Time Travel Writing Prompts

"Done. They're dead." "But... I just hired you!" "That's how time travel works, partner."

"Ive seen it all before. empires growing and shrinking like mushrooms in a forest. After a time it all flows together" the immortal exclaims, not realising that his timeloop is so long that he has not noticed that it is the same empire he observes every time.

You were born in the Medieval Age, but at 15, a time anomaly brought you to the modern era, where a scientist adopted you. Now, 11 years later, they’ve found a way to send you back and asked for your opinion, but your answer is clear: "Hell no."

Your sibling can rewind time and you're the only one that remembers. usually they use it sparingly but today has been repeating a suspicious number of times.

Years ago you came up with a nonsensical code phrase that you would use if you ever went back in time and needed to convince yourself of who you were. You never wrote it down or told anyone what it was. Today a young woman you’ve never met walks up to you on the sidewalk and speaks the phrase.

You've always had the gift; touching the dead you live their last moments through their eyes. As a paleontologist, it helped you recreate scenes from by-gone eras in astonishing detail. However, this time, you wish you hadn't touched the fossil.

Ten years ago everyone else on Earth disappeared. Now they are all back. Everyone says the same thing. Ten years ago, everyone else but them disappeared.

Vampires exist. They sleep for 10 thousand years to let the human/livestock population grow before waking up and harvesting our blood. They wake up today, assuming we are still cavemen like

"You claim to be an honest merchant who used to sell tomatoes and other goods... But tomatoes will not be known here until a few centuries from now." Whispered the Knight to the speechless stranger. "I never let one of us escape me, fellow time-traveller... Guards! Arrest this sorcerer!"

After an uneventful trip, the Titanic arrives safely in New York. Except this New York gleamed with towers of glass, not stone—and its people claim that the Titanic sunk over a century ago.

One moment you are 16 years old, the next you’re 82. Now everyone thinks you have dementia because you “forgot” the last 66 years.

Whenever you die you resurrect on the last day on which you could possibly have prevented your death with all your memories. Usually it only takes you back a few days, a couple of weeks in extreme cases. Today you died and awoke decades in the past.

Your daughter has always been weird, but lately it's gotten worse. She keeps going on about not having a smartphone or bored because there's no internet. It's 1685 AD.

As your spouse lays dying in the hospital, they ask if you'd choose them all over again. You say that you always will. Once they pass away, you rewind time to the day you met each other for the hundredth time.

"dude... give her space. For you it's been 30 years. You've had time to grieve and accept you lost your sister. For her though.... she just learned she's be gone for three decades and hasn't aged a day. You've got your teenage sister back but to her.... to her your a 45 year old stranger"

You suddenly gain the uncontrollable ability to "jump" randomly through time. It was difficult to adjust to the changing time periods until you encounter an elderly version of yourself, who hands you a worn out journal, detailing every date and destination of your jumps in the future.

You've just been awoken from cryogenic sleep so that scientists and doctors can finally cure your fatal condition. Then you learn it's been 57000 years since you were put in cryogenic sleep.

Ok, that's it. You don't care what happens anymore. Enough is enough. You take your standard issue time rewinder and set it back 20 mins just so you can win an argument with your wife.

When your university announces they’ll be burying a time capsule for a century, you decide to include a USB with an extremely detailed, high resolution copy of your brain, for fun. The last thing you remember is going into the MRI machine before you wake up & are told a century has passed.

"Time travel paradoxes don't happen, they just spawn a new timeline you can travel to." "Wait, does that mean I can go back to caveman times and colonize the fresh earth without consequence?"

You are subject to a quite unusual curse. You see, you were born twice, one day after the other, in two separate times and places. As such, you live half of your days as a noblewoman in pre-revolutionary 18th century France, and live every other day as a male millennial in the US.

After inventing time travel, you send agents back in time to change the future and conquer the world. Instead you get back several dead agents and a note saying “Never try that again.”

In a world of super heroes and villains, you are a historian. You are convinced that something is altering time, changing history so that super powered events only happened “a few years ago” when they should be far older.

Moments after your death you wake up in the body of your child self several decades in the past. The only context you have is a voice in your head that tells you "Welcome back Returner, this is your {ERROR} attempt at breaking the cycle. We wish you luck on this attempt to {DATA MISSING}".

You got pulled over after a weekend camping trip. When the officer returns to your car, he says you've been missing for fifteen years.

Dragons don't actually have such a long lifetime. Instead, they have a spell that allows them to sleep for decades or even centuries without aging a day. Your dragon friend wants to take a "nap" and asks if you want to join in.

You’ve been stuck in a time loop for over one hundred years. On this latest loop everyone acknowledges the loop and ask what you’ll do this time.

If we die today it will be-" "you said that the last 3000 times the loop repeated, SHUT UP"

A friend of yours came to you sobbing. They’re rambling about “timelines” and worried about “resetting again.” “I just thought I got it right this time…”

A 200 year old vampire falls in love with a human who seems more mature than other mortals because they have just escaped a 200 year long time loop