# Writing Time Travel



## Anders Ã„mting (Aug 22, 2012)

I'm sketching up a concept for a fantasy story that I'd like to feature extensive time travel, meaning events are going to have to happen in a non-linear chronological order as the characters are jumping around in time. I'm curious if anyone here has written a time travel story before and have any advice to give, particularly in terms of plot structure. I've never actually written about time travel myself, you see, and it seems to me the most daunting part is planning the whole thing out.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Aug 22, 2012)

Get ready for lots of logistical headaches.  The best advice I've seen about writing time travel stories is to make it interesting/funny enough that nobody bothers thinking through the time travel logic.

Also, I don't think any time travel story can ever beat this one:



> machine is broken! Oh no, my time


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## FatCat (Aug 22, 2012)

Time-travel!!!!! My god, I think I just popped a blood vessel trying to think of a way to write a story with this theme. Seems to me like your going to have to put off the style of a loose plot design/write as you think method and strictly adhere to a very detailed chain of events, lest you  suffer constant revisions! Although the potential for an awesome plot twists and surprises is astounding, I think you should take an O.C.D. level of methodical planning on the plot. Don't know if this helps at all, but good luck!


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## Jared (Aug 22, 2012)

Anders Ã„mting said:


> I'm sketching up a concept for a fantasy story that I'd like to feature extensive time travel, meaning events are going to have to happen in a non-linear chronological order as the characters are jumping around in time. I'm curious if anyone here has written a time travel story before and have any advice to give, particularly in terms of plot structure. I've never actually written about time travel myself, you see, and it seems to me the most daunting part is planning the whole thing out.



What are your rules of time travel? The future is fixed and the universe will adjust to disturbances, time changes and the traveler is affected, alternate timelines and the traveler is unaffected...? My suggestion would be to carve those in stone first.


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## Jabrosky (Aug 22, 2012)

I've just produced a brief outline for a story featuring time travel, but it's more the traditional sci-fi kind rather than anything magical, and I don't plan to have an actual time travel scene so much as keep it all in the backstory.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Aug 23, 2012)

Jared said:


> What are your rules of time travel? The future is fixed and the universe will adjust to disturbances, time changes and the traveler is affected, alternate timelines and the traveler is unaffected...? My suggestion would be to carve those in stone first.



Here's what I got so far: Time can be changed, though only in proportion to the effort of the time traveller. (In other words, you can step on how many butterflies you want, it won't cause any noticable change. They're only butterflies, for crying out loud.) Time will also try to resist changes or force temporal loops as much as possible. The further back you go, the harder it is to cause lasting changes without directly changing the course of important historical events.

Time travel is also tricky because time is ruled by a sentient entity which will typically divert time travellers to times and places other than their intended destination, either to minimize temporal complications or trigger certain events, or both. The exception to this is the chosen servants of said entity, who have an intuitive understanding of the rules of time travel.

Only one timeline can exist, and changing time causes the old timeline to vanish, however time travellers remain mostly unaffected when they change the future since casuality works both ways and effects can have abstract causes. An example would be reading a note and then going back in time and burning the same note before reading it. The time traveller would still remember what was written in the note. (While being able to recall two sets of event, one were he read the note and one where he didn't.) This is mostly harmless and can even be exploited to the time traveller's benefit, but can get dangerous (and confusing) if taken to extremes.


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## FatCat (Aug 23, 2012)

First off, I'm hoping the metaphor about the butterflies was relevant to "the butterfly effect" 
But it seems like this time-travel idea would be considerably hard to negotiate, and should be added into the plot as such. The actions the time travelers take in the past would logically have unknown impacts by said characters, even with the rules you've imposed. I do really like the idea of the entity who controls time, that solves a lot of logical fallacies that would pop up, however I'm wondering what your characters are attempting to change, and if this entity is resistant to the change. It would be interesting to have a battle against time itself, however I don't see how you could get away with saying the time-travelers could be immune to historical changes without being one of the servants of the entity. If they exist in the real world, they naturally would be affected by it, which begs the question, are your characters mortal? Perhaps they could be, for lack of a better term, angels or some type of deity, thus giving them the freedom to change the mortal timeline without affecting their own existence. Really do like the idea, though.


