I’m doing an evening course in writing YA fiction. Last week we had to write an opening for a crime story. I’ve never written crime and struggled until I decided it theme it to something I like so I came up with the idea of a time travel crime story. In my opening, the main character, Hazel, about 16 or 17, is in court being charged with breaking a time travel law. I started with it being for ‘personal gain’ but my writing group at work said that might be hard to define so suggested ‘irresponsible behaviour’ instead. Apparently she’s only the second person to be charged with this since the first person was banned from having a time machine and in that time, no one could be without a time machine so no one dared break this law again, until Hazel. She then starts to explain her defence. The story goes back to her family and it’s explained that she has a 6 year old brother, Jake, who she is very protective of. We find out that her mother started to neglect Jake as she was suffering from time travel addiction. I ran out of words for the course so I stopped here, but got generally good feedback and am keen on the idea so would like to continue. I’d like to ask two questions here: 1. Does it sound like a reasonable idea? 2. How do I come up with ideas about how to continue it? I know I’m not supposed to ask for ideas for the plot itself, but I do have trouble with inspiration at times. I need to figure out exactly what happened. It can’t be that Jake died as surely many people in that world have experienced death without breaking the laws. So it has to be something more and I want it to end in her being acquitted. I also want it to involve the mum’s addiction. But I’m not sure how to do it. Can anyone suggest how I might start to work through these issues and come up with a story that would work? I struggle with this a lot, I have an idea but have no idea how to continue it. Thanks!
Okay so 1) yes, this sounds awesome! 2) Coming up with ideas needs a framework first. Where is this set, what are the rules in this new society that uses time travel as such a common commodity that one can be addicted to it? Who was the first person to break this law and what for, what did they do? How come the mother is addicted, where is she going all the time? Are there any other laws surrounding time travel? The best place to start with is the mother, make her the focal point of the story. Where is she going all the time and what are the implications? Is she trying to bring someone back or is she trying to disturb the past to alter the future? Is she part of a group for example, a terrorist organisation or some kind of cult? Once you have that established, storyboard out each chapter by scene, for example; Chapter 2 Hazel's Defence Part 1 - The Police talk to Jake - Hazel's Defence Part 2 - Statement for the Prosecution - The Police talk to Hazel in her cell What does each scene add in terms of information? I use this question for all my chapters and it helps me to visualise the conversations, the information being awarded to the reader if they're paying attention to the small details. Build up each chapter until you're certain you know what features and what information you want to convey, then write it, read it and see if you like it. My chapters traditionally take around three re-writes to get just right, but a re-write can sometimes only be a few words that are out of place. One suggestion I want to make however, is making Hazel a main character but not THE main character. You can go in all kinds of interesting directions with the time travel but I would lean on the terrorist organisation side of things, wherein the main character is a counter-terrorist agent and his team, investigating time travel incidents and making sure no one is abusing this new technology. Alternatively you could make Hazel the main character in a coming of age drama, detailing her experience in court and through a short prison term, the rehabilitation of her mother and the relationship between her and her brother. It's a really cool backdrop and one that needs exploring, certainly, but one that can in all kinds of interesting directions. Hope this helps, happy writing friend!
Thanks very much for your feeeback and advice! It’s really useful. Although I realise I forgot to mention a crucial fact, that I was intending this to be a (longish) short story rather than a novel with chapters. I’m not sure I have the imagination to sustain it over a whole book....
Have you read much time travel fiction? I love your idea, but for readers of this sort of fiction, commonality of time travel in a story immediately runs up against chaos. The fix is to have it occur rarely, or as Julian May did, fix the time travel destination to so far in the past (millions of years) that nothing anyone did could have an effect on the future (or so they thought). So maybe re-think the concept that "everyone needed a time machine". Think through for a minute what the ramifications would be of everyone's car, for instance, having a "take me to my destination in time" function. Daniel Keys Moran has a short story, originally written as a pilot for a TV series, called "All Possible Worlds" wherein a group of "knights" has the ability to time travel. They try to "fix" things in the past, though they realize that every time they do, they make something worse, because the world they live in at any given moment is the best of all possible worlds. A bit paradoxical, but something to think about.
