Whew. Abilities like these can and WILL break your story if you let them—which is why it’s so important to set rules

So let’s talk about time manipulation in fiction! https://twitter.com/screamingintot9/status/1247044742308941824

Rules are what most magic systems + superpowers rely on. If you say a character can time/dimension travel without rules, there is nothing stopping them from going back in time and fixing every conflict in the plot. And that’s NO GOOD, because stories NEED conflict

Rules give us space to work by A) not allowing characters to break the story, but also B) creating conflict—and conflict is GREAT for stories. Rules often beg the question, “how will this character succeed when their abilities are limited?”

If you want a character to time/dimension travel, you need to consider HOW (do they require an energy source? A specific item? A certain spell memorized?) and if there are consequences (Does travel make them ill? Do they lose their memory of the timeline they left?)

All of these will keep a character from traveling willy-nilly. If time traveling makes you sick for a week every time you do it, you’re less likely to zip through the timestream to fix every little inconvenience

But—and this is my personal favorite way—you can also implement rules using characters themselves. For example, if the time traveller is too scared to use their abilities OR too stubborn + actively refuses. It can work because it causes conflict!

There’s a big difference between “my friend can time travel and I need to Save the World” and “my ex-boyfriend can time travel but he’s still not over the breakup—but I need to Save the World”. One of these has conflict and it’s more exciting because of it

Anyway, I would suggest implementing rules not only with time travel abilities, but with any supernatural abilities. It’s more exciting to see characters use creativity to work with their limitations than being so powerful that they succeed effortlessly all the time

And that’s all I have to say on that! I could talk for a lot longer but this thread is beefy enough already I had fun with this and I might do more threads like this in the future! I’ve been writing spec-fic my whole life and can help with a thing or two