: Re: Techniques to write for a wider audience Many years ago, I wrote a short story that used specific information from my cultural background e.g. a belief that if you dream something, it is a

@Sarah872

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I had a similar problem with my book, since it was aimed mainly for Portuguese speakers but the two main Portuguese speaking countries - Brazil and Portugal - have really different cultural scenes and even the language is somewhat different.

In some cases, I had to use footnotes and explain outside of the narrative what somethings were. At other points, my characters spoke in the book about the cultural thing that needed to be explained. I don't see how you can escape from those two approaches if you want to make your "localized" book accessible to people who are not familiar with you culture.

Quentin Tarantino has a wonderful example of how to do it in Pulp Fiction in the famous Quarter Pounder with cheese scene. He uses some hilarious European details and toys with them under the optic of an American; in the end, the viewer understands the differences perfectly with amusement.

Having the characters use those localized cultural details in the book is better; but sometimes that is not possible. In such cases you might try my approach: use footnotes to explain the less important ones and characters to explain the more important ones.

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