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## Jared (Aug 23, 2012)

On my iPad, so can't go into lots of detail, but here are some thoughts you might consider.



Anders Ã„mting said:


> Here's what I got so far: Time can be changed, though only in proportion to the effort of the time traveller. (In other words, you can step on how many butterflies you want, it won't cause any noticable change. They're only butterflies, for crying out loud.)



What determines efforts? Firing a rifle doesn't take much effort.




Anders Ã„mting said:


> Time will also try to resist changes or force temporal loops as much as possible. The further back you go, the harder it is to cause lasting changes without directly changing the course of important historical events.



So you stop Gavrilo Princep, but Archduke Ferdinand is killed the next morning by one of his cohort that suddenly decided to finish the job?




Anders Ã„mting said:


> Time travel is also tricky because time is ruled by a sentient entity which will typically divert time travellers to times and places other than their intended destination, either to minimize temporal complications or trigger certain events, or both.


Do these events have to happen? Is time travel required for time to move forward? What time does this entity live in? Does it live in all times at once? Is it sitting at the end of existance, meddling with the past?

Is there one "now"? Are there time travelers from the future?




Anders Ã„mting said:


> Only one timeline can exist, and changing time causes the old timeline to vanish, however time travellers remain mostly unaffected when they change the future since casuality works both ways and effects can have abstract causes.


How do they remain unaffected? The entity or just the way time works? I understand all of the words you used...but not in that construction.




Anders Ã„mting said:


> An example would be reading a note and then going back in time and burning the same note before reading it. The time traveller would still remember what was written in the note. (While being able to recall two sets of event, one were he read the note and one where he didn't.) This is mostly harmless and can even be exploited to the time traveller's benefit, but can get dangerous (and confusing) if taken to extremes.


This is a problem, I think. You said only one timeline exists, but you only use a simple example.

Two thoughts.

1) Does this extend to all time travelers? If you and I read a note, then traveled through time, but you went to destroy the note before either of us read it, but I went to ancient Egypt, would I still remember the note?

1b) Does this affect time travelers that came after you? If I write a note describing time traveling and leave it in a box, then you read and use it, then replace it so people in the future can read it, then time travel back before you read it, does that wipe out the time travelers that had used it before you went back in time and destroyed it?

1b2) What if someone in the future goes back and destroys the note before you read it?

2) What if someone read a letter that lead them to a place where they met a person that they married and were with for the rest of their life...until they discovered that they had been cheating on them the whole time. So they went back and burned that letter. But you've already established that things don't change...so why time travel?

2b) Same situation, but let's say that the alternate you-get-together involved you gaining a scar. Does that scar occur immediately, or only after you return to your time?

3) How can it get dangerous if the entity is keeping an eye out? What does it let by?


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## Anders Ã„mting (Aug 23, 2012)

FatCat said:


> First off, I'm hoping the metaphor about the butterflies was relevant to "the butterfly effect"
> But it seems like this time-travel idea would be considerably hard to negotiate, and should be added into the plot as such. The actions the time travelers take in the past would logically have unknown impacts by said characters, even with the rules you've imposed.



Most of that would turn out to be part of stable time loops, unless the time travellers specifically _try _to muck things up.



> I do really like the idea of the entity who controls time, that solves a lot of logical fallacies that would pop up, however I'm wondering what your characters are attempting to change, and if this entity is resistant to the change.



I think the bad guys they're fighting are probably using a different type of time travel under a different entity, though I haven't quite nailed that part down yet.



> It would be interesting to have a battle against time itself, however I don't see how you could get away with saying the time-travelers could be immune to historical changes without being one of the servants of the entity.



