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In fantasy, there are as many themes as there are storylines. Some are meaty, giving creators ample opportunity to craft meaningful plot lines that persist for a long time. Of all the themes within the genre, none offer a treasure trove’s worth of storytelling like that traveling through time. With how expansive it is for the plot, it’s easier than you think to make mistakes of time travel.
This particular concept features so many ways to tell a wonderful story that it’s easy to overlook something that could very well lead to its ruin. It could be something as simple as forgetting to flesh out at least a rough outline from the beginning to the ending or neglecting to showcase how it impacts the protagonist physically, mentally, and emotionally.
There are some mistakes of time travel that you should strive to avoid at all costs. One of them is using it as a deus ex machina. Having it occur with no planning beforehand runs the risk of alienating your audience since it doesn’t feel like a logical progression of the plot. This is different than featuring it as a plot twist.
The second mistake is to shoehorn it in. That is, you endeavor to make it fit where it shouldn’t fit which throws the entire story off kilter. It is as if you envisioned that introducing time travel here would advance the plot which ultimately results in it making no sense to your audience which only raises their ire and makes them less likely to keep going to see what happens next.
Thirdly, having an endgame plan that doesn’t make much sense is another one of several mistakes of time travel. Your protagonist went through many trials and tribulations in the different era of time he was in and he remained exactly the same he was when he returned to his original time without experiencing any growth at all? Your viewers would wonder what the entire point of all that was if he was essentially the same person he was at the beginning of the story.
This is article number eight in the series covering the various aspects of time travel. For more, take a gander at our blog page!
Time travel is a complex subject to explore since it is full of many moving parts. Its complexity is precisely why it is such a fascinating topic to dive into the story and many creators use it to craft amazing works. That complexity makes it easy to make mistakes and the first one is a whopper, one you should not make at all.
Using it as a deus ex machina is a big no-no! Why is this the case? It’s because it served as an artificial situation to resolve a plot line that came out of nowhere instead of being used to advance the plot in a meaningful and logical way.
Here’s an example. Suppose you have a protagonist named Tim who is being pursued by goblins who were dispatched to take him out by the villain. He’s running through a forest where he trips over a branch and falls, only that fall winds up teleporting him to a different era of time. In this scenario, traveling through time was the mechanism used in which to extricate Tim out of his dilemma instead of serving as something that felt like either a natural progression of the story or a plot twist.
Of the mistakes of time travel, this one is easy to avoid. You just have to work a little more and exercise your creativity to make it happen. Let’s go back to the preceding paragraph and make it better.
In this altered scenario, Tim is still being chased by the goblins. However, adding new details such as showing that it’s nighttime and after a lengthy scene in which they pursue him through the forest, the protagonist comes upon a mysterious mansion. Believing that it offers him the best chance for protection, Tim goes inside and he knows the goblins will go in after him. He scours the mansion, searching for something that will help him turn things around where he comes upon a mysterious object. He hesitantly touches it, only to vanish from that time and appear in a different era.
You see how this one makes for a more engaging story and that time travel worked well as a plot twist, you never felt like it was a contrived solution at all. It worked because you knew something would happen, you just didn’t know what it was.
A story has many ups and downs, it moves faster at certain times, and slower at other times. Every scene builds upon the ones that came before it and the events that transpire within each feels like a natural progression of the plot. Even the plot twists that appear fit perfectly in the overall narrative and enhance it as a whole.
One of the mistakes of time travel is to force it to fit somewhere it shouldn’t be. It could be at a very early stage in the plot where your audience is still familiarizing themselves with the world and the characters or at a late stage where maybe too much has already happened that makes it still relevant to the plot overall.
Shoehorning it in throws everything off balance. That is, the plot’s momentum is upended or comes to a screeching halt, your characters and your audience are discombobulated and must work overtime to regain their grounding. To your viewers, it feels like you put it in just because you wanted to and this is the peril of the 2nd of three mistakes of time travel.
There’s a way to avoid this. All you have to do is find a good spot that satisfies the plot and feels like the opportune time to introduce it to your audience. You could wait until the plot is firmly established and your viewers have spent time getting to know the main characters of the story.
You can even lay the groundwork for it and build up to a crescendo where the protagonist winds up departing the world he knows in order to enter one wholly unknown to him. Here, time travel is used as a device to move the plot forward and it feels organic, not shoehorned in.
The first time the protagonist moves through time is a special occasion but so is the one when he returns to his original time for the last time in the story. While the former deservedly gets its attention — it is a major moment in the plot, after all — the latter should have its moment in the sun. As such, the process leading up to it and afterwards should make sense.
Of the three mistakes of time travel, having the wrong endgame plan can utterly wreak havoc upon everything and leave a sour taste in your audience’s mouth. There’s a reason why you chose to have your protagonist journey through time in the first place and when he finally goes home, his going home should serve as the moment that ties together everything he went through in the other era, as if marking his personal growth.
While having an endgame plan is vital, having the right one matters more. This is where the payoff comes in, the reason why you put the hero character through the trials and tribulations he endured while in the other period of time. Your audience’s invested time in both the story and the protagonist and they want to see that it was worth it.
How do you avoid making this mistake? Ensure that the endgame is a fitting closure to the overall plot. That is, it must fit the narrative that was established and maintained throughout the story and the resolution of the various arcs arrive at a satisfying conclusion for both the characters involved and the audience.
When it comes to the protagonist, take care to close out his arc in a way that illustrates how he’s grown from when the tale began. He shouldn’t have gone through everything the plot threw at him and not come out the exact same way he was right at the start. Experiences shape people as they progress through their lives and the same ought to apply to fictional characters, notably the main character.
Mistakes of time travel are easy to make due to how expansive it is. It’s why it’s a good rule of thumb to do a lot of planning beforehand, during the brainstorming sessions so that you can spot any potential trouble spots and move quickly to deal with them. With this theme, planning is key for success!
One of three mistakes of time travel is having it serve as a deus ex machina. This literary device can make your story fall apart since it literally comes out of nowhere and breaks the established narrative of both the story and the world it takes place in. It runs the risk of alienating your audience’s immersion since they’re likely to be aggrieved by it.
Another mistake is to shoehorn it in a place that it shouldn’t be in. This can throw everything off balance and derail the plot. To avoid it, have it appear in parts of the story that feel like it’s a logical progression. The objective here is to make it feel like it is occurring organically. Your audience can spot the difference between it showing up in the right spot versus it being awkwardly shoved in.
Be careful when working on the endgame of the story. You want to ensure that it reaches a conclusion that is satisfying to both the characters and the audience. Don’t make the mistake of creating one that is nonsensical and isn’t true to the spirit of the story.
By avoiding these mistakes of time travel, you can craft a story that spans different eras of time and keep your audience invested in it from the beginning all the way to the very last scene!
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Sunfire
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