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    The Time Traveler's Guide
    The Time Traveler's Guide
    The Time Traveler's Guide
    Ebook78 pages1 hour

    The Time Traveler's Guide

    By Simon Rose

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The Time Traveler’s Guide examines the writing of time travel stories and historical fiction. Books always transport us to other places, especially stories involving time travel or those set in different historical eras.

    The book examines the definition of time travel and historical fiction, the creation of time machines, methods and devices, selecting historical eras and settings, and creating characters and crafting dialogue. The book also explores common issues with time travel stories, and the importance of research, plausibility, description, and plot, along with writing about time travel into the future, alternate history, and parallel universes.

    The Time Traveler’s Guide is an excellent resource for those writing time travel or historical fiction stories for both children and adults.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon Rose
    Release dateOct 28, 2016
    ISBN9781370325108
    The Time Traveler's Guide
    Author

    Simon Rose

    Simon Rose is the author of The Alchemist's Portrait, The Sorcerer's Letterbox, The Clone Conspiracy, The Emerald Curse, The Heretic's Tomb, The Doomsday Mask, The Time Camera, The Sphere of Septimus, Flashback, Future Imperfect, Twisted Fate, Parallel Destiny, the Shadowzone series, and the Stone of the Seer series. He is also the author of The Children's Writer's Guide, The Time Traveler's Guide, The Working Writer's Guide, The Social Media Writer's Guide, a contributor to The Complete Guide to Writing Science Fiction and has written many non-fiction books with Crabtree Publishing, Beech Street Books, Weigl Publishers, and Capstone.Simon offers a number of services for writers, including editing, coaching, mentoring, consulting, manuscript evaluation, and writing workshops. He has provided substantive and copy editing services for many other writers over the years. This has been for novels, short stories, fiction, nonfiction, biographies, inspirational books, and many other genres. He also offers copywriting services for business, including website and social media content. Full details can be found on his website at simon-rose.com. He is the founder of Children’s Authors and Illustrators on Facebook, served as the Writer-in Residence with the Canadian Authors Association, is a member of the Calgary Association of Freelance Editors, and served as the Assistant Regional Advisor for SCBWI Western Canada.Simon offers a wide variety of presentations, workshops, and author in residence programs for schools, along with virtual author visits. He is an instructor for adults with the University of Calgary and offers a variety of workshops and writing courses for both children and adults.You may also follow him on Twitter or Instagram, connect on Facebook, or visit his channel on YouTube.

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      Book preview

      The Time Traveler's Guide - Simon Rose

      The

      Time Traveler’s

      Guide

      Writing time travel stories

      and historical fiction

      The Time Traveler’s Guide

      Copyright © 2016 by Simon Rose

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations for the purpose of a book review. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact Simon Rose at sorcerersletterbox@gmail.com

      Published by Sorcerer's Letterbox Publishing

      Calgary, Alberta

      www.simon-rose.com

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Introduction

      Chapter One What is time travel?

      Chapter Two Time travel stories

      Chapter Three Creating your time machine

      Chapter Four Settings and historical eras

      Chapter Five Historical Research

      Chapter Six Researching eras: Medieval medicine

      Chapter Seven Characters

      Chapter Eight Telling your story

      Chapter Nine The trouble with time travel

      Chapter Ten Time travel into the future

      Chapter Eleven Alternate history

      Conclusion

      About the Author

      Books by Simon Rose

      Introduction

      This book explores the creation of time travel stories and examines the writing of historical fiction. Books are always able to transport us to other places and this is certainly the case with stories involving time travel or those set in a different historical era.

      Stories featuring time travel inevitably overlap with other genres. Authors of novels involving journeys into the past have to contend with many of the issues faced by authors of historical fiction. Stories involving time travel into the future or into alternate timelines have many things in common with complex science fiction adventures.

      My novels The Alchemist’s Portrait, The Sorcerer’s Letterbox, The Heretic’s Tomb, The Time Camera, Flashback, and Future Imperfect all feature time travel. Although these novels are written for young adults many of the themes explored in the following chapters are also applicable to those authors that are writing for adults.

      This book examines the definition of time travel and historical fiction, along with the creation of imaginary yet plausible time travel machines, methods, and devices. Each chapter explores the appeal of certain historical eras for time travel stories, the importance of historical research when choosing a setting, creating characters and crafting dialogue, stories featuring travel to the future, and the genre of alternate history. Common mistakes and issues related to writing about time travel are also covered.

      Chapter One

      What is time travel?

      Time travel is defined as taking place when there is movement between specific points in time. This is achieved in the same way that objects and living things move through space. In fiction, this kind of travel is made possible by the use of a time machine, device, or method. While nothing is carved in stone, I tend to think that time travel involving machinery or some kind of technology should be defined as science fiction while time travel that makes use of magic or similar methods is probably best classified as fantasy. However, these genres frequently overlap, particularly with time travel stories.

      Over the years, novels, movies, and TV shows featuring time travel have included methods involving highly sophisticated machinery, scientific laboratories, various items of jewelry, wearable technology, vehicles, ancient artifacts, books, portals and doorways, dreaming, food and drink, and so many more. Time travel stories have featured journeys to the past, the future, and to alternative timelines created when previous events were changed so that they occurred differently, thus affecting what happened next in various different ways. Time travel has long been a theme in books, short stories, TV shows, and movies and shows no signs of declining in popularity anytime soon, although of course only time will tell.

      A common theme in time travel tales involves someone being sent into the past by accident. When they arrive at an earlier point in history, the device or machine is somehow broken, fails to operate properly, runs out of power, is misplaced, or is stolen by the story’s villain. The reader is thus left in suspense, wondering if the heroes will be able to return safely to their own time. Of course, the reader most likely believes that the heroes will eventually escape from danger. However, the plot still has to imply that the lead characters might be marooned in the past permanently or that their lives are in jeopardy. In my time travel novels, the main characters always face serious challenges from the moment that they appear to be trapped in a dangerous historical era.

      Some time travel stories simply feature an adventure in a different period in order for the characters to experience what life was like. Perhaps the character discovers an old piece of jewelry that sends them back in time when they wear it or adjust it some way. The characters then witness historical events or meet famous people. Many time travel stories concern the consequences of travelling either backward or forward through time. The idea of changing the past, either intentionally or by accident, is a common theme in science fiction and fantasy. When events that have already taken place are altered in some way, what the time traveler knew as the present day has changed when they return home. This might lead to a further adventure to restore things to what’s perceived as normal, depending on the nature of the alterations to the timeline. As you're probably thinking already, time travel can sometimes be very complicated but the creators of these kinds of

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