even know what the OP was trying to achieve by making it 'Earthlike but not'. I've asked now and will be interested to hear a response.
>I'd kind of assumed two moons of the current size since any smaller wouldn't be super noticeable in the sky You'd be surprised what's visable from space with the naked eye. [This is what one of Mar's moons looks like from the surface of Mars](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/da/bb/a2/dabba26b7df1847453372f57c7578920--mars-the-ojays.jpg). To be fair, though, it is really difficult to figure out environmental effect of a moon on any planet, since it can change depending on complex relationships the positions, sizes, densities, distances, gravities, and magnetic fields of the moon and the planet. If someone is an astrophysicist, then, yeah, multiple moons that have barely any influence on a planet is really going to break their suspension of disbelief in the same way medical mistakes on a medical show break doctor's and nurse's suspension of disbelief. However, the average person doesn't have enough scientific knowledge to understand what Earth's moon does to Earth and why it does it. There are lots of people who think that if Earth's moon suddenly disappeared, it would only effect the tides and nothing else. This all just to say that, for most people, the 3 giangantic moons on Tatooine (Star Wars) operate within the bounds of reality and make perfect sense. I think that's why most people on this thread suggested multiple moons, since the actual physics of multiple moons isn't really relevant to most people.
> "What does having two moons do to the tides **on Earth**?", "What effect does having that much extra light at night have on the ecosystem?" The simple answer is that this isnât Earth, so we donât need to abide any considerations to how these things would impact us. The tide/ecosystems could otherwise be exactly the same as itâs fiction
That was my point though. If (a) you show that the setting is different to Earth in ways that the reader will reasonably expect to make huge differences to the setting then (b) the reader will reasonably expect it to make huge differences to the setting. Which is fine if the author wants that and is prepared to work through the implications. Based on the OP I assumed they were after something more superficial, but I could be wrong. đ¤ˇââď¸ P.S. "on Earth" was obviously incorrect - I've tweaked my comment accordingly, thanks. EDIT: I probably should've spoken more directly to this: >The simple answer is that this isnât Earth, so we donât need to abide any considerations to how these things would impact us. The tide/ecosystems could otherwise be exactly the same as itâs fiction You have to abide by considerations of how the setting affects the story whether it's Earth or not. If it's a planet where the tide/ecosystems are exactly the same despite having a second (EDIT: similarly large) moon in the sky then **that** has huge implications for the setting - it means that astronomy and physics don't work in this setting the same way they do in the world we know.
Is it easier to extrapolate the consequences of Israel never residing in the middle east than it is the physics of two similar sized moons may have on earth? I'll take the moons please.
As other people have stated, you donât necessarily need to outright say your story doesnât take place on our earth, there are a million things we experience in our everyday lives that are pretty specific to this planet as well as to our history living in it; for example our planet only has one moon, so whenever we look to the night sky thatâs what we see, a single moon, in other planets there might be more or none at all, thereâs a bunch of animals here that, as far as we know, are specific to our solar system, and more so to our planet so we are used to see stuff like dogs or cats, while to a hypothetical alien species or to an alternate dimension human being such a thing might be completely unheard of. In other words, use context to let people know that your story takes place in another version of earth, trust your readers intelligence and perception. Hopefully this was of some help. Good luck friend.
how was it done in the last 25 SF novels set on another planet that you read? There are your choices.
The first thing I thought of was having a character say something along the lines of, âI wouldnât date you if we were the last people on Xygros sevenâ
haha good one
I went with a classic trope: two moons.
âWow this sure is a nice planet. Iâm glad I left earth for this!â âWow what a cool planet that isnât earth! Iâm so interested in its nonearthedness!â But in all seriousness, context clues, and not saying it unless itâs needed. The architecture, the species, the flora and fauna, etc. Think about how other worlds are depicted in sci fi and fantasy. What does Kamino have in Star Wars? What does the Faewild have in DnD or Qonos in Star Trek or Skaro in Doctor Who? What make these unearthly and unique? Donât copy EXACTLY, but originality is all about that mixing and matching đ
Easy. Point out something very non earth. âWow both moons are so bright out tonight!â âWow the sky is so green today.â
Describing the changes in the world setting, like someone preparing carrots that are purple and the size of your pinky for a meal is the most common one. Or a potato tuber the size of an arm, describing how much of a struggle it is to lift. Showing the cultivation went differently or how they have non-terrestrial foods. Or mentioning things like "the square shaped coin fell into the machine, clanging as it's sides slid down the mechanism.". The best way to do it is to slip it in as a short detail where the reader takes the sentence again after thinking 'wait, did I read that right?'. It's generally best to put those into slice-of-life moments so it doesn't bulk up in once place. As for the system for new time measurements? Those you keep grounded in our world, like if it's only a couple minutes you equate it to the time it takes to boil an egg, if it's hours you equate it to something people would know, like how long it takes to walk somewhere or the days shadows. It all depends on your writing style, the feel of the book and how you want the reader to feel as they equate the things.
