What do you love/hate most about time travel???

When it works:

1.What history lover hasn't wanted to hop into a time machine? :D

2.The characters find that people of the past can be both surprisingly similar and different

3. We get to adjust to the past, the "archaic" language, the sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes beautiful surroundings and clothing, along with the heroes.

When it doesn't work:

1.The characters reveal to the first friend they make in the past that yes, they are from the future! And are easily believed to boot!

2.When they utilize blatantly "modern" dialogue or mannerisms, and scarcely do more than raise an eyebrow.

3. The entire venture into the past seems to be a fun fairytale lark, as the characters manage to fit in with little effort, and are taken under the wing of famous individuals.

I hope some of this helped!

I like it when there are major negatives to the time travel, as there really are to living in the past (The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is a great book for this!) I mean, would any woman really want to live in a time or place where women are property? Or when a toothache means pulling the tooth out with pliers?

I hate it when characters can't change time for no particular reason (Audrey Niffenegger, looking at you!)

Ooooo I'm going to bump this one up. I'm doing a time-travel and have been trying to go with: How would I (or any normal person) feel, what would my reactions be--leaving behind (or ahead, as the case may be) my friends, fam, pets, music collection--I mean really, that would suck!

One thing I hate about tt is the hero(ine) going, "Oh I've traveled back in time--coolness."

Also, it would take some time (pardon the pun) to convince someone that they did, in fact, go back in time, unless they deliberately set about doing so...usually it's not an intended thing--but s/he accepts it far too easily for my liking. I wouldn't! Something big has got to happen to convince your normal everyday hero(ine)--okay in my case it's the MFC--that yes, this ain't Kansas anymore, Toto.

And the main motivation for said character I believe would be to find out what happened and unhappen it... to get back home.

After reading some tts in readiness, I just had to put some thoughts here.

That is a fantastic book! I love the way how she can't understand the middle English despite having studied it, and the clever way the author depicts her gradually coming to undertand what they are saying. Fantastic! Especially to someone studying middle English!

As for time travel, well, it would neither put me off nor grab me sufficiently on its own as a concept. If it was set in my pet period, medieval times, I would give it a good look and if they'd made any really irritating errors with authenticity that would put me off for sure. Other than that, it would have to have an interesting plot hook and characters that you want to spend time with, like any other book. And I agree with other people about having the character react realistically not like a plastic person. But there are some reasons people might be pleased to find themselves in another world, like if they are big time not happy in this one, so I don't think it's always required for the person to always be desperately trying to get home. In fact, that is onething I find irritating in this genre, as it's overdone. The person can't get home and has to go on a quest with that as the goal. Wizard of Oz, anyone? So, either have it as not a problem to switch back and forth, or that they are happy to go there.

Another take on it which is less often done is the bringing historical people to modern times. Done well, that can be fun. Done badly, it can be fun too! Depending on whether you rate Bill and Ted's excellent adventure as done well or not, I found it fun...

Time is funny stuff. Playing with it can be risky. You have to decide and then treat consistently, the question of paradoxes. If you ignore the question, that can be irritating too, as the reader is aware of it and is let down if it is not addressed or is treated inconsistently. I mean, one thing might not change the future and another thing might anyway, so it's that everything has to or nothing has to, just that if something that ought to, like killing the king before he is crowned or something, does nothing to change the timeline, the readers will be wondering why it doesn't. There may be a reason, like his reign was not that important and his brother did just as good a job, but you'd have to let that be known somehow.

I think it's possible that someone who found themselves in a time warp unknowingly, like they walk through a door and it's 1647 or whatever, might go along with it for a bit, despite being a bit freaked out, because it would be so odd and unexpected. They might think it was a historical re-enactment or a film set, and try to pretend to fit in , or it might even feel a bit like a dream, especially if there was some sort of jolt as they travelled, they might assume they'd hit their head and were hallucinating or dreaming. But then as time went on and it became clear to them that it was real, or at least gave every appearance of being as real as their own time, then they would freak out! A sort of delayed reaction. I find that plausible. As for the total acceptance, probably just if they had really hated where they were and hoped that this alternate reality was there to stay. Or if they were mad or something of course.

I think that's more than enough now!

Yes the pic is a stavechurch, in case anyone wondered!

The worst part about time travel is getting something to time travel in. Time travel machines are cliché, so we can lose hours of sleep finding a way to travel thousands of years back without them. I chose a prophetic tablet. Has anyone thought up any really creative, weird, or exotic methods of time travel?

"The ability to speak does not make you intelligent." - Qui-Gon Jinn, the Phantom Menace

I'm trying to bypass sort of both... my characters have something that I refer to vaguely as "the gate" (which I have no doubt will be changed later, but is good enough to be getting on with). There isn't really a capsule involved, but there is a lab where a full-time tech is in charge of finding lock coordinates. I have no idea how this works or what it means, so I just try to have the characters talk about it with enough confidence that it looks like they know.

