Writing

The Worst Pitfall of Time Travel

May 19, 2021

Time travel is a trope commonly used to raise the stakes or make a book/game/film more interesting. Sometimes, it works — look at all the beloved time travel movies that we still remember today, even if we haven’t seen them.

But time travel is a fiddly thing (also often emphasized by said books/films themselves). If it isn’t done right, it doesn’t work. It’s not satisfying and it can cause a story to be buried under the masses of already forgotten failures.

I’m not talking about the varying complexities of time travel, or how overused it might feel.

Today, I’m arguing that the worst thing time travel can do to a story is fail the characters.

1. Character Arcs

I think most of us are familiar with the concept and importance of character arcs. A character goes through multiple things in the story that change them and allow them to grow, either in a positive or negative (but generally positive) way. Character arcs track the internal journey of the character and show how the plot affects them. In short, it’s development. Character arcs mirror how people change in real life.

Character arcs are important because they are arguably the core of almost any story. The protagonist believes something wrong about themself or the world, they go on an external and/or internal journey, and in the process they learn the truth. Most of the time, a protagonist will come out as a better person than they were at the start of the story.

2. Time Travel

This is where we’re coming back to time travel. Many time travel plots follow something along the lines of “someone messes up (accidentally or deliberately, depending on the character) and the only way to fix it is to go back in time and undo the mistake”. The main character(s) goes on a journey back in time, and, after some ups and downs in the plot, fixes the mistake and returns to present day. The villain, if included in the story, is defeated, and everything goes back to normal.

Occasionally, there are losses. Maybe a side character gets trapped or lost in time. Maybe there are even a couple of deaths. Either way, a time travel story might account for casualties to make it seem like a sacrifice was made.

3. Reset Button

Here is where the problem with time travel comes in. Characters making sacrifices during the time travel plot is okay. What isn’t okay is pushing the reset button — i.e. when the main characters fix the problem, they go back to present day and everyone is alive again. This makes the reader feel like they’ve been cheated. Sure, it’s nice to have those characters back, but we’ve already seen them die. It makes it feel like the losses didn’t actually mean anything.

But this is linked to something worse. Okay, so maybe our main cast is physically intact. But how are they doing in their internal journey?

Because here’s what I’m getting at. The worst thing the time travel plot can do is reset character arcs.

This can happen if it comes to a point where all but one of the main characters have to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. When the remaining character returns to present day, having prevented the terrible future from happening, everything resets and all the dead characters are alive again in present day — usually unaware of the past sequence of events.

We’ve gone on a journey with these characters and watched them grow with each challenge. But if we return to present day and everyone but the main character has forgotten what happened, that’s not good. We went through character arcs, but they did not stick. It’s like watching an episode from a show where the characters learn a lesson, but forget all about it in the next one. Essentially, nothing has really happened to the characters because they are the same.

Even if the characters do the thing where they hop back into time and bring back a past version of a dead character into present day, it’s not the same. This character is back at square one and they are not the same as the character we lost.

4. Conclusion

Character arcs and sacrifices that stay are key. They tell us that the time travel plot has affected the characters, both internally and externally. Victory has been fought for and won, but there are also consequences that the characters now have to deal with. Nevertheless, they’ve grown from the adventure and are ready to take the next step, if any.

This, to me, is far more interesting than the reset button.

And that’s the worst danger that comes with time travel: erasing the internal and/or external journeys of the characters.