Scribbled Fiction

Inflicting terrible things on characters is the number one way to create sympathy for them. And where there is sympathy, there are readers who will continue to read your book to make sure that things turn out for your characters. And usually they do. But in the middle (*crazy laugh*) bad things happen to your characters. Terrible, eclectic assortments of injuries, embarrassments, friend fights, and moments of crying into threadbare pillows behind closed doors come flying toward the characters like so many dodge balls on the playground. Ah, how I love tortured moments. These moments will have all the readers in complete agony for the characters, longing to yank them out of their nest of problems and give them a cup of hot chocolate and some TLC. But they can't. So the characters are left all alone to weep over their problems. And the best part is, as the writer, these problems are all your fault. You're welcome. And now I present to you (drum roll please): The stages

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.