Can we just talk about time travel?

Prince of Persia. Power Rangers Super Charge. Ninjago Season 6. And from what I've heard, Flash (the series). All of these have gotten themselves into such a big mess by the end that they have to go back in time and undo it all just to fix their own mistakes.

Time travel is nothing but trouble, and we can all thank our lucky stars no idiot has invented it yet in real life. While it sounds appealing to be able to visit people who lived long ago, or see what the future looks like, doing that would mess everything up. If we traveled to the past, our very presence there would change everything. If we traveled to the future, we would find out what happened in our own time, and our knowledge of that would still screw up time. Because whether we meant to or not, we would change our actions, therefore changing the future we just saw. And now that I'm thinking about it, since the future is constantly in flux, would it even be possible to travel there? But I'm getting off topic.

The problem of characters going back in time to fix their own mistakes has gotten so bad that every time I see a new character with a time machine, my first thought is, 'you better not screw this up, bub.'

Honestly, every time the travel-back-in-time-to-fix-it thing happens in a movie or a show I like, I can only watch that part once, because it makes me so frustrated. The beginningish of Peabody and Sherman movie is the only exception to this, since they don't successfully fix their mistake this way, and all it does is cause more trouble, so that's sort of fine.

Now that I've thoroughly ranted about it, let me explain to you why your characters traveling back in time to fix their mistakes is such a problem. The issue of changing the present isn't the main problem, because one can always use the Fixed Timeline Theory as their basis for the time travel. If you don't know about the three basic theories of time travel, here's a lovely chart to help you understand them. But no, the main problem with this is that it does exactly what it's supposed to do: It undoes everything. At first this might not sound like such a big problem, but listen to me for a second. It undoes everything. Not just the mistakes, but also the character development, the introductions to new characters, and any ways their world or situation in life might have gotten better. I think the thing that bothers me the most about undoing time is, if you wrote a story where everything was undone at the end, it means you just wasted your time writing a story that never happened. If it never happened, what's the point?

So here's a few ideas for what we can do instead of going back in our fancy time machines and undoing our mistakes. You're the writer, so use your power and get your characters out of this.

1.  Write the story so that it doesn't get to the point where this is your last resort. There are a number of ways to do this, such as giving your characters a last-resort plan of their own(one that doesn't involve undoing their adventure).
2. If the characters have a way of going back in time, let them be tempted by it. Give them the opportunity to go back in time and undo it, but then have them use an alternative. This is better both because your characters will have made a powerful choice, but it will also teach the readers a valuable lesson. In real life, one can't go back and undo mistakes. Instead we must deal with what we've done and continue moving forward.
3. I still don't recommend letting the characters go back in time to fix their problems, but if you let them do this, make sure there are consequences. What if the timeline was left hopelessly tangled, so that one of your characters wakes up with an amputated arm? What if it made sure a couple of characters died or were tortured by the enemy? What if it caused a ripple effect on time, messing up all of history? There are many options here.
4. Or rather than escaping the bad situation, just let it happen. Let the characters deal with the mess they've created and have to live with it. This also could teach a powerful lesson to the readers.

See? The travel-back-in-time method isn't the only way to go. It's just a sloppy, frustrating final option that just weakens the ending of the story. There are better options. So please, please don't use it. Save me the frustration and avoid it at all costs. You will have a better story without it, and I'll keep my hair because you didn't use it.

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Cover Photo by Jeff Golenski on Unsplash