Time Travel: Doesn't Have to be a Paradox

I have one blog tag under the subject 'time travel' so I may be rehashing some things I brought up before, but I'm fairly certain that one mostly covered its introduction in the UnQuadrilogy. Although I want to assume this is going to be going in a different direction.

Let's start off by my admittance that I wouldn't claim to be deep in the logic holes of time travel as a possibility or not. I rather like the concept of a multiverse, a sort of tragic twist to the Quantum Leap idea where you might be able to return to a version of your world CLOSE to the one you leapt from, but it's very likely that the pioneers of 'time travel' will never truly get to dial into their EXACT point of departure ever again. Not enough to create a gaping butterfly effect in what you knew, but it would be a thorn in the paw sort of difference-- if everything seems right, but your brown-eyed sister is blue-eyed instead. It would either be something you could reconcile with or you'd always wonder if the people you'd really left behind were mourning somewhere.

There are so many emotional aspects to the logical that there's hardly a reason to feel constrained by any logic string you build from. It might be interesting to dive into conspiracy or sci-fi forums dedicated to mulling it over or it might be a little too deep-web for some people. If you wanted to wing it a bit, I could see it very well developing somewhere in between the branches of a character tree and the stacking of a timeline format. If that sounds confusing, let's just use the conceptual vocabulary here. Time travel, as a character, is essentially a choose-your-own-adventure build. From each possibility that exists, they would be a set of consequences. Some people find the sheer amount of choices staggering, so to make it simpler to you, I might suggest maybe drawing up 3-4 scenarios to outline. Keep in mind, each of these would branch to represent a direction you want the affected characters to develop in. This would keep it from feeling too rigid, but if you accept that it would be pretty tough for anyone to follow your exact creative logic, then you might have a single path already carved out with a distant second to represent another choice they didn't take (the presence of a doubt for a path they might have chosen).

Coders are probably following me well enough but I'll give you a choice tree picture to better illustrate the verbiage here.

Yes, you've probably seen funny memes just like this on social media, actually...

So, don't be confused by this, which resembles an asset map for a rigged 3D model in animation. You really don't need to read it to understand the concept of an organized planning tree.

The first example is the simplest- a sort of yes/no binary whereas the second contains branches that connect many assets, more along the lines of a choose your own adventure book. I say this because if you were trying for 'all of the endings', you sometimes noticed how you'd arrive at the same path when you diverged at some point before. It might have been mildly frustrating to reread it, but you could at least note that you were finishing the two possible choices in that scenario at least and if you ran into a third time? Time to start over or backtrack, right?

Assume your time travel does not have the luxury of flipping back like turning a page (although the movie Butterfly Effect did illustrate how you might think you were doing so just to make it increasingly worse and alien). Are there certain conditions to be met to proceed? Blue key for the blue door? Okay, that was patronizing since I know everyone can do better plotting than that (although let's never rule that out in a comedic satire). 

In Quantum Leap, Sam had to fulfill the purpose of the body he leapt into until Al could figure out where he was going next. It was largely comedic but there was an emotional element in that each connection with these human beings seemed to disconnect him further from who he actually was and returning to himself whole seemed slimmer. Some of the people he became were pure and even weak in a way he'd never had to deal with as himself (and yes, I do mean women because historically and even now, we're not exactly in a place to overpower men physically) and some were morally bankrupt, which gave him the troubled conscience of whether he should or could help them at all at what cost to himself.

I loved that that show could dive into deep emotional aspects, in a way that female writers might tackle it as well-- a mix of action, comedy and emotion that was neither too masculine or feminine, simply the human struggle. However, rather than fangirl all over it, we'll move on.

Once you use a sort of tree to map the developmental aspect, you can move into a more linear assortment to choose the path, rather than strictly a chronology as you would with a normal timeline. This is more to map the path of your story, but if you want to mark specific departures, then stacking time lines to mark those as 'scenes' would work too. You get the benefit of the linear path with the flexibility of multiple branches.

Again, a purely visual example of the explanation.

Some people can get away with mostly verbal trees but if you know your way around design programs or spreadsheets, you can generate the given examples with little hassle. Table it or even go the style-sheet route-- these aids for complex ideas are for YOU to navigate optimally so they don't really have to make much sense to anyone else if they work for you.