Well, they're not exactly _immune, _retrocausality being what it is. For example, if you go back in time and tell yourself not to go back in time, your past self still vanishes at the time he was originally supposed to go back in time - because you being in your own past is already an effect and the cause is mostly a formality at that point.

When this happens, anything your alternative past self did differently gets reflected back at you, but you don't lose any knowledge your aquired along your original timeline. 

Likewise, you won't cease to exist if they kill your grandfather or something. (Which, while possible, would require some serious effort on your part.)



> If they exist in the real world, they naturally would be affected by it, which begs the question, are your characters mortal? Perhaps they could be, for lack of a better term, angels or some type of deity, thus giving them the freedom to change the mortal timeline without affecting their own existence. Really do like the idea, though.



They start out as mortal but get kind of a promotion later on. It's actually a major plot twist and one of the main reason I want to write this story.



Jared said:


> What determines efforts? Firing a rifle doesn't take much effort.



You have to consciously aim it at something. You generally can't change timelines by accident, except in very small ways.



> So you stop Gavrilo Princep, but Archduke Ferdinand is killed the next morning by one of his cohort that suddenly decided to finish the job?



No, if you stop Gavrilo Princep, Archduke Ferdinand lives. (Unless someone else kills him later for whatever reason. But that's bad luck, not temporal mechanics.) That's what I meant by interfering in historical events.

Rather, suppose you go even further back in time and kill a whole bunch of random people. Non of those are going to be Gavrilo Princep's ancestor, so Archduke Ferdinand still dies.



> Do these events have to happen?



Probably not. The entity likely just thinks that if you are going to hop around in time, you might as well make yourself useful.



> Is time travel required for time to move forward?



No, time always moves by definition since in this setting, time is a type of motion.



> What time does this entity live in? Does it live in all times at once? Is it sitting at the end of existance, meddling with the past?



Most likely, the entity is present at all times. Or at least, it's capable of being present at any time it wants.



> Is there one "now"?



I guess, philosophically speaking, but "now" is always going to be matter of perspective. Since the default is to always move forward in time, "now" has about as much meaning is "here" does for a person who is constantly running forwards.



> Are there time travelers from the future?



Oh sure. In fact, I expect the MC will run into future versions of themselves on several occasions.



> How do they remain unaffected? The entity or just the way time works? I understand all of the words you used...but not in that construction.



It's just how time works. If a time traveler goes back in time and changes the circumstances that led to him going back in time, this creates a new timeline. But the simple fact that creating this timeline required the time traveler to go back in time in the first place, that means causality kinda has to fudge the rules a bit to allow him to still be where he ended up. Thus, the original timeline becomes something abstract, a turn of events that technically didn't happen but still caused what just happened to happen. 



> This is a problem, I think. You said only one timeline exists, but you only use a simple example.
> 
> Two thoughts.
> 
> 1) Does this extend to all time travelers? If you and I read a note, then traveled through time, but you went to destroy the note before either of us read it, but I went to ancient Egypt, would I still remember the note?



I guess that depends on the exact circumstancs, but probably not.

The future me in this case would arrive from an abstracted timeline where we both read the note, but which never occured from your point of view.



> 1b) Does this affect time travelers that came after you? If I write a note describing time traveling and leave it in a box, then you read and use it, then replace it so people in the future can read it, then time travel back before you read it, does that wipe out the time travelers that had used it before you went back in time and destroyed it?



You mean, you bring the note into the future, and then you go back an destroy it before you can bring it into the future?

In that case, yes. That's a pretty straightforward example of changing the timeline. As a result, you would have a bunch of weird memories of time travellers who does not/will not exist. Also, the Unicorn who rules over time is now annoyed at you and tells you to cut those shenanigans out or it will strand you in the Neolithic age.



> 1b2) What if someone in the future goes back and destroys the note before you read it?



