Wrote myself into a terrible corner, what now?

First, I just want to say hello to everyone still here from a couple years ago. Love this community and I'm very glad to be back after some tough times.

I have been working on my sci-fi, alternate history novel for the better part of the last two years. It's around the 84000 word count right now.

However, there's a major problem going on with the latter half of the story. I might have to scrap the whole thing if I can't find out how to write myself out of this hole, because I really should have thought about it before, since it's rooted in the core premise of the entire story:

The protagonist discovered a way to alter the past. It happens accidentally the first time, but then he starts using it to change more and more things. For some reason (explained in the novel), only he can retain his memories before the world changes. (this is found to be false later on, as the antagonist can too).

The climax of the story is supposed to be him, trying to save the new reality he has created, faced with the antagonist who wants to undo the changes because they pratically ruined his life and took everything from him (as well as basically writing millions of people out of existence).

I wrote one ending where the protagonist wins, but him winning means he basically becomes the villain of the story, sacrificing millions of people that existed previously to preserve this new, vastly different world, where he made friends and found a love interest. The main problem here is that this basically makes him a selfish prick and kind of the bad guy.

The alternative ending is the one where the villain manages to return everything to the way it was before. The problem here is that many characters that came into being due to the changes are ultimately written out of existence, including the MC's love interest. It's a bleak ending for him. I wrote a version where he changes his mind and allows this to happen, but I don't really like it this way either.

Is my story dead before I even finish it? I showed the endings to 3 beta readers I trust and they said the conclusion (no matter which one) left a bitter taste and they kind of hated it.

What now?

 

I'll be honest, I quite like the sound of a book with no completely happy ending, just because it sounds fresh and new, but I can see where others might not like it.

My advice? Get more opinions on your ending. Three is quite a small survey pool, and maybe the story just isn't for them but could be targeted to someone else. On the other hand, maybe you can write another ending where both equally wins or loses. I don't think a story truly ever dies. I think it just sits in your head until you get it out right.

 

When I was in the service, we used to say there were three ways to do anything: the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way. You have posited a binary choice (and, by the way, it may be clear in the book but I fail to see why the guy who wants to un-vaporize millions of people is a villain). Is there a third way?

Consider the movie The Time Machine, which starred Rod Taylor, from back in the 1950s or 1960s. The protagonist (Taylor) went to the future and found that the people living on the surface were basically just food for the Morlocks who lived underground. He managed to initiate an apparently successful rebellion but, in making good his escape, he was separated from the woman he had met then and with whom he had fallen in love.

He had wanted to bring her back to his time but, at the crucial moment, they were separated by an impenetrable stone gate. Did he give up? No -- he went back to his own time, dragged the machine to the opposite side of where the gate would be, and (presumably) went back into the future to reunite with his love interest. Thus, his choice was not a binary "Do I stay or do I go back?" choice. He found a third way.

You should also watch the movie Time Cop, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.

 

The catch here is that if you change the world back to what it was like before, you are "un-vaporizing" millions who were written out of existence, but destroying and erasing the world, and people, that came with the change. That's why the choice is hard. I'm really proud that it's kind of a strong punch but I don't know how to deliver it.

By the way, I'm gonna watch those movies and get back here with an opinion and hopefully an idea what to do next.

Interesting. Which of the two endings I presented would you consider ideal, then?

 

Oh no, I think neither of them is ideal. That's what I like about them, that neither of them is ideal. I guess if I had to choose one, I'd choose the one where the villain brings everything back to normal because it was never the protagonist's right to change it in the first place.

 

I think personally, if I was just a reader I would hate that ending.

It's just like the "it's just a dream" trope, where the ending negates everything that happened during the story and kind of makes you feel cheated, don't you think?

 

Not if the villain kills the protagonist and/or erases them from existence because they have too much power and clearly no regard for the natural order of things. Then I would be quite happy.

It's your story. You can have the protagonist win. You can have the protagonist lose. You can have the universe create two alternate dimensions and the protagonist lives in the world without his love interest and the antagonist live in the world that the protagonist created via time traveling just to have them both unhappy. You're the creator, you just gotta think of an ending you're satisfied with.

 

You realize that if antagonist does this then he becomes a hypocrite, since he's basically doing the same thing he's out to get the MC for doing, right?

Damn, this raises the stakes a little bit. I'm even more confused now.

I COULD go this route and have them both win or lose...but I guess that would just be a cop out, right? It would destroy the impact it's supposed to have, I think.

 

And...? I'm sorry, but an antagonist is an antagonist for a reason. Most antagonists are hypocrites or jerks or two-timers or world destroyers, it's kind of what makes them the antagonist.

Again, it's your story, though it kind of sounds like you're unsure of what you want. Maybe try and find out what you want out of the story, not whether something is a 'cop-out' or not a cop-out, before thinking of an ending.

 

Seems like the OP wants and ending that feels good; both the protagonist and antagonist got what they want.

My short, incomplete, not well-thought of suggestion would be to create a branch in the timeline: One where the protagonist preserves what he had created, and the another where nothing was ever changed by the protagonist's actions. Both could coexist peacefully, with only the protagonist and antagonist having the knowledge of the existence of the other timeline.

 

I DO...but I feel like I shouldn't have it. I don't know...I don't think the story calls for it. I'm afraid such an ending would be an easy cop-out that takes out all the punch that the ending is supposed to have.

