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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42537
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Time travel is cheating. You are already cheating. Even if you come up with a worldbuild-y excuse how your cheat works or what limits it, you are already cheating, so just accept it.

Plot holes are not created by time travel, they are created by poor writing – like inventing "rules" for something that is already breaking the rules, and then forgetting to follow your own rules.

Is an old professor going to pop up at the beginning of the story and tell the reader the rules? How are the rules known, did someone try to cheat on their cheat and then discovered they couldn't? Did it kill them, or did they keep trying over and over until they gave up? Did everyone else agree that they would honor the rules and never attempt to prove or disprove the "theory"?

What controls this rule (the author)? Is it pretend physics (the author)? Destiny and fate (the author)? Or maybe some doodad not been invented yet (sequel)? Maybe a daredevil with sex appeal and charisma will come along and break the rule (just a little) – is that a broken story with a plot hole, or is he a truly the chosen one who cheats better than the other cheaters in every story that involves (magic) cheating?

**You are the author** , not some rulebook that says what is the correct way to cheat (in this story). If the story has plot holes, it's because the author put them there. Maybe it's not an accident because this old professor's theory of how cheating works is wrong, and it takes the right kind of hero to break the rules (of cheating).

This isn't worldbuilding, this is writing. We don't dictate made-up rules by consensus. The only master of consistency within your story is you. If you want to break the rules that you have set up within your own story, you might have a good reason. It might fit your theme about taking a leap of faith, or trusting the unknown, or heck, just risking it all on one last gamble. There are narrative reasons to break your own rules, even for individual characters – because you want to say life is unfair, or a higher power can intervene, or maybe the whole point is that the rules are breaking down, or "Crap! We just broke the rules! and now we are doomed".

It's your universe. We can help you with mistakes or bad plot choices, but there is no system of rules that makes that easier or foolproof. Not cheating physics is one way to stay "safe" but that is the whole point of the story, isn't it?.

Original score: 3