Then, of course, you don't get to read it.



> 2) What if someone read a letter that lead them to a place where they met a person that they married and were with for the rest of their life...until they discovered that they had been cheating on them the whole time. So they went back and burned that letter. But you've already established that things don't change...so why time travel?



This will result in you having lived two timelines, one where you married that person and one where you didn't. I suppose it's up to decide you which one you prefer. Burning the letter will, in any case, prevent your past self from marrying that person, as far as the timeline is concerned.



> 2b) Same situation, but let's say that the alternate you-get-together involved you gaining a scar. Does that scar occur immediately, or only after you return to your time?



You mean, you had no scar when you went back in time, but your alternate past self later gained one?

In that case, it either appears on your body at the moment you burn the letter or with a slight delay, I haven't decided yet. Either way, it happens at the same time as you gain the memories of your new past self.



> 3) How can it get dangerous if the entity is keeping an eye out? What does it let by?



It can get dangerous in a "Ouch, my head! I don't know who I am anymore!" sense.

Basically, the Unicorn operates on a "If you mess yourself up with too much time travel, it's your own damn fault" policy.


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## Zero Angel (Aug 23, 2012)

Your idea of the travelers remaining unaffected reminded me of two things.

First, the 90s X-Men Cartoon. The time travelers in that had bracelets that (I am inferring) created a type of temporal shield. So long as the power lasted on the bracelets, the time travelers continued to exist, even after their time line had been destroyed / re-written. Anytime a time-line was rewritten, all of the characters from it ceased to exist (even if they exist in a different form). One story in particular featured a punk Storm and her lover Wolverine from a post-apocalyptic present. When they helped change the past, they stayed alive, but destroyed each other's bracelet as they embraced for a final time. Upon destruction, they were wiped from existence, although the characters alive in the surviving timeline remembered their actions and their actions in the current timeline didn't go away.

In Doctor Who, only the Doctor and "special" time travelers are able to remember all the different timelines. Other people slowly forget time lines that were erased and almost immediately forget existences that were erased from their own timelines.


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## FatCat (Aug 23, 2012)

Just a thought, but what if your characters did not have the ability to time-travel at will, but relied on a deity like you described. That way you can shrug off any inconsistencies as the divine will of fate. in addition to keep your plot twist, they could be tools of said deity that eventually learn the ability to time travel without assistance at the ire of the deity, somehow progressing beyond mortality with the knowledge they learned? That way as they learn to time travel the deity who sends them places is in control of events to protect the timeline as a whole, and allow small changes. I'm not sure if this will even be remotely helpful, but the topic has got my head spinning in a good way haha.


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## CupofJoe (Aug 23, 2012)

I was thinking of Time Travel for a story but now I think I'll go away and put a damp towel on my forehead...


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## JCFarnham (Aug 23, 2012)

The fabulous podcast Writing Excuses has recently done a 'cast on precisely this subject. You could go much further in depth than they did (but then again they only have 15-20 minutes), but the 'cast works as a brilliant primer on time travel.


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## JonSnow (Aug 23, 2012)

So, now that this question has come up... I'd like some opinions on the small time travel idea I have been tossing around for my WIP....

Plotline- main character has an ancient, magic sword that was forged by fluxing the metal with a substance called "kingsdust", which is what gives the sword its magical properties. These blades are extremely rare and kingsdust was mined out of existence centuries ago. so basically, the character has to go back in time to get the sword re-forged.

I haven't worked out exactly "how" he is going to time travel. But I believe I have molded the plot to make it fit, if I can figure out the method of travel. He meets two characters while back in time (he will not be gone for long, maybe a couple days),  the blacksmith and a woman. This woman is actually the Blue Maiden (not her real name, but a song/poem about her is still told in modern times, as her disappearance in the past set off a long war). She wants to leave for a number of reasons, and ends up travelling forward in time with this main character when he comes back, after the sword is re-forged. So basically, the "ripple" he created (removing her from her time)  has already happened (he knows the story, and will put two and two together when he meets her). Does that make sense? Any suggestions or thoughts? Any glaring holes? I don't want "time travel" itself to be a major part of my story, but one significant part of my plot will involve it, if I can make it believable.

