Time Travel Vs. Historical Fiction

When Diana Gabaldon's novel, OUTLANDER first came out in book form, everyone decided that time travel writing was the way to go. Even today, when she releases a new season on STARZ agents and editors are suddenly flooded with time travels. Unfortunately, the majority of these are far from time travels.

For most authors, their version of a time travel is nothing more than putting a 21st Century character in the past. The rest of the novel is spent in the past where the character is just a part of this new time. At this point, the story is nothing more than a historical novel. Oh sure, they might do something like bringing aspirin with them, or some other item from the future, but that is the only interaction with that time. 

True time travel has the character(s) grappling with the time shift. Claire and Jamie are constantly worrying about what they do in the past and how it might affect the future. They also struggle with how much they should bring in what they know from the future. Add in that Jamie and Claire's baby was born in the modern world... 

Think of the 80's movies, BACK TO THE FUTURE. Again, we have time travel, but there is the constant battle within the characters as they struggle with the time differences. 

If you are simply moving a character to the past and once there, you do nothing with the time difference, then you have a historical novel. Your best solution is to drop the piece of traveling back in time, figure out what it is that makes that character unique and bring that out keeping the character as only a historical character.

It is also important to consider, regardless of which approach you take, to know how to market it. I received a project over the weekend that was a time travel, but the person was claiming it as historical. Woops! (BTW, this author also claimed that OUTLANDER was historical).

As always, I want to stress the importance of knowing your genre and knowing what you really want to get out of the novel. If you want to tell a "fish out of water" story, it doesn't have to be time travel. Consider the following...

It did not require time travel to make this work.