It's like...would Rogue One be 10% as memorable/good if they all flied off into the sunset in the end?

 

In the struggle between protag and antag to have their own way, opposing energies collide, all plans go haywire and they wake up in a world that neither of them championed and that neither of them has any control over.

 

Yes, I quite understood the binary choice as you explained it. But it's your book, so YOU get to set the rules regarding how time works and what the effects of meddling with it are. Think of a third option -- an option that allows the protagonist to restore the original time line but somehow keep his love interest. As for the people who came into existence after the change ... well, now you're into a philosophical question: If their existence is owed to an artificial meddling with time (or history), if the meddling is un-done -- did those people ever exist at all? I would say the answer is no. (And, of course, you might respond that if the meddling is NOT undone, then the millions of other people who were winked out of existence never existed, because that stream of time and history never existed. And I can't argue against that.)

You can do a lot with the concept of streams of time. Are you familiar at all with Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull? Richard wrote another book (the title of which I can't remember) about the concept of parallel universes, with parallel but alternate streams of history. In that book, he used the device of a magical airplane (he was a pilot) that allowed him and his wife to jump from one stream of time to another. In one of those jumps, he and his wife encountered an old man who had a book, which he (the old man) said contained all the truths in the world. They asked him what he was going to do with it, and his answer was "Burn it." They expressed horror that TRUTH would be lost forever. The old man then explained that if his book of TRUTH was revealed to mankind, those who didn't believe that it was the truth would resist its teachings, which would lead to wars and killings. In the end, Bach and his wife agreed -- burn it.

So perhaps the twist at the end of your book could be that the protagonist didn't destroy the "original" world, he only created (or found a way to enter) an alternate time line. So rather than having to destroy the residents of this alternate timeline in order to restore the original, "all" he has to do is find a way to get back into his original time line (and bring his lady love with him).

What I'm getting at -- as I was in my previous post -- is that you have cast the situation as a binary choice: A, or B. Sit back, relax, close your eyes, and contemplate the possibility that there's a choice C (and maybe a D and an E).

 

In the process of doing what they're doing, they annihilate the entire timeline. Everything's gone.

In the sequel, the protagonist and antagonist have to work together to find a way to bring everything back.

 

Very intriguing. But I wonder if these people who only came into being because of the time alteration are really people, or just potentials? In a sense it's like they're just shifting things to a different timeline, and on the original timeline all the original people are still alive. And on the first alternate timeline, where they never came into being (which is very different from being killed) a whole different set of people exist. All these timelines exist in potentia at least, and shifting from one to another doesn't kill anybody. It just means that possibly you yourself have shifted into a different timeline. I suppose it depends on how you conceive of what it means to shift a timeline.

My suggestion is the same as several others above—I think you need to keep thinking on it, maybe take some time away and work on something else, then get back to it later with fresh ideas. I think maybe you need to see it with new eyes, see possibilities you haven't seen yet by thinking of it as a binary.

 

In a sense what a time travel story really is is "What if I had done things differently at a crucial point?", or extended to "What if people before I even lived had done things differently?" Then there's the plot device of a time machine or spell or something to bring that potential into existence, at least for the MC and maybe the group that are with him. Or a series of ghosts that visit Scrooge or whatever.


But the basis of it all is What would you do differently if you could, or what would you change long before you were born if you could, and what would be the results of that? It's really a sort of philosophical thought experiment. At least that's true if the time machine is used to go back and make a change. I suppose it can be used for other purposes, but that's usually what it is and it sounds like that's what you're using it to explore.

 

That really is the entire philosophical theme behind it all, and yeah, it’s what I try to explore in the story.

I suppose that is the key moral dilemma of the story. If you erase someone completely to the point where they don’t exist, that is the same practical result as killing them, no?

I thought about maybe playing with multiverse and maybe allowing the characters to go from one timeline to the other, essentially splitting things up even more and creating a third line…maybe. I’m thinking about it.

 

Yeah, the thing about that is it sort of reduces the stakes, since nobody dies when you shift from their timeline to a different one, you're just jumping track. It would be like Back to the Future if nobody was actually dying as they disappear from the photos. But still any loved ones who get 'erased' would be gone for the MC and all the main characters (any who 'go along'), so that's still pretty devastating to him. In a very real sense they die to him, because he can no longer interact with them.

 

Yeah. That's why I've been saying in the previous posts that it's an easy way out.

It's frustrating because I've always had trouble raising stakes and creating this kind of tension. But now that I did, I don't know what to do with it.

 

Just make sure it isn't telegraphed too much or you've got the 80's movie thing where the protag has a semi-hot female friend who helps him try to land the super-hot girl, and in the end he realizes what a bitch she really is and that the semi-hot friend was the right one for him all along.

 

Honestly. I think the ending I really want to go with is your number 2.

In this case, MC wins, prevents the world from returning to it's original state, saving the new reality and his new life. But then he has to live with the guilt and heavy conscience of killing the antagonist to do so, as well as the consequences of the act itself.

Is it such a downer ending? Would you be satisfied, based on what I've revealed on the story here?

 

Thank you for the input.

I think I made up my mind. I will go with my gut and ending 2 it is.

Not that I have any ambition of it. But do you guys think a novel like this has any chance of being published?