Young Writers Society

IT COULD'VE BEEN ME by marmalade

Okay so I'm finally working on a novel again. It's going to be called It Could've Been Me and it's a Romance Science Fiction. I'm outlining it right now with some success.

The main character is called Stella and a year before the novel starts a good friend of hers, called Jack, confesses his love to her. She tells him she doesn't want a boyfriend and a year later (the next school year) Jack is dating one of the popular girls who used to be Stella's best friend in middle school. Stella realizes she actually does have feelings for Jack as she is jealous and misses him (he stops talking to Stella because his girlfriend controls him). Stella then finds out she has time travel powers and decides to use them to end up with Jack. On her crazy adventures through time she discovers more about herself and those around her. She also realizes that she can't change the past and that everything happens for a reason.

I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how Stella discovers her powers and can someone explain to me how time travel can wreck her sense of reality/the space time continuum because I want to include that in the story? Thanks <3 I'm still trying to find my groove when it comes to my prose but I'm hoping to finish this novel. Also what do you think of my story so far?

Okay so some new ideas I have are:

1. For Stella to time travel she looks at a familiar object and focuses on the scene. When she looks up from the object she in back in that scene.

2. The more things she changes and the more she messes around a rip in the space time continuum is formed and welp she messes up the world. Which causes her to be in all time at once. She will in a hallway and be in 2017 and then walk into a room that's 2009 with her elementary school friends playing.

Hey! I saw this and thought it looked pretty cool. I'd like to see how it comes out.

Ideas: Maybe she could discover her power through wishing she could turn back time and say yes to Jack, or something of the like.

Suggestion for time space continuum... Perhaps she starts to forget what timeline she is from, because she goes to so many?

One more thing... I really hate to point this out, but I feel like I should. The title, It Could Of Been Me is actually improper grammar. It should say It Could Have Been Me. Maybe you're using it as a plot point, like Stella is bad I'm LA class, or maybe this was just a simple mistake. Either way, I felt the need to point it out.

Really looking forward to this. Best of luck.

I LOVE this idea. Science fiction and time travel? Romance? asdfghjkl, count me in.

For ideas how she discovers her power/uses it:

- for your first idea (looking at an object) I think that would limit her powers. I'm not sure how much power you want Stella to have, but simply looking at an object wouldn't let her travel anywhere/anytime. It's a cool idea, though, but just thought I'd point out it's a bit limited.

- maybe she could find a watch (flea market, passed down from family, on the street, under her bed) and somehow that lets her time travel

- she could travel through her dreams, maybe. This is also pretty limiting, though, but could pose some conflict

- something like @Sheyren said, where if she wishes/thinks hard about it. I think this ties sort of to your first idea, so maybe you can combine those two together!

As for the space time continuum, I don't think I can help you there. It confuses me too much if I think about it too hard xD

Also, as Sheyren said, the title *technically* should be It Could Have Been Me, but if you want to keep the same sound you can do It Could've Been Me.

I'm SO excited for this. Good luck outlining!!

So I'm trying to figure out how Stella can go back to the present. I'm going with my idea with objects and I'd explain why in more detail but I don't want to spoil the story. Does anyone have any ideas for traveling to the future? Maybe she has to really focus and wish to return?

You might have already found many of these things, but here are some links that may be interesting:

https://einstein.stanford.edu/content/r ... /q411.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TiQidGPHA4
http://www.hawking.org.uk/space-and-time-warps.html
http://www.space.com/21675-time-travel.html

I tried to find articles (and the documentary) with reliable sources that don't go too far into the sciency talk (though sciency talk is unavoidable to some degree). Like EternalRain, I adore time travelling stories as well, but I put the bar quite high and demand both accuracy and originality from them. If you want to take the more fantasy route than the sci-fi one, or rely on "she just can" as the reason why the MC can time travel, though, that's okay too, it just makes it a different genre c: And even so, I'd expect it to come with some rules... plus, reading up on time-space continuum can never harm you, so anyway... the links are there for you to check out if you wish.

There's a movie called Somewhere in Time (there's a book too, but I haven't read it) in which the MC travels back in time by the means of self-hypnosis. But what I found interesting about it was that he carries with him a single penny from his own time, the only object that hints at him not being from the past (he changes hairstyle and clothes before he leaves, I think). As long as he doesn't look at the penny or touch it, he'll stay in the past, but as soon as he does he'll get awoken from the hypnosis and pulled right back into his own time.

Now, your MC doesn't go far enough in time for such a thing to make as much sense, and obviously that particular thing has been done already, but I just wanted to bring up one of the ways I've seen in movies/books that I thought was quite original.

I actually have a MC(ish) in my own WIP who travels through time! It's not the centre of the overall story, but I'm always happy to see another writer playing with time travelling c: Let me know when/if you post some of it!

I just stopped by to say that your little cover you made there is more professional looking than almost my entire twitter feed.

(Clarification - I follow a lot of indie/self-pubbed authors)

(Re: time travel - what ^they said.)

if you still want to follow It Could've Been Me, i'll be posting it for LMS It Could've Been Me