: Re: How to deal with common Earth references in a non-Earth setting? Until now, I have mostly written in settings similar enough to Earth, mostly with human beings. For the first time, I am writing

@Twilah982

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I don't think there's a right answer for what you're asking. At the end of the day, you're writing in English. English, like any language, reflects the history and collective views of the society it came from.

For example, English has many words for water related things, especially about things that relate to sailing, because throughout its history (through the vikings and Normans, and finally the more modern English who were seafarers as well) the English nation has been sailing. That's just how that is.

So the way I see it, you have three options:

Stop thinking over it and just write in a way that's natural to you. Alternatively, introduce a human element to the story, or have the narrator be human. Make it natural for you.
Write up a variation on English, as you've said, but always be careful to strike a balance between making it sound authentic and making it understandable by humans.
Do what Tolkien did with his elves. Granted, they did have human interaction, and they did speak (to protagonists) in "common speech", but what Tolkien did was he invented a language (a few languages, actually) for his elves, to match a society he invented for them, and everything he wrote about them, he wrote with that in mind.

He could chose a different word order in a sentence, or have they choose specific words, or act in a certain manner that was uniquely elvish. And then, everything fell into place with elves.

This is by far the most difficult way to go, but it's also, in my opinion, the most rewarding. It sounds right, when you write it down. There's a lot of learning to do, though, and a lot of work after it. If this is the course of action you want to go with, a great book to start with is Mark Rosenfelder's The Language Construction Kit, available both online for free, and on paper or pdf as an extended version.

Best of luck to you!

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