Moderators, if this is in the wrong section feel free to move it


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## Anders Ã„mting (Aug 23, 2012)

Zero Angel said:


> Your idea of the travelers remaining unaffected reminded me of two things.



Well, like I said, they aren't completely unaffected. It's just that a time traveler can only add to his own temporal motion, never subtract from it. Let's call this the "No Takebacks Rule of Time Travel." 

You can change the temporal motion of other people, including other time travelers, unless they somehow manage to exploit causality/retrocausality in a similar manner.



FatCat said:


> Just a thought, but what if your characters did not have the ability to time-travel at will, but relied on a deity like you described. That way you can shrug off any inconsistencies as the divine will of fate. in addition to keep your plot twist, they could be tools of said deity that eventually learn the ability to time travel without assistance at the ire of the deity, somehow progressing beyond mortality with the knowledge they learned? That way as they learn to time travel the deity who sends them places is in control of events to protect the timeline as a whole, and allow small changes. I'm not sure if this will even be remotely helpful, but the topic has got my head spinning in a good way haha.



As I said, most people who time-travel, be it deliberatelly or accidentally, tend to end up wherever the Unicorn thinks they ought to go. I don't think more than a couple of the MCs will be able to time travel freely. It's not really something normal people are meant to be doing.

That said, the question about their mortality actually has nothing to do with time travel. 



JCFarnham said:


> The fabulous podcast Writing Excuses has recently done a 'cast on precisely this subject. You could go much further in depth than they did (but then again they only have 15-20 minutes), but the 'cast works as a brilliant primer on time travel.



Huh, imagine that. I haven't kept up with Writing Excuses in a while, but I'll be sure to check that out. Thanks.



JonSnow said:


> He meets two characters while back in time (he will not be gone for long, maybe a couple days),  the blacksmith and a woman. This woman is actually the Blue Maiden (not her real name, but a song/poem about her is still told in modern times, as her disappearance in the past set off a long war). She wants to leave for a number of reasons, and ends up travelling forward in time with this main character when he comes back, after the sword is re-forged. So basically, the "ripple" he created (removing her from her time)  has already happened (he knows the story, and will put two and two together when he meets her). Does that make sense?



This is called backwards causality, a future event causing the past to happen. It's actually totally legit because there is no logical contradiction saying it can't be done.


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## JonSnow (Aug 23, 2012)

Anders Ã„mting said:


> This is called backwards causality, a future event causing the past to happen. It's actually totally legit because there is no logical contradiction saying it can't be done.



Fantastic. Thanks for the answer


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## Jared (Aug 23, 2012)

Anders Ã„mting said:


> It's just how time works. If a time traveler goes back in time and changes the circumstances that led to him going back in time, this creates a new timeline. But the simple fact that creating this timeline required the time traveler to go back in time in the first place, that means causality kinda has to fudge the rules a bit to allow him to still be where he ended up. Thus, the original timeline becomes something abstract, a turn of events that technically didn't happen but still caused what just happened to happen.
> 
> In that case, yes. That's a pretty straightforward example of changing the timeline. As a result, you would have a bunch of weird memories of time travellers who does not/will not exist. Also, the Unicorn who rules over time is now annoyed at you and tells you to cut those shenanigans out or it will strand you in the Neolithic age.



Well, I think that these responses kind of answer your original question.

Time travel stories can be a pain to plot out because of the paradoxes, conservation of information and mass, and the flow of cause and effect. But you're invoking a time travel deity that negates those concerns, so I don't think you have any issues to worry about.

