For Fun - What's the worst corner you've ever written yourself into?

[AlinaX]

I think of that as the Superman problem. They made Superman the comic book character so invincible with so many powers that they had a hard time coming up with conflicts that were realistically threatening for him. There was a lot of inconsistency as a result.

This is, in my view, a huge problem with superhero universes (and also many urban fantasy worlds). Because the hero's powers are so great, the stories focus on a subset of characters with special powers, gifts, etc. It's very limiting. I much prefer to see the hero interact with humanity.

But Superman especially. Or Supergirl, more recently. The girl that can outrun a speeding bullet, etc., struggles to catch a quadcopter. The inconsistency is painful.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Oh wow, the list is long and distinguished. I have done this a lot, on short stories. I would write something one day and when I looked at what I had written the next day I was astounded. It didn't even fit the narrative that I had in my head for that story. It was almost as if I had written it all while was drunk but I don't drink or do drugs. The only thing I could do, is cut all the work from the previous day and start again.

That's how Homecoming Party wound up with three different ending.

 

[Bramblethorn]

This is probably a dumb question, but would the person doing the time traveling experience their own personal passage of time? And if so, what would their personal time be set to? If you could travel back in time, it's not like you'd cease to exist because you weren't born yet, so it stands to reason (I think) that whatever time passes for the time traveler can't correlate to the interval between their former place in the timeline and their current place in the timeline. But the more I think about it, the less sense it all makes.

For high-speed travel, this is the "twin paradox". If John stays on Earth, and Jane zips off to Alpha Centauri and back in a fast spaceship, when they meet up again less time will have passed from Jane's perspective than from John's. Travel fast enough (approaching c) and you can get anywhere almost instantly, from your perspective.

Joe Haldeman used this as a plot device in "The Forever War": soldiers who do a lot of FTL travel end up seeing their stay-at-home families growing old. Or so I hear, I haven't yet read that one myself.

I'm not sure whether it would have to work that way for wormholes - have to ask a proper physicist for that!

 

[davet_1_1]

Writing a lot in the NC section I find myself constantly wrestling with the reluctant character becoming a sex-craving libertine in the space of a paragraph. Or to paraphrase oggbashan, 'with one thrust she was free!'

 

[SimonDoom]

This is probably a dumb question, but would the person doing the time traveling experience their own personal passage of time? And if so, what would their personal time be set to? If you could travel back in time, it's not like you'd cease to exist because you weren't born yet, so it stands to reason (I think) that whatever time passes for the time traveler can't correlate to the interval between their former place in the timeline and their current place in the timeline. But the more I think about it, the less sense it all makes.

It's difficult to imagine traveling back in time, or to make any sense of what happens if you do. Movies based on this idea, like The Terminator, have to deal with all the weird implications. What happens if you go back in time and kill yourself? The only thing that makes sense to me is to imagine that time exists on an infinite number of tracks, and if you do that you alter one track, but not necessarily the one you left. But, then, can you go back to the track you came from? Who knows. It's probably not possible.

Traveling forward in time is much less complicated and presents no such problems. By accelerating to a sufficiently high speed one could, say, experience the passage of one month of time and come back to earth where a year has passed to its inhabitants. This is what happened to the astronauts in Planet of the Apes, although they didn't realize it at the time. There's no need to deal with all the alternative time path questions.

I don't think time travel and wormholes have to be roadblocks for writers. Since it's mostly fantasy and conjecture you can make them whatever you want them to be and if it's handled well the reader should have no problem suspending disbelief.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

And this from the woman who has cats with portals in pockets. You need to listen to your cat. This stuff is a doddle for a cat.

That's different. Everyone understands cat portals. They only go to the cat dimension, though, and time passes in which ever way the cat dictates that it passes. Time's only time, but a cat's a cat.

My cats probably do know about wormholes, but the price for sharing that information would almost certainly be far too high.

A non-fantasy one - I had a bit of plot involving a guy having then-under-age-sex when the age of consent was 21, but misremembered the year it changed locally (and it had been a minor comment to start, but then the characters ran with it). Eventually decided the only way out was to move the whole story from around 2015-16 to 2010.

Cue research on whether fingerprint-lock phones were available them, changing references to buildings as being built not existing, and having to make one character the type of guy who would own a much fancier phone than I'd originally had him as. And having to go back to Wikipedia to re-write another character's military career to fit the timeline.

I think it all hangs together now - it made the housing choices of them all more plausible at least. Course I then had one of them dissing civil partnership and claiming he'd never marry again unless he could go down City Hall and do it properly. Roll on same-sex marriage legislation, but turns out City Hall (London) is one of the few buildings in the area not licensed for weddings even now... (which took ages to confirm, given London Ontario has a City Hall and would love you to marry there...)