I can't stand it when characters play the "I'm from the future" card, especially if it leads to "so you should listen to me." Bad things ought to happen, and they so seldom do.

2006: Minus Ten (FAIL)
2007: Shinyarat (WIN)
2008: The Witch's Daughter (WIN)
2009: As-yet-untitled soon-to-be win!

I have a scrap of manuscript (a piece of the Lindisfarne gospel, to be specific) which, if touched, has the ability to transport a person from the place where the manuscript currently is, to the place where it was made. But I haven't really gone about explaining why or how this works -- it's just a device to move people back and forth through time.

I love reading about time travel but I've discovered that writing it is a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.

2009 -- Lindisfarne (revisited)
2008 -- Lindisfarne (in progress)
2007 -- Skipped NaNo. Big mistake.
2006 -- Sunrise Hope (coming out 2011)
2005 -- Stones of Ashreel (in limbo)
2004 -- Prone to Wander (in limbo)
2003 -- Deborah & Barak (in stores)

Something that turns me off in novels that feature time travel is when the time-travelling heroine throws temper tantrums because the men are racist, sexist, classist, or some other kind of -ist. It's the past; they didn't know any better.

I liked the way Star Trek handled a time travel one time.
Seems a guy went back 600 years, said he was a time traveller. He got killed by a guy (lets call him Al) from the past so he could steal his machine and then went 400 years ahead to the Enterprise. They were amazed at the machine from 200 years in their future, so thought Al was genuine. Al stole technology to sell when he got back to his own time.

I don't like using present day morals and values for people from past or future.
They didn't all think "Make Love not war".
I also hate time machines that can take you within a week of when you are aiming for ... or even within minutes for "Back to the Future". Time travel is not that exacting

I generally dislike time travel as a plot device - I feel it cheapens the struggles and triumphs of the characters if means exist to undo them all. I only think a few things do them well.

My MC is, like Billy Pilgrim or Sam Beckett, being sent from place to place randomly, and a running theme in the story is how he never figures any of it out - he doesn't even know what sort of time travel (stable time loop, multiple timelines, what have you) it is. But:

1. If I were concenred about anything beyond word count, I would flesh out my character coming to terms with the different values of the time periods to which he goes - half the time he doesn't speak the language so it doesn't matter anyways. But he ends up in 1857 Pennsylvania and has to deal with race (as even the abolitionists thought black people were inferior) and religious (he is an atheist) issues carefully, for example.

2. He never tells anyone that he is a time traveler, because even those who have any understanding of the concept wouldn't believe him. he has to be careful figuring out what time period/place he ended up in this time.

3. He never ends up influencing the course of history - he is usually surrounded not by the movers and shakers of history but the average people. And he doesn't introduce any new technology because a) he is not sure how that will change things, and b) he doesn't have a lot that he can do based on the infrastructure of the time - what are the Incans going to do with a 21st century cellular biologist's knowledge?

NaNo 2006: Bloodlust
NaNo 2007: The Twilight of the Maqara
NaNo 2008: My War
NaNo 2009: Untitled Part 1

I just hate trying to tie up all the loose ends!

I wrote time travel last year, I'm writing it this year, and also for the next three years (a five year long NaNo series :P) and there's always a couple of problems...

1. When characters time travel freely, explaining away the reason they don't just travel back and stop any complications from happening. If a major character dies, why are the other major character's mourning rather than going back and preventing the death?
2. Paradoxes. They appear so easily, just huge gaping holes in the story. Some are really easy to plug up, others not so much... the most common one is the 'if we just went back and averted this, what reason did we have for coming back in the first place?'
There's so many more reasons that I could list but I should really be writing, and now this post looks pretty empty and crappy...

This is why I've decided to scrap the time travel element at the end of next years novel.

NaNo 2008: You Broke Christmas (50,002).
NaNo 2009: Shalloween.
NaNo 2010: Where's Wally?
NaNo 2011: What The Devil Is Happening?
NaNo 2012: Oops.

'Any last words, you giant moron?'

I dislike it when everything is like the times now, except the clothing is different--as in, the attitudes and what was considered correct/ impolite, ect. are exactly the same.
On the other hand, it's great because I love historical fiction, and especially someone else's opinion on the past.

...the fact that if you travelled back in time by so much as a second, you would be many thousands of miles from earth, floating in space. Earth moves around the Sun, the Sun moves around the Milky Way, the Milky Way... you get the idea. Doc Brown's DeLorean and Doc Who's Police Box always appearing conveniently on solid ground doesn't work for me.

Time-travelling spacecraft could work. And Sam Beckett making Quantum Leaps into other people's lives works (within the logic of the show).

Other niggles: travelling into the past and being able to follow people's accents or languages perfectly. Hm...

(On the up-side, I love the fact that this thread crosses the boundary of history and SF so nicely!)

I am also known as 'Twisted Sister'. If you're lucky, you'll find out why. If you're unlucky, you'll find out why.