Just plot your story as normal from the viewpoint of the time traveler, as the world will adjust around them. If you include a second time traveler, just put in their second and first appearance normally. The rules you've set up ensure that what the time traveler sees is what happens, by definition.


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## Zero Angel (Aug 23, 2012)

JonSnow said:


> Plotline- main character has an ancient, magic sword that was forged by fluxing the metal with a substance called "kingsdust", which is what gives the sword its magical properties. These blades are extremely rare and kingsdust was mined out of existence centuries ago. so basically, the character has to go back in time to get the sword re-forged.
> 
> I haven't worked out exactly "how" he is going to time travel. But I believe I have molded the plot to make it fit, if I can figure out the method of travel. He meets two characters while back in time (he will not be gone for long, maybe a couple days),  the blacksmith and a woman. This woman is actually the Blue Maiden (not her real name, but a song/poem about her is still told in modern times, as her disappearance in the past set off a long war). She wants to leave for a number of reasons, and ends up travelling forward in time with this main character when he comes back, after the sword is re-forged. So basically, the "ripple" he created (removing her from her time)  has already happened (he knows the story, and will put two and two together when he meets her). Does that make sense? Any suggestions or thoughts? Any glaring holes? I don't want "time travel" itself to be a major part of my story, but one significant part of my plot will involve it, if I can make it believable.



I really like this idea. It reminds me of something you might see in a Chrono Trigger story. I like everything that you said, only I would leave it ambiguous that the Blue Lady is the girl in question until after they already remove her from her time stream. Then it's like, "Oh crap! We caused this big war!" If your MC knows who she is, unless he is evil-aligned, he might go the route that it is more better for her to stay behind and she has to sneak her way through to the present (stowaway or run through the portal before it closes or whatever your time-travel medium is). Also, once she sees the effects of her actions, is she sad at all? Does she care that she was responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands, of deaths? Do they try to return her to "save the day" or does something happen that prevents her return--like death?



Anders Ã„mting said:


> Well, like I said, they aren't completely unaffected. It's just that a time traveler can only add to his own temporal motion, never subtract from it. Let's call this the "No Takebacks Rule of Time Travel."
> 
> You can change the temporal motion of other people, including other time travelers, unless they somehow manage to exploit causality/retrocausality in a similar manner.


What a great rule! I really like the idea behind it.



Anders Ã„mting said:


> This is called backwards causality, a future event causing the past to happen. It's actually totally legit because there is no logical contradiction saying it can't be done.


It's not just totally legit, this is the current accepted belief of what time travel would be like according to everything I've read on the subject. In fact, it's not about causality or anything like that. People always ask what came first, the chicken or the egg, but the fact is both the chicken and the egg have always existed. From what I've read, all of time has already happened from the beginning until the end--what changes is merely our perception of time. 

I dislike time travel in general because I've been burned too many times by stories that have an "It was all a dream" like ending and I greatly dislike the infinite parallel worlds model. So what I did was create a subspace universe type thing that can replicate any period of time outside of the present, but is actually just a copy and not the real thing--think Sea of Eden in Chrono Cross or even the Danger Room in X-Men. I have a "Guardian of Time" god being, but he is not able to time travel and he even wrote a dissertation (in first draft form here) about how Time Travel does not exist. 

Finally, I will leave you with a quote from the Doctor: 





> People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... timey wimey... stuff.


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## JonSnow (Aug 23, 2012)

Zero Angel said:


> I really like this idea. It reminds me of something you might see in a Chrono Trigger story. I like everything that you said, only I would leave it ambiguous that the Blue Lady is the girl in question until after they already remove her from her time stream. Then it's like, "Oh crap! We caused this big war!" If your MC knows who she is, unless he is evil-aligned, he might go the route that it is more better for her to stay behind and she has to sneak her way through to the present (stowaway or run through the portal before it closes or whatever your time-travel medium is). Also, once she sees the effects of her actions, is she sad at all? Does she care that she was responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands, of deaths? Do they try to return her to "save the day" or does something happen that prevents her return--like death?



