If you could go back or forward in time, when and where would you go? For me, it would be the sixteenth century, Scotland, the era of Mary Queen of Scots. I chose that era for two of my books: “Queen Mary’s Daughter” (Clean Reads: 2018) and “King Henry’s Choice” (Clean Reads: 2019). Both books involve traveling through time from the present day into the past. It was fun, but it was also complicated. There are a lot of writers venturing into the realm of time travel – some are successful in keeping the times believable, but many are not. How does a writer manage the multiple changes in time and the events in the past that alter the present?

I discovered the trick is not to allow the story to drag on into multiple books. There’s enough to keep track of when managing one book. Even in the second book, “King Henry’s Choice,” it was difficult to keep the time zones clear, precise, and accurate to my storyline. I stopped there. There was no point in confusing the readers even more, especially since I was already becoming confused.

Writers of time travel epics need to maintain flow charts of what happens when and where, at least two: one for the past and one for the present. Maintain consistency in your characters and in the various time changes and locations. Consistency is always the key – lose that and you lose your readers. Another important tool is to identify the time and place for each change. It helps the reader stay focussed on the era in which the events occur. The last thing a writer wants to do is confuse the reader. Once confused, you’ve lost them.

How the characters jump through time is also important. Is there a wormhole? Is it a specific location? Or does it just happen (which is never a good idea because it’s not believable)? It could be a hidden doorway, a staircase, a picture, a book – the possibilities are endless. One of the jumps in “Queen Mary’s Daughter” was through a hidden passage with stairs leading upwards, but to what?

“They reached the top of the stairs, or so it seemed. There was nothing else, nowhere to go, just a final step. “What now?” Mary Elizabeth gasped.

“An explosion from below erased any answer and she felt herself hurtling through space. She landed with a heavy thud. The ground was wet and mushy and she was soaked, already shivering uncontrollably. She pushed herself into a sitting position and tried to wipe the cold slush off her hands. Looking around, she tried to take in her surroundings. It was dark and all she could see were shadows. There was nothing familiar about it.”

And, with that simple transition, the main character finds herself, once again back in the sixteenth century. As her grandmother said:

“It’s all about time relativity,” Gran said. She resumed her seat at the desk and waved, quite regally, though Mary Elizabeth had never noted that part of Gran before. Mrs. D and Mary Elizabeth took their cue and sat on either end of the couch.

“Now.” She studied both ladies, one then the other, assessing their purpose at a glance. “What’s the meaning of this jump in time?”

Even your characters can challenge, amongst themselves, this paradox of time travel. You can’t have characters going back in time, killing off the characters’ ancestors, and then expect the characters to be alive in either the present or the past.

In the first of the “Back to the Future” movies (1985), Marty meets his parents in high school in the past, only there’s no indication that they will ever connect and marry. Marty has to bring them together, somehow, before he totally fades from the picture in the future. A very complex paradox.

Paradoxes aside, it’s important to focus on your plot's meaning and direction. What is the purpose of your character jumping through time? Is it a power grab scenario? Or is it a means to fix historical mistakes or tragedies to create a better world? Your time travel plot needs a purpose, a reason to exist, otherwise, what’s the point in time traveling at all? Don’t get carried away by the recreation of past, present, and future scenarios. You’re bending reality, but you don’t want to sever the connection. Writing about time traveling is fun, because you can flip everything and every time upside down. You make your readers question their sense of place, their understanding of the world around them, and the reality of what they thought they knew.

And, like everything else you write, do the research. If you’re taking your characters back in time, you need to have your facts straight. If you’re taking them forward in time, the sky’s the limit to what you can write about. Make sure your language suits whatever era you jump the characters into. Using words like ‘dude’ and ‘hey, man’ doesn’t fit in the sixteenth century. You might be messing with the timeline, but you want to make what you write believable. The main thing to remember with time travel stories is that they’re complicated to both write and read. Keep your traveling points lucid and tight; make your characters realistic; and minimize the paradoxes. You can only blame so much on the unreliability of the time-traveling wormhole.