Four Peas to Creating an Authentic Alternative History: Premise

I have decided to expand and update a post that I originally wrote for The Undeveloped Story, which has been inactive since 2012. Since most of my new readers have never seen this post, I thought it would be a good idea to pull it out of mothballs, rework it, and expand it.

History has always been a passion of mine. In high school I never got lower than a B- when it came to world history, and when American History came around, my worst wound up being only an A-. Needless to say, If you have any love for the subject, and possibly if you are of a certain mindset, you will come to a time when you will read some historical account and then "What if X happened instead" will pop into your head.

It was probably during some boring class like English (I know, how can it be boring if you're a writer. I know enough to write, but don't ask me to diagram a sentence to save my life) that one such What if popped into my head. "What if we never learned the lessons of The Civil War, and a mere ten years later it happened again, this time in the American West." Thus the seeds of an Alternative History (Alt-Hi) were born, and to one degree or another, I have continued to refine the story from then on. 

There are four peas (P's) you need to master in order to create an authentic historical fiction: Premise, Probability, Possibilities, and Preparation. While every part is important, sometimes you can lose the race at the starting line. It can all come apart at the premise, where the question is always, what if.

P#1: Premise

I have already told you the premise of the story I have been refining over the years. Here is it reworked another way.

It has been said that those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it. What if, ten years after the conclusion of the Civil War, the United states found itself facing a similar conflict, but this time in the West?

What separates the Alt-Hi from Sci-Fi, is that, while both genre's begin with the What if question, The Alternative History is limited to the inventions and conditions of the timeline they are reconstructing. (For example, Let's say Lincoln doesn't get assassinated. We can't have him saved by being teleported out of the theatre just before Booth fires. We could have him blocked by another patron until the moment is unfavorable.) There are an unlimited number of premises. 

A faulty premise will only be fatal if you stick with it. As you work your way through the peas, you may find that your original premise was horribly flawed and should be abandoned. However, the benefit of the process is that a better premise may arise from the ashes that will stand up to the demands of the story.

So you think you have a good premise. Will it make it into a story? Not unless it makes it through another Pea.