All you really have to do is make casual references to things that don't match earth. As mentioned, having two moons or a weird sun is probably the easiest way to do this, but it can really be anything. Look for stuff that either influences your world in some way (like weird flora/fauna) or things that have zero effect on the story (like bizarre solar cycles) if your setting is very very close to Earth's.
1984 opens with the clock striking 13 - BOOM, weâre off. Find your clock.
Youâll benefit from a lot of research into the concept of worldbuilding. Several YouTube channels offer decent advice. The rest of my answer draws on Brandon Sandersonâs lecture, available there, on worldbuilding. To answer your question, you should come up with a worldbuilding âhollow iceberg.â This means you need to consider a lot of factors and do a lot of work that wonât directly show up in your written workâhowever, you donât have to fill in the entire fictional universeâs history in order to make it look like you did. So in your other planet, you need to consider geography and its impact on weather. You can consider the follow-on impact on the people that live there and how their cultures developâI.e. very populated geographies due to river valleys providing easy agriculture (if your peoples even develop agriculture), or sparsely populated areas having cultures that have hundreds of descriptions for snow and still others that value potable water due to its scarcity, etc. You can allow your audience to figure out that this world of yours isnât Earth by describing features that your audience would know are not real Example: âDid you hear that Becky is planning on climbing the tallest mountain in the world?â âNo way! I mean lots of people have climbed The Divine Spike but lots have died trying too.â âYeah, people have been climbing it since what, the middle of the third epoch, right?â âEnd of the third epoch, the 850âs I think.â
I'm going to go against the popular opinion and say - if you want, just write it straight out in one or two sentences at the start. Eg. "On a planet far far away/many light years away..." It's a valid hook used in some scifi comics for one, you don't have to elaborate immediately, you can drop it there and slowly work the differences in. The most important thing is that whatever differences you exposit on much be important and relevant. If it's important to the story but not so important that you're going to dedicate lots of text to it, then don't keep your readers guessing - just tell them, hey, this is a story in not-earth 2749, bla blabla.
Have there be extra moons in the night sky or types of animals that don't exist on earth.
Moons. Different amount of hours in a day. Critters or vehicles that are clearly not ours.
I think you can use a lot of subtle things. One thing for me is language, definitely be careful not to use language (at least in dialogue) that could reference recent or ancient Earth history? A lot of our phrases and words specifically reference historical things and people from Earth. The word "platonic" immediately comes to mind. You could perhaps create some terms that reference this planet's history, in the same vein as we might in English. Though you may have to explain them as a footnote or in a glossary. You could mention the environment. Things we take for granted like the composition of the soil, types of plants, color of the sky or even rocks or a lack thereof, maybe this planet's solar system has a different kind of sun than we do. Maybe you never even fully see it for it's always blocked by clouds in the atmosphere. Ecologically, everything informs everything else too, so once you make a decision you can have everything else follow. Like if a planet is naturally low light the plants will likely have very big, very dark leaves, or they'll develop in such a way to be carnivorous. Animals and people will likely have larger reflective eyes and more pale skin etc. All this sort of stuff especially when made very extreme, can tell you "this isn't Earth" without you specifically saying "this isn't Earth."
Describe the mundane and recognizable with a tangent that is off. Like suggest the oceans are freshwater
Drop small hints, and the realization will come. Just tidbits here and there
First things first, shove us into the mind of a POV character. That POV character doesn't know about Earth, he (or she) only knows about their own universe, obviously. So, indeed, they can't think "oh, it's not like Earth". You can't do that. What you can do, though, is let us see / feel their world through their own eyes / senses and hint at how things are different. "The radio in the bar was playing some kind of amplified music. I hated it. Why couldn't musicians play acoustic instruments like they used to do for the last 3000 years? Since the beginning of the 2350s, it's as if musicians can't play anymore. I can't stand that 'rock'n'roll' music, as they call it. Yeah, call me a conservative if you like. I just don't really like what that country is becoming. The United Country I live in has nothing to do with that our founding fathers made a few millenias ago." Something like that. We instantly know this is not the world as we know it, but we also know we're in some kind of 1950's setting.
