An idea I had for a story is actually getting a little bit of development.
It's a time travel story, so I've been absorbing all the time travel speculative fiction I can.
In my opinion, the first thing you have to nail down before you approach anything at all is the binary nature of time travel: either there is predestination or there isn't.
If there is, then everything that your time-traveling character does was part of the timeline from the get-go. Character X going back in time was predestined, and the future (his or her present) couldn't be the way it is without them having gone back to the past to do whatever it is they do/did. Everything they do is guided, and though it may appear to them to be free will, it isn't.
If there isn't, then, effectively, there are no rules at all. Everything is in flux, constantly being altered. The only way around this isn't even logically feasible. You can say that your story is the first time time travel happened, but then you have to deal with the logical conceit that after your story is told, people are still mucking about with the past, present and future, and therefore, your story is actually just a snapshot of a possibility. Your whole timeline isn't a timeline anymore. It's a pigpile point of wrestling realities.
This debate is heavy on my mind. From a personal, theophilosophical point of view, I find predestination abhorrent, But as someone trying to tell a story, I crave the structure provided by fate.
The concept, in its initial form, revolved around sports gambling and time travel. Attempts to flesh it out rapidly escalated into something that would have to be a series or something. Too many plots for an effective, easy to sell, 1 1/2 hour comedy script. I can imagine Ebert's review of the film. He complains that one subplot should have been the main plot. I agree. But that's not what I set out to write.
Well, I'll update the progress on this as I feel necessary, but it's going forward. Now, to prepare for more negagement parties and concerts.
Yes, it's true. Every time the Kickback plays up here, I go to an engagement party.
Fuckin' weird is what it is.
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