Do your worlds have AlternateUniverse or AlternateContinuities?

While I've been creating my world, which takes Artistic License – Geography with country sizes (a different-size United Kingdom and different-shaped France, both slightly larger than real-world, and a United States that's got 10 additional states), I've been thinking about these two tropes which could be in my works:

- Alternate Continuity

- Alternate Universe

Although I'm developing a Canon, what are the advantages and disadvantages of having these in your world-building?

Does anyone here use either an Alternate Continuity or an Alternate Universe in theirs? (I know that Alternate History is used a lot on here, from what I've read).

Alternate to the reality you live in, or the reality the characters live in in the story?

Alternate to the characters' realities, not our world.

kinda, so many in fact.

Okay then. I try to avoid Alternate stuff because it's extra information that I have to keep straight for a single story. If the difference is big enough (say, a story-driving event didn't happen), I've found that it's easier to just adapt that Alternate thing into/as a separate and unrelated story. And if the difference is small enough it can be used in the same story later on down the line, so that there's only one transit route to remember instead of two.

Canon, on the other hand, I've found to be more useful in short series - five or six stories of any length, all taking place in the same world. Setting them chronologically after each other, rather than simultaneous or overlapping, makes it easier to keep the ideas in them apart and/or simplifies references to each other. (Story 1 sets the tone of the world; Story 2 builds off of Story 1; Story 3 uses the world-building from Story 1 and Story 2 and adds a couple of new elements; Story 4 is practically a stand-alone with the occasional detail from the previous stories cropping up; Story 5 takes an element common to the previous stories and rejects or deconstructs it; etc.)

The bigger your story bible gets, the harder it is to bend it in a new direction. Take the Star Wars series, and the old Expanded Universe that got built up: the new sequel did away with the majority of that because it tied too many hands.

edited 8th Mar '17 3:17:04 PM by ExcuseMyIngles

I don't plan on using Alternative Universes in my work. Mainly because once I feel as if I ran out of stories to tell in the core one, any other ones would just be reinterpretations of the first. So just best to start a new project or take characters I love from the first work and place them in a new one related to, or far removed from the original.

One of my current projects is taking the Alternate Universe elements of Big Hero 6 and possibly exaggerating them to create a universe where the Knights of the Round Table have been reorganised into a special operations group for a more 'unified' Britain and Europe.

And magic still exists. The intent is to create an Alternate Universe to the MCU, with possible implications of a multiversal plot somewhere down the line.

Spec Ops Knights? This probably won't involve nearly as much 'longsword ninja' as I'd like it to...

Using Alternate Continuity and Alternate Universe always seemed rather overwhelming to me, so I've only ever thought of using them sparingly. The only instance in any of my projects that I can think of would be a fairly standard Alternate Self Future Me Scares Me of the main character who comes into the main reality and wreaks havoc, because said character lives in constant fear of what would happen if he ever became evil.

I suppose what the whole thing could be useful for is bringing back dead characters through their Alternate Self, but that does sound like something one should be careful not to overuse.

Funny thing, my girlfriend use it in her settings and I made a point of classifying in three types:

type 1 which are just devition of modern history like the typical "X survived into our present day" or "X didnt die", I use the name "alternative timeline"

type 2 were something allow a diverge, like said "X point in time allow steampunk tech to flourish" or "aliens come"

Type 3 are truly weird thing, like a world were all funny animals or were people are made of cristal, she told me there was a alternate universe were everyone have their heart in a box

at the same time she said all her chararter have something it conect in every universe: like if X chararter is a spy, he will be one in each universe in every form(a demon spy, in another is demon hunter, in another he just perform industrial espionage,etc)

And for last, she dosent have any problem in saying a X who is a hero in one universe is a nobody or just die early, to hammer the idea the multiverse is a werid thing and nobody cares.

Well I haven't written mine yet so I guess all the ideas I'm just thinking about or tossed out sort of count as an alternate continuity.