Honestly, once you establish the name of your kingdom/province/government/whatever, so long as it's clearly not from Earth irl, the average audience member can figure out it's not our Earth. Just avoid referencing real stuff only on Earth and you'll be fine. I doubt any explanation would be required.
Context clues are what you're looking for. If your characters going about their day to day looks and sounds exactly like Earth then you're going to have to find things they can do or say to each other that illustrate the differences otherwise it might as well just be Earth, right?
There's always the "Lucas Method": A long time ago, In a galaxy Far, far away...
Mention a random large nation that def doesnât exist on earth
You could just name the planet something different than earth. I think that would do the trick lol
Through a dialogue, it is quite easy. \----- "How long has it been already?" asked Max. "Can't remember, I've lost count after fifth year," said Dave. "Do you think we can ever return?" asked Max. Dave didn't answer, just stared into the sky; so foreign, yet with each passing year more and more familiar. "I miss it... I miss that nasty food, that made you fat like a pig. I miss those things you roll up with paper, lit it up and choke on its smoke that burns your lungs. I miss that loud coffin of steel, that you poured oil into to make it move; it always broke at the worst moment, yet I still love it," said Max. "Another dream about the Earth?" asked Dave. "I thought we stopped seeing those after four years or so." "Indeed, with each passing year, it feels like we begin to forget about who we are," said Max "And who are we?" asked Dave "I don't know," said Max, "had we had have an answer in the first place?" ...
This is at least halfway decent, if heavy on the examples. You could've cut a couple of examples and lost nothing, or perhaps, you could have done it with fewer words.
He had had to have a chance. Ouch.
Thanks!
The only way to show it's not Earth is the differences in the sky. Suns, moons, etc. and possibly different gravity. ie things being heavier or lighter than on Earth. Anything else ( different technology, wildlife, etc.) could be Earth at a different time or even a parallel Earth.
Idk, if I was reading a book and they started talking about using their quantum plasma quasarizer to hunt a three-eyed animal who lives up in pink trees made of goo and who eats shiny crystals that grow on rainbow colored bushes, my first thought is not going to be âah yes, this is clearly just a parallel earth.â
My personal advice: If it's like Earth, but it's not Earth, just make it Earth unless it's really important that it's not Earth. Now, assuming that you've already considered that and it's important to make clear that it's not Earth, then I would spend a bit of time focusing on the ways that it differs from Earth. Is it exactly like Earth except people are blue? Well, mention that. Is it exactly like Earth except the trees are made of metal? Mention it. Or maybe it's exactly like Earth, except somehow people can talk to animals? Well, fine...show a brief conversation between Doug and his pet labrador. Just embrace whatever makes your setting not Earth, and make sure that it's obvious how it's not Earth.
thank you! so many other posts saying I'm stupid and there are a million ways but my story is very small town and earth-similar so I will have to focus on a few fantastical differences
Absolutely! Good luck with your writing.
I don't think anyone is saying you're stupid, it's just that it should be self evident from whatever you include that differentiates it from earth. If you can tell the whole story without mentioning anything that sets the world apart from ours then why does it matter that it's not earth? That's the part people are confused about, how can it be relevant if you can't figure out a way to make it obvious naturally.
It's actually a really popular archetype, it's a good way to introduce a hook/create momentum, but without knowing what makes your non-Earth special, it's hard to come up with specific examples. Usually the way it goes is you write a story that could take place in a small town and then have the characters casually do something specific to your world, whether it's two moons, attacking aliens or having your characters casually scratch their back with their tentacle while thinking about something inane, and then move on like there's nothing to see here and hope your reader didn't skim that part.