This is why I love this forum. The MC is traveling back in time with the intent of affecting as little as possible in the continuum, which means if he knows this woman wants to leave her world (and did so in the past) he must not stop her. However, I'm toying with the idea that he does not discuss the future with her (for the reason of not giving her any ideas of preventing it), and she tricks him into taking her along, therefore keeping both the past and present intact, the MC unwitting. 

Only then will she realize what her decision has cost. And honestly, I hadn't even thought about this plotline beyond this point, because it is like mid-book 3, and I'm still writing book 1. Your question is making possibilities and new plots explode in my brain. So THANK YOU. Seriously.


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## Zero Angel (Aug 23, 2012)

Great! I am glad I was able to help. I only regret saying "more better" in my first reply 

Sounds like you have a strong understanding of what you want to happen. It's always interesting when the Lawful Good character comes into conflict with what it means to remain Lawful and not go the Robin Hood route.

I look forward to seeing what happens in your books! Keep us updated please.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Aug 24, 2012)

Jared said:


> Well, I think that these responses kind of answer your original question.



Not quite - I never really worried about paradoxes and conservation of information. My concern was about the actual story structure, which is going to have to be non-linear because the characters will end up doing things that have already occured when the story starts, or witness events first that they themselves later instigate, or meet themselves from a later part of the plot. I'm wondering what the best way of planning that is, because I've never done something like this before.


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## Jared (Aug 24, 2012)

Anders Ã„mting said:


> Not quite - I never really worried about paradoxes and conservation of information. My concern was about the actual story structure, which is going to have to be non-linear because the characters will end up doing things that have already occured when the story starts, or witness events first that they themselves later instigate, or meet themselves from a later part of the plot. I'm wondering what the best way of planning that is, because I've never done something like this before.



I disagree, it will be linear from the point of view of your MC. It has to be linear by your rules, because the non-linearity that arises from the paradoxes and such that don't exist for you. (By linear I mean that the going into the past can not affect the time traveler's present _as presented in the book_...unless you're planning on changing things and trying to catch the reader up on everything that changed in the timeline and what the MC does now that they remember two histories. I would really recommend not doing that.)

Honestly, as a first step, I would just try plotting out the book from the narrative point-of-view like you would any other. Anything that the MC does back in time had to have occurred in the book already, so that's not an issue. (I don't know if you have them going forward in time.) When you reach a scene where the two versions of the MC actually talk face-to-face, leave the outline vague until you reach the older version's time hitting that, then go back and flesh it out.

I really do think that you best approach is to do it this way. If it fails, you learn something that will inform your adjustments. Then either you'll improve your plotting or have more focused questions to ask.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Aug 24, 2012)

Jared said:


> I disagree, it will be linear from the point of view of your MC. It has to be linear by your rules, because the non-linearity that arises from the paradoxes and such that don't exist for you. (By linear I mean that the going into the past can not affect the time traveler's present _as presented in the book_...unless you're planning on changing things and trying to catch the reader up on everything that changed in the timeline and what the MC does now that they remember two histories. I would really recommend not doing that.)



What I mean by "not linear" is that the MCs will witness or be affected by events that they themselves turn out to be part of. 

Just to use a random example: Suppose Character A finds that his car is stolen in Chapter 1. So he has to walk to his destination, takes a shortcut, and ends up rescuing Character B from orcs, or something. Then, in chapter 10, Character B needs a car, so she goes back in time, steals Character A's car, goes forward in time, and is like: "Hey, I got you your car back!"

In order to do this, I have to know what is going to happen in chapter 10 when I start writing chapter 1. I have to write the _entire_ story this way. That's what worries me, because I don't always get my best ideas right away, and every time someone travels backwards in time, I have to account for that earlier in the plot.


