Writing Prompt: Time Travel Rules
8
April 2009
What is time? If you were to write a story that involved time travel – what rules would you incorporate into it?
Some examples I can think of on time rules:
The Grandfather Paradox: deals with the consequences of what if a man goes back in time and kills his own grandfather.
Can Not Occupy Same Space: This is a rule from the Jean Claude Van-Damn movie Time Cop in which you can’t occupy the same space, which means that you can not touch your past self or really bad things happen.
Seven Days: From the 1998 show of the same name staring Jonathan LaPaglia, in which the lead character can only travel backward in time a set distance – seven days.
Lifetime Travel: This one is from one of my favorite Scott Bakula stories, Quantim Leap, in which the lead character can only travel in time within his own lifetime.
Cannot Alter Set Events: a rule that specifies that certain things must happen, a character might be able to travel back and witness an event in history, but they can not stop that event from happening. Any effort to change history merely shifts things a little and, one way or another, the event still happens.
So, what rules might you come up with for your own time travel rules?