Yeah time travel fiction is one of my favourite things to read. I did know it would be difficult to come up with rules and explain everything. Someone suggested maybe people could time travel but they’d be invisible so couldn’t interfere too much. But then I need Hazel to be able to interfere to be charged with the crime.... I plan to write possibly a novel about a girl who has OCD and her compulsion is to time travel. In that it will be the case that very few people have the ability to do so- she has it like a superpower but it’s quite rare. But in this story I kind of need it to be widely available. Thanks for the tips though, and I’ll keep pondering it.
I have a couple of unsuccessful novels under my belt that deal with time travel. It's impossible. It will always be impossible. Time does not have a direction or flow. It's change and a rate of change. You can't go back in time but it's not impossible to re-create a previous circumstance... it's just really hard. As for your story, you've written yourself into a corner. The trick is to plan for a way out before you get in. Now, plan a way out, and start your story again. That would be my best suggestion.
Have you read "The Forest of Time and Other Stories" by Michael Flynn? It's a collection of short stories, and The Forest of Time is one of the best time travel stories I've ever read. Also, check out "The Continuing Time and Other Stories" by Daniel Keys Moran. As you might suspect, it's another short story collection. It contains the aforementioned "All Possible Worlds".
The piece I'm writing right now involves time travel. Of course, it involves paradoxes. I have the MCs wrestle with trying to unwind the paradoxes, and realize they can't. I felt like it sort of "armored" the story against readers complaining about the situation.
No but sounds great, I’ll check it out. Where do I get them from? I checked Amazon but couldn’t find them. Cool! Sounds really fun. What do you mean by plan a way out? I’m new to this so please excuse my inexperience. Also, how much does it need to be completely believable? I read that if it’s science fiction it does but time travel can also be fantasy and there you can take more liberties? I’m watching Legends of Tomorrow on TV at the moment and although their time travel features science fiction, as they talk about warp drives etc, they also travel to all kinds of times often in their own lifetimes, and it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of it (although people may disagree with me!). I guess that’s more fantasy as there are superheroes etc. Obviously I’d not want people to read my story and think ‘that’s ridiculous, it makes no sense’ and it’s important to think through some rules for the world, but if it’s a short, fantasy, story, then will people be willing to suspend their disbelief at all?
In my case, I wrote the prologue and intro chapter, then wrote the epilogue. So I know what happens, and just have to fill in the middle. Having high tech stuff doesn't make a story science fiction. Star Trek and Star Wars are both fantasy, for instance.
Here's Moran's work: https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Continuing-Time-Other-Stories-ebook/dp/B07MD64368/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1XN88K484XM2I&keywords=daniel+keys+moran&qid=1550174286&s=gateway&sprefix=daniel+key%2Caps%2C199&sr=8-1 And here's Flynn's: https://www.amazon.com/Forest-Time-Other-Stories-ebook/dp/B004AYDL3A/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=the+forest+of+time&qid=1550174368&s=digital-text&sr=1-2
It's quite a common story telling device to set up an impossible situation and then present a simple solution. Such as "The girl was tied to the railroad track and the train was rushing ever closer. It seemed this was the end of her, no escape, no pardon, no reprieve ... but fortunately, she wasn't tied to the same track."
The key to science fiction mystery is to make sure the reader understands the rules of the technology, particularly as regards the solution, without being so obvious about it that there's no surprise at the climax. I recommend "Asimov's Mysteries" as a short story collection illustrating how this operates. He wrote these when challenged by the assertion by other writers that science fiction mystery is an absurd concept because the sleuth can always pull the solution out of thin air. There are enough time travel paradigms in fiction that you really do have to clarify what rules apply. Is the grandfather paradox possible in your model? Does changing the past alter your timeline, or does it merely create an alternate timeline coexisting with it the meta-universe? If the former, is there a propagation time before you erase or reset your own present, and how does that manifest? How do temporal paradoxes resolve?
Yeah this is what I need to get better at since I’m not great with endings and also tend to feel bad if I don’t start writing immediately so often I don’t know the ending in advance and that can lead to problems at times. Thanks! Trouble is I’m in the UK and they don’t appear to be on the UK version I’ll keep looking. Interesting, thanks! Very useful thanks. There’s a lot to think about. I think I’ll put this story on the back burner for now but I would like to return to it.