I believe that's called "getting caught up in your own plot hole." I'm just as bad about it. I have to get every factual detail exactly right, and it doesn't matter that nobody will know the difference.

For high-speed travel, this is the "twin paradox". If John stays on Earth, and Jane zips off to Alpha Centauri and back in a fast spaceship, when they meet up again less time will have passed from Jane's perspective than from John's. Travel fast enough (approaching c) and you can get anywhere almost instantly, from your perspective.

Joe Haldeman used this as a plot device in "The Forever War": soldiers who do a lot of FTL travel end up seeing their stay-at-home families growing old. Or so I hear, I haven't yet read that one myself.

I'm not sure whether it would have to work that way for wormholes - have to ask a proper physicist for that!

I've spent a couple of decades just trying to wrap my mind around the fact that time passes faster on a higher story than a lower story. I understand all the rules that should make it so, but my brain keeps saying, "Nuh-uh!" If I recall correctly, someone even proved it with a very sensitive pair of clocks. My brain still does not accept this.

I can sort of understand how faster than light travel can allow time travel, but does that mean the effects of time are undone? Does the meal you ate become undigested? Does the tear in your sleeve become untorn? And if the effects of time are undone, wouldn't that just put you right back where you were to start with?

If the effects of time are not undone, wouldn't that put you in a different timeline or something? Otherwise, when you return to normal time, some things wouldn't match anymore. If you picked an apple up off your desk just before you went on an FTL trip, and you eat it during your trip, and you come back earlier than when you picked up the apple, should it be on the desk? Have you still eaten it AND it's on the desk? What if you didn't eat it during your trip. Is the same apple in two places at the same time? If you now eat one, does the other also get eaten, since it is actually the same apple, or did the apple become a different apple when it left the timeline? If that's the case, aren't you becoming another you the moment you leave? Does the old you just cease to exist, or do you meet the other you before that you leaves to create yet another other you? This is why I don't like math. Well, one of many reasons I don't like math.

It also strikes me as problematic that a whole lot of theory hangs on the assumption that nothing can go faster than light, thus conveniently solving a whole lot of problems. I should probably just restrain my wondering to figuring out how to convince my brain about time on the 50th story versus time at ground level!

 

[yowser]

My current project. (I am just beginning to paint myself out of the corner, it is strange how much easier it is to get yourself into a mess than get out...)

Most of the time for me it is when both the character(s) and the story start evolving in different directions and I am somehow not paying attention.

In this case it is a small town, the specific location has significant relevance to the tale, and involves the brother's snooty girlfriend, the daughter of the town veterinarian. I have her going away to college to get her vet degree so that she can take over the family business (but then it turns out the only vet school in the whole region is just three towns over), and it doesn't make sense for her to go there since she would most likely be living at home to save money, which would ruin the complexity of the relationship with the brother and the ingrown nature of the small town vibe, all essential to the story's arc ... it all gets very messy and doesn't make sense and I had to take her in a completely different direction to make it all work.

Almost solved, but still a ways to go...

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

My current project. (I am just beginning to paint myself out of the corner, it is strange how much easier it is to get yourself into a mess than get out...)

Most of the time for me it is when both the character(s) and the story start evolving in different directions and I am somehow not paying attention.

In this case it is a small town, the specific location has significant relevance to the tale, and involves the brother's snooty girlfriend, the daughter of the town veterinarian. I have her going away to college to get her vet degree so that she can take over the family business (but then it turns out the only vet school in the whole region is just three towns over), and it doesn't make sense for her to go there since she would most likely be living at home to save money, which would ruin the complexity of the relationship with the brother and the ingrown nature of the small town vibe, all essential to the story's arc ... it all gets very messy and doesn't make sense and I had to take her in a completely different direction to make it all work.

Almost solved, but still a ways to go...

Characters are bad about doing their own thing with no regard or consideration to what you want them to be doing. It's very inconsiderate!

Could you just make up an imaginary college with a vet school that's further away?

 

[Bramblethorn]

I can sort of understand how faster than light travel can allow time travel, but does that mean the effects of time are undone? Does the meal you ate become undigested? Does the tear in your sleeve become untorn? And if the effects of time are undone, wouldn't that just put you right back where you were to start with?

I'm not sure there are answers to these, since AFAIK anything beginning with FTL/time travel is a counterfactual and the answers to counterfactuals aren't well defined. But I am not a physicist and it's too early in the morning.

It also strikes me as problematic that a whole lot of theory hangs on the assumption that nothing can go faster than light, thus conveniently solving a whole lot of problems. I should probably just restrain my wondering to figuring out how to convince my brain about time on the 50th story versus time at ground level!

It might seem less arbitrary if viewed from a different perspective: the faster an object goes, the more kinetic energy it has. As it approaches c (the speed of light in a vacuum) that energy approaches infinity. So to go FTL, you need to find some way to get past that point of infinite energy.