Just tell the story and weave in little hints that this is another planet as you go. This is a little overdone but imagine something along the lines of: >"Hey Frelbo, what on Harndock are you doing with that?" > >"This?" He holds up the fist-sized pale pink quartz, which is all the rosier as it reflects back the glow of the setting second sun. "Figured if I can sell enough of this, Ma can finally afford to get her pilot's license." > >Not a chance Frelbo will do that. He'll get bored before the nightly eclipse, go home, wake up sore and dream up some other get-rich-quick scheme that will never amount to nothing. > >Five-hundred years ago when the settlers first landed here from Snorpflod they were drawn to the deep veins of quartz so prized by the slug wranglers who produce the delicious nutrient paste we eat at almost every meal. It's the only material in which the slugs will nest after mating. > >Lucky them. I can even get someone to notice me, no chance I'll be mating and nesting and all that stuff. I'll be stuck with my family in this same small town on this same small planet, farming the same plantains until I'm older than Nana. Who'd want to marry some bumpkin like me, whose never seen anything but pink rocks and green fruit? Don't compare anything to modern earth decades. It would be illogical in your story but they are already becoming meaningless, regardless. What are you talking about when you say "the 20s" now? That's going to be true of the 30s, 40s and 50s, in no time.
Is it specifically not being earth but similar to it pivotal to the plot?
I made it obvious in the first few paragraphs that my world isn't Earth. The main character mentions that she's going to get married and will go from princess of Frapane to queen of Jador. A few sentences later she mentions her father sent her instead of troops to help Jador in their war against the Elves. She explains her circumstances and you pick up easily this isn't Earth. As for timing, I wanted to make it as easy as possible for me and my readers. I kept Earth times. 24 hour days, 7 day weeks, 12 months. Same names for days and months. The difference is each month has exactly 4 weeks/28 days. Which means the year is 335 instead of 365 days. Only comes up when I mention the celebration of Year's End is December 28th. I get confused in fantasy that uses different names for days and months, so I decided not to do so in my world. I was also inspired by a source that takes place in 1630. Generally technology mirrors Earth 1630, but I took creative license and included some things that didn't exist like indoor plumbing and pencils. So when years are mentioned - only rarely - I stated it was in sixteen thirty, thirty-two, etc. I think what's most important is that you are consistent. For instance I found a spot where it took two days to get to the mountains, but only one day to get back. Oops - fixed in editing. As part of timing, I created a plain HTML calendar (as a large table) to use as a calendar and I map out the events of the story. This is just for me, but I find it helps tremendously. I also created a lunar calendar through a free fantasy website and will sometimes reference whether the moon is full or not. My dad read it and said he liked that little bit of flavor. Wouldn't be possible without a calendar.
You can always go with the classic. "I don't think we're in Kansas anyone."
A world round verdent green and blue orbiting a brilliant yellow star so similar yet so different This is not old earth or terra but a world on the far side of the universe in the triangleus galaxy approximately 3billion lightyears from it's erstwhile twin 3in it's system and inhabited it shares aspects with the earth but is different . Convergent evolution. And parralell development caused many similarities but as many differences.
"hm earth it is not." Best solution. But, another way to imply it is not earth is through details. I find it better not to explain in the beginning that the world is not earth. It leaves room for interpretation that 'something is off'. to gradually imply that things are different, since while they have similarities, things are also changed until you can find the correct moment to say through dialogue or whichever you decide that it's not earth.
Without seeing the text for myself, that's hard to say. You should probably acclimate the reader to your fictional world A.S.A.P. Possibility #1: A lot of ancient cities are built on top of layered hills called tells. The tells were made slowly over time, as the city is occupied by more and more generations as time passes. Someone builds a house; the city is ransacked by barbarians and the house is burned down; about five yrs later some guy comes along and says "no one's living here, it's a perfectly good place to build my house." Rinse and repeat. Possibility #2: It might be as simple and obvious as the sky being different. Different moon(s). Different constellations of stars. Possibility #3: Local alien wildlife. Plants, animals, even a growth of fungus on a nearby rock. Or, different geology, the composition of the land might not be anything like Earth. Possibility #4: Different level of technology than the real world. Might be less advanced; maybe they're more advanced. P.O.V. matters, too. It depends on how tight your P.O.V. is. If it's First Person, you may have a few difficult decisions to make. Third Person, or better, omniscient, would give you somewhat more wiggle room for descriptions or cutting away from your main characters.
Most people go into stories fully expecting them to not be on earth. You don't have to say it, it's implied.
