So much of our fiction involves time travel. The Time Machine. The Time Traveler’s Wife. Doctor Who. We’re drawn to the possibilities that traveling through time present: an opportunity to relive the past—or to change it.
It’s much easier to consider a linear narrative for a story. Point A reaches the climax of Point B through a clearly defined sequence of events. And while that can serve a story perfectly well in many cases, there are times when distorting the linearity of time can offer something unexpected to your story. What if your character goes back in time and accidentally kills his own grandfather?
Still, time travel feels like a gimmick, the trick of science fiction and fantasy. After all, good literary fiction doesn’t waste its time on unrealistic situations or fantastical ideas, because that might be interesting. Worst of all, when executed poorly, it leaves the reader feeling as if they’ve just been strained through the very edge of credulity.
Here’s your assignment: write a time-travel story. Or incorporate time travel into a story you are currently working on. If you’re balking at the very idea, think about it a little more broadly. Maybe a flashback would offer a better perspective on your main character’s motives. An imagined future scene—or if we’re talking fiction, anyway, an actual scene from your universe’s future—might move your story into an unpredictable direction, one that you never could have considered without venturing into the unknown.
And maybe you’ll write the next Back to the Future.
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