 

[AlinaX]

Think of the universe as the surface of a party balloon. While travelling around the surface you are limited to light speed, because to go faster would tear the material and pop the balloon. However, warp physicists have shown it's possible, theoretically, to deform the surface of the balloon and create shortcuts between different parts. (This would take a lot of energy, and attempts to use the shortcuts might well pop the balloon - very strong sellotape would be useful.) Some physicists have even theorised that the balloon is not spherical-ish but actually more like balloon animal, e.g., a puppy, and that such shortcuts exist naturally - although, again, using them is an entirely different matter.

Quantum physics has no problem with particles travelling backwards through time. The difficult bit always is sending information - in meaningful form - back in time.

 

[davet_1_1]

I'm only now discovering how making the main character the single mother of a young child is forcing me to find exciting new ways to get the kid offscreen. There are only so many variations of dropping him off at school I can write.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Think of the universe as the surface of a party balloon. While travelling around the surface you are limited to light speed, because to go faster would tear the material and pop the balloon. However, warp physicists have shown it's possible, theoretically, to deform the surface of the balloon and create shortcuts between different parts. (This would take a lot of energy, and attempts to use the shortcuts might well pop the balloon - very strong sellotape would be useful.) Some physicists have even theorised that the balloon is not spherical-ish but actually more like balloon animal, e.g., a puppy, and that such shortcuts exist naturally - although, again, using them is an entirely different matter.

Quantum physics has no problem with particles travelling backwards through time. The difficult bit always is sending information - in meaningful form - back in time.

It is worrisome to think that we could get to the point of trying to create shortcuts through the balloon before we come to a point of reaching consensus about the avisability of doing so, and even before we come to the point of accepting the need for such a consensus. I can see a race to dive right in.

I don't know what party balloon the rest of you are living on, but mine is definitely a puppy.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

I'm only now discovering how making the main character the single mother of a young child is forcing me to find exciting new ways to get the kid offscreen. There are only so many variations of dropping him off at school I can write.

Maybe her husband starts trying to nose his way back in the picture and demands visitation?

 

[Rustyoznail]

I haven't written enough erotica yet to run into that kind of problem, but in my non-erotic writing, oh boy. I'm currently struggling with the idea that an alien species can create wormholes, but can't travel through time, when science suggests that if wormholes can exist then they must traverse both space and time. If the aliens can time travel they'd be an invincible antagonist, and if they can't travel through wormholes, they'd be a toothless one.

But there's a limit to how much hand-waving I can stomach in my own writing, so yeah, trying to figure that one out. Even if they can only use wormholes to travel through space, that's such an enormous advantage over humans that they still might be invincible, which I need them to ... not be.

One way worm holes maybe?

Or once a hole has occupied a piece of space/time, another one can't occupy it?

 

[davet_1_1]

Maybe her husband starts trying to nose his way back in the picture and demands visitation?

I think the father is probably going to be interested enough in the kid to see him at weekends, or take him to the occasional plot-convenient movie.

 

[TheStoryTeller2342]

Messy - killed both main characters and scattered another one to the winds because I didn't want to write any more
3 Weeks On The Road - introduced a character I didn't know what to do with
Jessie - killed both the main characters because I want to write action for another forum instead of sex

I guess that last one isn't a corner so much as a conclusion. I'm not too fond of happy endings, particularly because I like to write about the impact/corruption of violence on the innocent/unwilling as a cautionary tale.

 

[BiscuitHammer]

I think Richard Wagner probably did this exact thing better than anybody ever has when he was younger.

He wrote a tragedy play called 'Leubald', and by the end of the First Act, forty-two characters had died, and he needed to bring most of them back as ghosts in order for the plot to work out.

Maybe the Ring Cycle and Tannhauser get a lot of play, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Leubald is in no danger of that...

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

I think Richard Wagner probably did this exact thing better than anybody ever has when he was younger.

He wrote a tragedy play called 'Leubald', and by the end of the First Act, forty-two characters had died, and he needed to bring most of them back as ghosts in order for the plot to work out.

Maybe the Ring Cycle and Tannhauser get a lot of play, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Leubald is in no danger of that...

That seems a bit excessive.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

I don't think I write myself in corners, as much as I screw up the plot. Or don't have enough plot, or carry the plot.

 

[TheLobster]

Depending on just how hard SF you're aiming for and how you need wormholes to work, the concept of a light cone may be helpful.

(...)

The Orion's Arm universe has a similar restriction on wormholes, making them unsuitable for time travel but still permitting regular FTL travel.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

The Orion's Arm universe has a similar restriction on wormholes, making them unsuitable for time travel but still permitting regular FTL travel.

The website is fascinating. I'm going to spend some time diving down rabbit holes there, for sure.