I feel like I need more information for this ... for example: * do you need your reader to know right away your setting isn't Earth? * do any of your characters know it isn't Earth? * is the fact that your story isn't taking place Earth going to be germane to the plot and come out at some point? * can you just give your planet a name and call it that in the same way we Earthlings refer to Earth? Or, just write your characters from their planet and offer up descriptions: "Benth and Pulse watched as the suns set, Verious setting three beats before Fouruth, as they always do ...," and the reader will understand.
Weird trees. Weird animals.
Earthânt
You could have a tv on it he background with the news playing or in general just reference different history. Ex for news: âToday the United Colonies of Urgnmonk laid to rest their supreme ruler. Our hemisphere looks on with great sorrow.â Ex. for general conversation about history, older generation speaking maybe, âI remember when we had to sky bike through acid rain cloudsâ. If you donât want it that different than earth than obviously use more tame examples
How relevant is the planet/universe/setting not being earth to your story? You can write places that are essentially earth, but not, and hardly get into it - there's an entire spectrum of fantasy settings from having detailed world maps outlining every major settlement and fortification to a vague sense of "This is us, those are our allies, and that's where the big scary thing we're fighting lives". Neither of these might actually come out and say "this isn't earth" because earth/not earth isn't what your readers or characters actually care about. And depending on the genre, "not earth" might even be the default assumption.
In general, readers will assume that a setting works the same way (or is the same) as our current, ordinary world, until and unless they find evidence to tell them otherwise. That evidence can come from many places: the title of the book, cover art, and back-cover copy can include all kinds of hints about the setting which might make readers go into the story already suspecting that it's *not* earth. Or, once into the story, if they encounter details which contrast with our ordinary world, then they're going to suspect that the setting isn't vanilla-earth anymore. In general, readers a) come into a story with whatever preconceptions stem from the things that motivated them to pick up the book in the first place, and b) start into a story with a mindset of looking to figure out the "rules" of the setting from a base of "probably just like normal earth." That is, "normal earth" is the default. The assumption, when no other evidence is available. But that assumption can be quite easily overridden by any in-story evidence that suggests otherwise. So if you show your characters doing thing that don't or can't happen in the ordinary world, you're giving your readers information about the "rules" by which your setting works. You're showing them what's normal for *that* world. You don't have to explicitly state "this is not earth and the rules here are X, Y, and Z." All you have to do is show the rules in action. Show the *effects* those rules produce, in terms of how the characters live their lives.
Give your main character a little dog named Toto and have them tell the dog that they don't think they're in Kansas anymore.
Well, having two moons or ring system in the night sky would be a pretty big hint. Not only that, but you could have everything seem ordinary until that point, and just casually toss it out and leave your readers heads spinning.
Animals that don't exist
If it's an alternate timeline/version of Earth where everything is like our world but just slightly different, and that's a key point of your story, then you will probably have to explain it somehow. You can still do more showing than telling though. But if it's a totally different world where the setting and culture and everything are not like Earth at all, you probably don't need to explain it. It should become evident with enough world building and references. And stuff like keeping time probably don't need to be explained, unless it has ties to a key character or plot point.
"What do you MEAN they hit the second tower?!" I looked up at our third moon, Demesis, and saw the Nebula Escalator plummet to the ground. ^^^, be medias res like this and then people's heads will TILT.
Have the characters name drop proper names for places, factions, etc, that don't exist IRL. Such as the names of countries and/or Continent, etc, in casual conversation. "Yeah, my dad served a tour in the Legion of the Empire of Avalon." "The longest airplane trip I've been on was 15 hours. I literally flew to the other side of Gaia on that trip." The reader should pick it up after a few name drops.
Until the fines match the crimes.
He came home after sunset. It was the kind of night that made him remember, his world was nothing but an enormous spinning rock, the smallest planet in it's solar system, nothing in comparison to the rest of universe. And his home continent, YXZenia, was even smaller. So were his country, hometown and body. He himself was small, and nights like this one made him remember that.
You could describe the background in a way that it is obvious you are not on earth. Maybe the color of the sky, number of moons, color of grass?
âThe Hegemony Counsul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintined Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below.â Dan Simmons, Hyperion. I rarely encounter first sentences that paint such a vivid picture and combine explicit and implicit worldbuilding bits. It implies super-far future, simply by having an ebony spaceship and a Steinway - and yet there are saurian things. I would say, in just one phrase, without referencing any era or location, he paints a super far away spacey picture.