And yes-- NaNoWriMo is around the corner, so I'm doing a bit of this planning myself while working on UnSung. I'd probably be further on it, but I like to use these blog breaks to ruminate on the creative processes I'm using. About 6K shy of 200K! I'm hoping to pop the 200K mark by the end of the week or blast well past it.

For my fellow stat geeks though...

Ha, I'm clearly not very 'professional', jumping around like this, but who can resist sticking it to every fuckstick manager that ever accused me of that?

You'll run into contradictions here and there. You might need a helpful nerd or two to dig through your blind spots. Some might be rigid pains-in-the-ass and hate your logic, but it's still good practice to be thankful for being critical or passionate enough to irritate you and go with your gut if you are ever more certain that's what you want for your story. If you're rejecting EVERY suggestion, you are very likely wasting the point of having anyone look at it at all. Be honest with yourself beforehand-- were you just hoping they'd worship your ideas or were you really open to having it picked apart and tested?

That's a decent chunk to let you mull over. If you feel confident I might be able to help you, feel free to request some of my time. I can't promise I can be immediately available but I am sincere about helping when I can.

To finish, as promised, I'm digging out Dinsch's hair/eye color for today's color-porn fun. This one might be a little challenging because of it's deceptive simplicity. The white I chose is actually a very light shade of green, making it a tad cooler than a cream with its yellow-orange base. Why did I want a green-tinted white? The natural complement of a red is a green! Although true red and green are nauseating (I like forest green/burgundy for the Christmas season), you can definitely get the right complements for them with saturation and hue adjustments. As for the red, rather than roll this one around, I took to the HTML preset of firebrick, a bright red reminiscent of fleshly oxidized blood, which is essentially what unpigmented red eyes get their color from. Ocular fluid being clear would only reflect light to give it a brighter base color.

Like most albinos, they aren't naturally adapted to blend and even in community-minded animals, they are generally regarded in the same vein as the old or sick-- the ones that must sometimes be sacrificed to preserve the stronger ones. Rabbits may choose to join burrows to create a warren but don't exactly prefer to be communal. They're just the hippies of the animal world and are just okay with it. When threatened, it's every rabbit for itself.

However, Bryfolk are neither human nor rabbit and their identity is not solely one of their animal ancestors' instincts anymore than humans are bound to a general mindset. Bryfolk tend to embrace communal living and are very social, libertines with relaxed social interactions though tensed for flight at signs of danger.

Next post: Ashe. He's a human character, one of the last remaining survivors of his tattooed tribe. His history is one of the grittiest and tragic, but I'll go into that a bit more then.

Do you use any animal hybrid themes in your writing? It can be a very niche one. I actually find it laughable that people could watch Shape of Water and think 'bestiality' to be honest. Like anything different from our little niche of hairless monkey is somehow less-than or wildly different. While I'm personally not into the furrier side of the spectrum (I still prefer to hybridize the face and body as more human in order to justify the human lifespan and stabilize the addition of animal characteristics), I wouldn't see something that structurally human and assume that they weren't more like us than animals. The entire point of the movie, communicated through Elisa herself, was that she could relate to 'the asset', being treated as stupid or lesser simply for being mute. It was also clear that, not socialized, he had wild aspects as well, but again, not different from an isolated human.

This was actually reaffirming towards my own logic of humans that might have grown from something other than monkeys. I specifically use rabbits, birds, big cats, and foxes in my series. Since they evolved very specifically into separate humanoid races/identities, going crazy with dog/wolf, reptile, etc. might have needed many, many more books to integrate.

In any case, if you'd like to share your own human-animal combinations (and yes, dragonkin count), feel free to comment below! Totally understand the hesitation to divulge on a current work, but you can nod your head and name your combo at least. Thanks for reading!

The Editing Paradox

So. I sits down to do me some editing and the game changes. I knew UnNamed would be opening a can of worms, but I had no idea that revisiting it to clarify a character's development would be a traffic jam. It's not a huge spoiler to say that I introduced a time travel concept that I only worked out on a skeletal level for the first book. Tonight I had to revisit all of the concepts more fully to continue its promise.

Unfortunately, describing it in any detail would probably just confuse it. It's a much simpler idea rolled out in small doses as the story grows, but it's because of the other storylines and events that it  just doesn't sound as complex as any attempt to summarize it would. I know this means that I will have to reference the first book as well as recomb the 1st part of this book to make sure all facts line up. Of course, book one has the final say; it's published.

