: As to establishing an alternative universe or setting an alt-historical theme I'm a big believer in the Nineteen Eighty Four slap-in-the-face method: It was a bright cold day in April,

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As to establishing an alternative universe or setting an alt-historical theme I'm a big believer in the Nineteen Eighty Four slap-in-the-face method:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking
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Monica's suggestion of making reference to some clear and obvious anachronism dropped into the narrative flow in an almost throwaway fashion is ideal.

As to establishing believable characters. There are levels. I wrote a short series of novels set in a US based cop show.

i.e. the books were intended to pastiche a cop show, not portray actual US cops as I have zero experience of the way actual US cops talk outside of my reading Homicide by David Simon.

After this I came to understand that I should really be embracing writing dialogue for characters I could really get a good rhythm going for. Think of Pegg, Wright and Frost in Hot Fuzz. They were parodying US Action Blockbusters but an essential part of their parody was to ground characters and scenarios in a very recognisable Britishness because I think that they felt pretending to be Americans would be somewhat crass.

This does not mean that you can never get the timbre right, particuarly if you have a UK-language and culture editor to point out obvious howlers but that is adding another layer of work to the already challenging process of producing a novel in the first place.

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