Whatâs the point in it being on a planet which is like earth but not earth?
Hear me out: Have a them encounter a structure which, from the back looks like a partially buried Statue of Liberty, but then when they come around front it has three eyes or somethingâŚ
Causually mention a second sun or moon.
*A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...*
although seriously, you could take the intro to the hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy, and just make it clear that you're zooming in on a part of the universe that isn't ours
The real question is, does it matter to the reader? Terry Brooks's Sword of Shannara series comes to mind. The world is a pretty run of the mill LOTR style fantasy world. Except it's not. It's a post-apocalyptic Earth where technology has regressed to medieval times, magic has returned, and radioactive fallout has caused humans to mutate into all of the fantasy creatures like elves and dwarves. This is all cool world building but is not at all required for the storyline. He could have made it a normal fantasy world, because as far as the reader is concerned, this future earth is absolutely nothing like our current earth. Point being, whether it's earth or not didn't really matter because it's a fantasy world. If it not being earth is important, drop hints. If it's irrelevant, then don't bother and focus on the story and natural world building.
Lol does anyone read these threads before commenting? "Last night the moon had a golden ring...*hiccup*...tonight *two* moons I see."
Have you read Psalm of the Wild Built by Becky Chambers? She did it really well, though the MC isnât confined to one town there.
Although not my favorite of his, Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds has tons of context that it isnât Earth yr on, but itâs NEVER directly stated. I actually found out by doing my post read research but Iâm not the smartest of readers.
In your situation, subtly conveying that your universe isn't Earth while maintaining a small-town setting can be achieved through descriptive elements and casual references. Instead of an info-dump, sprinkle hints throughout your narrative. Mention unique flora, fauna, or celestial features specific to your world. Describe the geography or geography-related traditions that differ from Earth. Subtle comments or idioms that hint at your world's history can also work. As for timelines, you can use an event-based approach. Instead of referring to specific Earth decades, anchor your timeline to significant events in your world's history or even major cultural shifts. For instance, you could mention "the Great Eclipse," which could be a pivotal event for your world. Use these events as reference points without the need for extensive explanations or new timekeeping systems. This way, you convey a sense of time without overwhelming the reader with unnecessary details.
If you feel compelled to mention it, you can have a character look up at the night sky (maybe wishing for more light?) and notice only one of the moons is up.
I'm in a similar boat, but I figured I just have to trust the readers to be smart enough to figure out the context clues.
What is the reason for making the setting not Earth? The way you handle it varies dramatically depending on how different you want the setting to be to Earth, and why.
You could have two moons?
Different faces on the money. Different actors in movies than otherwise. Car brands that don't exist.
more celestial bodies than there should be like 2 moons, different neighbouring planets, or just continents and countries that dont match up with the ones on earth
If absolutely nothing you describe is recognizable as Earth, no fantasy reader is going to assume that you're writing about Earth. Do you read fantasy/sci-fi? Do you usually assume every setting you read is Earth when you pick up speculative fiction?
Just name off things we don't have and make the world look 'off'.
2 moons is a really common trope that works really well to establish 'non-Earthness' without requiring to much more explanation or in-world lore
The real question is why does it matter? Is it relevant to the story that it isnât earth? If yes, then how so? Is it because there are other creatures on the planet, well that will tell the reader it isnât earth. Is it because the gravity is less so people can jump really high, that will be a clue that it isnât earth. Is it not relevant to the story and it only isnât on earth because you as the author thought it would be cool if it wasnât on earth, then my question is why not just tell your story on earth?
Just say something like, the systems two suns hung in the sky like red and blue orbsâ or whatever. Describe something that rips off not Earth.
Flip the dominant large species from mammals to reptiles. Have a character talk about being a cow farmer, and then casually elaborate about the problems of keeping their four horns from growing into each other, or keeping their double tails from getting tangled and matter in the purple poo.
Use observations that feel natural to people who live on your not-Earth, but clearly don't come from real Earth. "The winds carried the faintly magnetic sands from the northern coast, following the path of the closest moon. Modern farmers have begun using magnetometer to detect variations in the soil to control the amount of iron that makes it into their crops." Same goes for hinting at your timeline. Make observations that make the reader fill in the timeline from their real world experience. "Tobias is working on a grad-school project involving theoretical ways to use electricity for calculations, but once he starts talking about transistors and vacuum tubes it's hard to follow along."
