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Vent: My fiction prompt about a time traveler hit a total wall
I sat down last Saturday to write a story about a woman who jumps into alternate realities each time she sneezes, but after 3 paragraphs I had nothing. The concept sounded cool but the logic fell apart because how does she control it or even survive. Has anyone else scrapped a prompt halfway through and started fresh.
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lee.drew1mo ago
The "sneeze" trigger is actually a clever hook, but the REAL issue is you gave her zero control over the ability. Plenty of time travel stories work fine with a random trigger, like the movie "The Time Traveler's Wife" where the guy just pops around unpredictably. You don't NEED logic for the survival part, just focus on the human drama of living with a chaotic power.
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the_hayden1mo ago
Huh, you're actually right. I used to think random triggers were just lazy writing, but The Time Traveler's Wife really does prove the chaos itself can be the whole point. Makes me want to go back and rethink my own story notes.
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the_oscar16d ago
@the_hayden nailed it, I just had to let the character breathe and figure out the story from there.
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