Now, I did need to work out the details before moving ahead, to make sure any more mentions in Part II line up; why make more work for later. However, it does mean I have to resist the urge to move backwards. The point of this edit is still lining up part 1 and 2 in its current sequence. I'm making sure that, while it's fresh, I'm aware of what I already have and only adjusting what contradicts as well as any grammar, punctuation and wording immediately obvious. I'm also allowed to add anything that can help with pacing or storytelling. At this stage though, my only rule is not going back. If I do, I might create a paradox in my thinking that forgets the chronology and screws up what the characters know or not.

I still have to draft Part III. Part I and II being cohesive will actually make Part III almost lightning fast. After that, I'm adding a reread of the first book before editing all three parts. Once all three parts are edited? I step away for a few days or a week then do a last edit. Nope, still not done, because I do the epilogue leading into the third book at the end of the first.

Although, I may have to check on whether I can technically call this one an epilogue... In the first book it was, but this one is more like a prologue but at the end of this book. I like to set the stage for the story at the technical end of each one, something that isn't just repeated so it's not a preview and certainly not a preface or foreword, which are author's notes at the beginning and end, nothing to do with the continuing story.

(I looked it up for anyone who wondered. Technically, an epilogue is only defined as a section at the end after the main plots have been tied up; doesn't specify that it HAS to be the same characters to count. The thing is that many old characters have the potential to show up again, so there isn't really a formal ending for anything until the last book is written.)

In any case, the struggle will be worth it. My notes grow but they also tend to get more organized as they come together.  Yes, often the idea of stopping mid-edit is horrifying for some people, but as I've said, I keep one rule at this stage and it's that I can't move backwards. Filling out a concept more fully so I can resume the edit only chopped into my time a couple of hours and it didn't reorganize my understanding and screw up the primary mission. 

One reason for this-- I keep notes of things I might have forgotten I wrote later now that I started over. As I run into them, I cross them out. If I jump around and change things, then I alter facts that I haven't processed yet, making my notes useless. If I get a good idea for later, THAT can go into my notes-- it fits into the forward-thinking rule. Because I still have many edits that will put me back to check on the newer notes, it CAN wait. 

Why create a time travel paradox in my own thinking? Now, in a simpler story, it's fine, but a complex idea becomes complex to read if I start playing Jenga with it. To edit a story like this, I have to start from the beginning and walk through it as the reader would. Every. Time. Anything that halts ME is going to halt the reader. Each time I make the journey, I am aiming to keep it moving. When the edit comes that I am not stopping, publish.

Really, I will love to see what this series becomes. As much as I love my first series for all it taught me about writing, I really feel the lessons are paying off in creating a very different story. I love when a new character stands in the horizon, holding a torch to pass for the sake of storytelling. I didn't want a story where the main character carries it so much that it can't continue without them. I wanted this to be a world where everyone else isn't just an NPC (non-playable character; sorry, gamer term on a writing blog) in 'their' world. It's never been more important to realize their lives even when it's not important to the story so that when they reappear, you don't think they were just lying on the floor with their eyes glazed over.

My hope is that your takeaway from this is in understanding why some processes are important to the type of story. Don't be afraid to write complex stories. If you find something is irritatingly flat, you can take notes on what to come back to or attempt to flesh it out right then. When you have this new understanding, you take it to future edits. No, you decided her personality would change so she wouldn't say it like that anymore. No, I decided his upbringing means he wouldn't know something like that now. Your first draft is your first impression of your world. That's it. Each draft reflects what you add to it when you get to know it better. It's not as complex as you initially think because you're making the connections to understand the transitions as you go. 

And yes, you can do a lot of backpedaling in a first draft. I know a lot of writers swear by the forward movement only rule here, to keep it creative, but there are three types of people: ones who dip their toes in the water and get in a little at a time, those who jump/dive in, and... those who don't swim at all. In terms of writing, either one of the first two are okay. You don't have to have perfect confidence to get things going. If you have to poke and edit and hedge a bit, at least you're moving. It isn't a mark of quality to be less confident. In fact, reasonably cautious writers are the ones that give themselves less work in the long run. Tortoise and the hare, if you will. Okay, hares can succeed too. I'd never hate on a fast writer because it's not less work just because the pace is different.

With that being said, a break is in order. I pulled away from the draft to take a 'break' and here I am. Not. Breaking. But now I am. If this is your break, thanks for sharing it with me!