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## Jared (Aug 24, 2012)

Anders Ã„mting said:


> What I mean by "not linear" is that the MCs will witness or be affected by events that they themselves turn out to be part of.
> 
> Just to use a random example: Suppose Character A finds that his car is stolen in Chapter 1. So he has to walk to his destination, takes a shortcut, and ends up rescuing Character B from orcs, or something. Then, in chapter 10, Character B needs a car, so she goes back in time, steals Character A's car, goes forward in time, and is like: "Hey, I got you your car back!"
> 
> In order to do this, I have to know what is going to happen in chapter 10 when I start writing chapter 1. I have to write the _entire_ story this way. That's what worries me, because I don't always get my best ideas right away, and every time someone travels backwards in time, I have to account for that earlier in the plot.



I know what you meant. What you're saying doesn't clash with the definitions that I used.

Let's get the disclaimer out of the way: If it's worrying you this much, you may not have the chops or writing muscle to pull it off right now. You may need write other stuff to train up to the level where you can do the heavy lifting this idea requires. There's no shame in that. Listen to or read interviews with authors and they'll say the same thing. I've heard Seanan McGuire and Brandon Sanderson both say is in the past couple of weeks.

Now, to the suggestion: iteration, focus on the only the MCs.

Pick out the main POV character. Plot out that thread _coarsely_ from beginning to end.

Find where that thread loops back on itself or intersects other threads. Now plot out the other threads around that one.

Find conflicts, resolve and adjust plotting.

Iterate and add details.

Think of origami. You don't do all of the folds simultaneously and hope the shape falls into place. You do a large fold here and a large fold there. You do some smaller folds, then open it back up so that you can do larger folds that incorporate those smaller folds. As you get further along, your folds tend to get smaller and more detailed.


---

Anyways, that's my suggestion. I've never written a time travel story, but if my iterative and recursive code/work translates over, this is what I do.


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## Zero Angel (Aug 29, 2012)

I just remembered a story I consumed once that dealt with time travel in a "magick" way. 

Anyway, there are like five versions of this story. Each version is a different path through the timeline. 

The first started out in the "original" timeline sorta, but a character intervenes from the future. 

The second time through the results of the intervention change the intervention, and we see another possibility of a way through.

And so on. 

This kept up a couple of times, but each time was different enough and new enough and interesting enough and well executed enough that it was enthralling.

Can't remember the series but if I do I will post it.


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## soulless (Aug 29, 2012)

Zero Angel said:


> I just remembered a story I consumed once that dealt with time travel in a "magick" way.
> 
> Anyway, there are like five versions of this story. Each version is a different path through the timeline.
> 
> ...



I like the sound of this, hope you remember it.


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## JCFarnham (Aug 29, 2012)

As for the causality questions, may I suggest it might help you to plot backwards, similar in a way to how one might plot a mystery. 

Knowing where you have to go, or what you have to get out of a complex plot is useful. In your case especially, you need to master the art of foreshadowing to the extreme. A plotting backwards (_finding your end point, then figuring out what needs to happen to get there_) has helped me a lot in my foreshadowing efforts. 

Something else you could do, is split the threads of your plot. Take a linear approach to one subplot, and the other, and other, and so on, then weave them together into your causal mess? I'm currently plotting this way, admittedly its not a time travel story, but it's helping to keep separate elements, well, separate. 

You could do what a certain director does and write in chronological, then purposefully cut and paste depending on the view points?

If you're a visual person I strongly suggest you map this out. Big sheet of paper, different colours to represent different view point threads... That's how I would do it. If you don't currently outline, you need to for this kind of project. Time travel is fun. but remember to plot in a way that everything seems plausible. There is still probably only one version of history, it just so happens that your character are interacting with it out of order.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Sep 1, 2012)

So, it occurs to me that I may be focusing too much on the heroes time travelling and not enough on the villains.

So, new question: Is there anything I really shouldn't let the villains be able to get away with when it comes to traveling through time?


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