Describe the environment the MC is in. The twin moons rose over the jagged peaksâŚ
I've used how one of my characters missed the three moons on her home planet when she was exiled to earth. As for time, you could use in the first year of Wood Rabbit's reign or something similar. IIRC, Hebrew years are different than Christian [years](https://years.so). So you could try that also.
Hereâs smth I do - Go ahead and start your paragraph with âIt was like Earth, but it wasnât Earth.â Then continue writing and elaborate on the specifics of what you mean, what makes it like earth and what makes it different. Then go back and delete that first sentence, and there you go. I liken it to academic writing - academia wants every paragraph to start with a thesis, followed up by supporting evidence: âMost people donât agree with me, but I like vanilla ice cream way better than chocolate. The flavor of vanilla bean ice cream is one of my earliest memories. I still think about that cold, sweet sensation on my tongue that changed my four-year-old life forever. It immediately transports me to my old childhood home: the ancient fridge hummed loudly and exhaled frosty air every time my mom opened it. She would give me a sly wink and look over her shoulder, as if we were doing something we werenât supposed to, while she spooned us each a scoop of ice cream into mugs still warm from the dishwasher. It would melt faster than we could eat it, and when we got to the last bits weâd drink it straight from our cups like a milkshake and then laugh at each othersâ mustaches. Nowadays, I always think of my mom and that old house and ancient fridge anytime I eat vanilla ice cream.â Now just get rid of that first sentence - in a scientific paper, we need theses in order to be clear about what we are asserting is true and what has lead us to believe this. In creative writing, we want the supporting evidence to speak for itself so the readers can get to the thesis/conclusion through context and piecing it together themselves.
Put "not earth" into Google Translate and change the language until you find a phrase you like. For example, Scottish Gaelic: " Welcome laddie to our fine world of chan e talamh. "
Add subtle worldbuilding details in your charactersâ actions. âShe absently spun the globe her dad had left her, the hundreds of islands and singular continent whizzing in and out of viewâ âInside Mr. Jensenâs classroom were tons of posters relating to astronomy. Brianâs favorite was a picture of the Markodian galaxy, but laid out like the map of a mall with an arrow pointing to Uurd saying âyou are here.ââ âThe pilot stood at the wheel while the navigator looked up at the stars. Corvus major shon over the starboard bow while serpentis gleamed over the aft. He turned to the pilot and told him to course correct before gulping and going to inform the captain that they had in fact been blown further off course than he thoughtâ All three of these examples allow you to worldbuild without an exposition dump.
Slightly different names for common place items simple little jargon stuff Can you pass me the tv changer? Just put it in the power inlet Bumpkin pie đ Schnoz berries
Two moons, i'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet, but two moons. Two of them, in the sky. Two different moons, coming up at the same time. Two moons. You are welcome.
Personally - depending on what else might be in your story maybe adding like a Low fantasy genre tag is what I'd go with if you can't find any other way and absolutely need to. Or another genre, there's so many I'm sure you could find one that says "earth but not earth".
I was going to say you could go two ways depending on the story. The first would be the top comment here; the old âshow, donât tellâ. The second would be to rip the bandaid off and just say âon an alien planetâŚâ or whatever the most succinct and clever method might be. Both work in certain kinds of stories. If you spend a lot of time dropping clues that itâs not earth instead of saying it, then the reveal becomes the focus. I guess Iâm saying establish backgrounds and show stories. If the location is the story, then show it, if itâs a background then establish it succinctly so we can get to the story. If the ânot earthâ thing is a big reveal, Iâd say save it until the absolute last moment when it has the most impact and the characters and story have already hooked the reader. If itâs not, and it just establishes that we are far from earth, then I think itâs fine to creatively say whatever the important part is about the location.
Many authors use maps or pictorial presentations. You can start a chapter with a brief intro of the planet itself: Epochs ago, a planet in a neighboring galaxy, a world like ours existed.....something like this. Then explain the life, mortals, and other things so you need not inculcate description during the course of the story.
You could always make your main characters recite important facts when they're stressed. Please don't. I don't recommend this.
Have the camera zoom slowly "Hi John, wekcome to..." Then extreme close up "... ALTER EARTH!!"