Nothing like Back to the Future Day to think about time travel in writing. If you read a lot of magazines’ “what not to write,” Time Travel stories are usually pretty high on the list. Why?
It’s been done
It’s a cliche
The story could never end
People have trouble wrapping their brains around it
People get tired of trying to wrap their brains around it
It works better cinematically…
(The list goes on) That last one is really what gets me. As a writer who is still iffy about placing the one time travel tale I wrote in my short story collection, this is a fun topic. haha
I mean time travel tales are sometimes like a slap in the face. I want nothing to do with the new Star Trek movies, because they go back and basically crap on the timeline from the previous ones. I’m not okay with that. A lot of people aren’t. Sometimes time travel stories seem like one big fucking cop out. A great way to keep a series going and going and going until it’s been milked so much, all that’s left are dry fucking bones.
Look at the terminator movies. Most of us only love 1 and 2. We disregard the rest. Why?
Well, I’m a picky bitch. haha I don’t know about everyone else, but when you’re dealing with altering time and space it has to be done with such precision, and good enough placement that it fits and isn’t another way to end it like “it was all just a dream.” haha
I think that’s why we all love the Back to the future trilogy. If you go back and watch 2 and 3, they’re not the greatest movies, but the story has great characters we all love and the humor needed to carry such an annoying concept.
Humor is the most difficult thing to write. Anyone can dig deep and pour their pain on a page, but to find the laughter and make it carry through to a reader, or an audience of any kind takes more skill than I’ll probably ever have. heehee
Makes me want to work on a full blown comedy now, just to see if can. But that’ll have to wait for the future. And since time travel hasn’t been mastered (that I know of) I’ll have to keep working and see where this goes on the simple single timeline I’ve been given.
I’m tempted to post my time travel story up here if you guys are interested. So, if you want to test it out and tear me apart for my time travel story let me know 🙂
Yeah post it.