"The Ripple Effect"
Based on the characters created by Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale
| Synopsis: While discussing "great regrets" in life with his girlfriend, Marty McFly decides to do something about his. He takes the DeLorean and travels back in time ten years to convince himself to do a risky event that he had originally passed up -- and since regretted. But when Marty returns home, expecting to find things the same, he discovers a world where he was killed from that event. His family doesn't know who he is. Jennifer's never seen him before. And Doc still hasn't invented a time machine. Can Marty fix things before it is too late? |
| Length: 15,000 words |
| Written: December 1997 |
| Revised: December 1997 |
| Author's Notes: One of my favorite "old" movies is It's a Wonderful Life. I dunno why, maybe because I grew up seeing it around Christmastime since I can remember. Maybe because I like the message it has in it, how one person can do so much. Or maybe because it reminds me a bit about BTTF. I mean, doesn't Potter remind you of Biff Tannen, and the reality where George Bailey was never born of the alternate 1985? Bob Zemeckis and Bob Gale were even quoted once, saying how that film was the greatest time travel story (even though time travel wasn't really done) because it was about people. Anyway, sometime in mid-November 1997 I got to thinking that would make an interesting premise. And I'd wanted to do a Christmassy BTTF story for the last five years. By early December, the pieces came together. Though I was far from finished with "Partners in Time?", I decided to go ahead with this new idea. I wrote the first two chapters the day I started it, December 12, 1997. And less than a week later, on December 16, 1997, the story was completed. The story came together better than I ever dreamed, and at a pace that shocked even me. But it is also the shortest one I've done so far, teetering on the border of "short story" and "novella" distinction. But I knew it would be short from the start and accepted that. Not all stories have to be 100 pages long. Some ideas and plots just lend themselves better to short stories. I had fun with the story, since I can count only a couple instances where I've dealt with time travel in Hill Valley. And dealing with Marty as a child was pretty interesting. As for my little jokes -- Jennifer's "great regret" is mine from so long ago.... |
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