Written by Emily Harstone October 31st, 2013

Writing Prompt: Time Traveler

The writing prompt today is simple. There are no catches, no hitches, no hidden rules.

Set a timer for twenty minutes and start writing about your main character, a time traveler.

Your main character does not need to travel in time during the story itself, but the face that he or she can travel in time has to affect the way they act and interact with other people. It has to be one of the central aspects of their character, although certainly not the only aspect.

Your short story can cover anything, a trip in time, the time traveler at home with their partner, the time traveler trying to fix their machine, the time traveler passing through time without a machine . .  .

The possibilities are endless so start your timer and get writing.

 

We Send You Publishers Seeking Submissions.

Sign up for our free e-magazine and we will send you reviews of publishers seeking short stories, poetry, essays, and books.

Subscribe now and we'll send you a free copy of our book Submit, Publish, Repeat

The Art of Getting Feedback On Your Writing

You're invited to join a talk with poet and editor Karan Kapoor. Karan is the editor in chief of Only Poems, and is on the editorial board of Alice James Books.

Available to watch right now, completely free.

Free Talk: Book Publicity for Authors with Caro Perny

Download the Slides. Caro Perny is a lifelong booklover, born and raised in New York City. She is currently Associate Director of Publicity at Tor Books. Over the course of her career, she’s worked with an amazing variety of bestselling, award-winning, and critically acclaimed authors such as Carissa Broadbent, Tochi Onyebuchi, James Rollins, Alyssa Cole,…

Available to watch right now, completely free.

A Quick Start Guide to Children’s and Young Adult Publishing

Writing for children and young adults is very different than writing for adults. Audience expectations are different. Picture books, for example, have completely different sub-genres than adult books. Whereas adult books have genres like science fiction and fantasy, picture books have sub-genres like fairy tale, alphabet, and bedtime books. There is a whole body of…
Special Issue

Verso: Accepting Proposals

Verso is the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world. They publish 100 books a year, and have editors based in Brooklyn, London, and Paris. They participate in all of the major book fairs. The majority what they publish is is nonfiction, and they are not open to unsolicited submissions of fiction of…
Manuscript Publishers Non Fiction

Quills & Quartos Publishing: Accepting Submissions

Quills & Quartos Publishing was founded in 2019. They started with a very specific vision, to focus on publishing the best Austenesque romance fiction. This is of course a niche market within a niche market, so if this is not the right fit for your work, please don’t submit or read further. However if you…
Manuscript Publishers Romance

University Press of Mississippi: Accepting Submissions

The University Press of Mississippi was founded in 1970. They are currently the largest and only nonprofit publisher in the state. They are supported by Mississippi’s eight state-run universities. They publish work on a variety of subjects and are open to submissions in all nonfiction categories. They are not interested in fiction or poetry submissions….
Academic Manuscript Publishers