Simon Fox - Running Out of Time Blog

Before I started writing Running out of Time, I knew I wanted to write a book that included time travel. Or a version of it at least. And because we all time travel (although most of us only do it going forward at a speed of one hour per hour) I thought it would be interesting to think about what it would be like to go back a section of time after you’ve lived it and see if you would do anything differently.

Would that solve all your problems, or would it just lead to more?  And, importantly, if you’ve had experiences that never end up happening, would that change you? 

It's a bit serious, isn’t it, so I knew if I wanted people to read my story and enjoy it, I needed to wrap all of this up in a gripping adventure. One of the key ingredients in making an adventure story tense is an almost impossible objective with an almost impossible deadline and I decided to make the objective of my story revolve around a journey.  Because, going back to the theme of time travel, life is a journey, isn’t it, even if we’re only going forward at one hour per hour.  

So Alex goes on a journey– although his is tougher than most. He’s got an almost impossible deadline, a bunch of soldiers trying to stop him, no money, no one to trust and no idea what is going to happen next. Then, because I’m a writer and I can do what I like, I gave him one thing to help. Alex doesn’t move at one hour per hour like the rest of us.  He can steal time; living a small part of the future before it happens. 

Obviously, I couldn’t make it easy for him. He can only steal fifteen seconds of the future, which is hardly enough to do anything. Count it out for yourself. What could you do in fifteen seconds? It’s too short to play the lottery or learn anything or travel any real distance. But if you’re smart like Alex, you can use it. And it might just save your life! 

So having come up with an idea for my story, I then decided to use the idea of time travel in how I wrote it. I basically ended up writing two stories, “Before” and “After”, which alternate between the chapters.  The purpose of this was to give a sense of what it might be like to jump around in time, where everything that happens has consequences. The story doesn’t say what event the “before” and “after” relate to (although there are some clues) and hopefully when you find out at the end it will be a bit of a surprise.  

It was quite hard writing it that way because not only did I have to remember what was going on in the other timeline when I changed chapters, I also had to make sure that all the “afters” joined up with the “befores” even when I hadn’t got to them yet. (If that sounds confusing that’s the trouble with time travel!) 

Anyway, the result is there for people to read. I’mreally proud of it. I hope the unusual structure makes it more exciting even if it takes a while to get into.  At the end of it all, Alex is just a kid with a really toughjourney ahead of him. He makes friends and enemies and does his best to use his gifts to do what’s right. 

Fifteen seconds isn’t a lot, but it could make all the difference in the world.