How would you expose an alien society and culture from a mainly first person perspective of someone who is part of this society and culture? I have certain social organisations that the reader simply must understand. How can I feed enough information to the reader early on for them to understand? Think about it like this. We all know our own culture. If some remote tribe of murderous cannibals was to read your story which involved daily life activities they would be saying things like "why didn't he just smack him on the head and eat him?", "what the hell are cars?", etc,. So I find myself with a major problem. I have to show soemthing of the history of this world, reveal character of MC and show the culture and social institutions (this race of people in general). The history I can drip feed, but I am worried about the showing the fundamental differences of this society compared to our own. The MC in my novel is in a position to reflect on and show the contrast between two different parts of this society because her parents are from two very different parts of society. The problem is these differences are not so obvious to the reader who doesnt understand the basic culture of these people and the institution that rules the nation. Should I just write it without being overly concerned about this and then edit later? Will taking that route make life more difficult for me in the future?
You have to trust your readers a little bit. Write it as if it's not an alien race. Just give us a first person narrator and tell the story. You'd be surprised what a reader will understand just from that. I would say don't worry so much about it. I'd be willing to bet that if you just wrote it, you'd hardly have to clarify anything upon edits. Just make sure you get some solid beta readers.
I guess that explains why we haven't been able to break into the headhunter market yet. Seriously, though, I wouldn't worry about it. There have been plenty of books about alien societies that didn't have to resort to encyclopedic tutorials.
Yes just write like an alien. Credit the reader with some intelligence. If you share a finished draft with some close friends for reviewing and the same confusion/feedback occurs then you can edit it to make it clearer. Don't attempt to second guess what your reader is capable of. A good example might be 'a clockwork orange' it's written in a 'futuristic tongue' but has become a classic
