Ever wanted to create your own time-traveling assassin universe? Yeah, me too. That’s why I wrote The Silent Guardian. It wasn’t just an excuse to play with paradoxes and blow things up across millennia—though, I won’t lie, that was part of the fun. Building this universe meant wrestling with time travel logic, crafting deeply flawed heroes, and making sure the world didn’t implode (narratively, I mean).
Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how I approached the storytelling, and how you can build a rich, mind-bending universe of your own.
1. Choose Your Flavor of Time Travel (and Stick to It)
Before you start assassinating emperors in ancient China or sabotaging the moon landing, you’ve got to decide how time works. Fixed timeline? Multiverse? A single mutable stream? Don’t skip this part. If your story breaks its own rules, readers will notice (and yell at you on Goodreads).
In The Silent Guardian, I built my time travel system around a block universe: everything that will happen has already happened. Time travel doesn’t rewrite history—it loops you into a predetermined structure. This creates built-in tension. The hero thinks he has free will, but does he?
Tip: Write out your time travel “rules” in a doc before you write your story. Trust me, it’ll save you from headache-inducing paradoxes later.
2. Build Time Travel Limitations
No one wants a god-mode character who can bounce around time like it’s a Netflix menu. Limitations breed creativity.
In my story, time travel requires intense mental focus and drains the body, meaning the protagonist can’t just hop around willy-nilly. It’s costly, dangerous, and sometimes doesn’t go as planned. Think of it like teleporting with a migraine… and a sword through your gut.
Tip: Introduce a “cost” to time travel—physical, emotional, or philosophical. It adds realism to the most unrealistic part of your universe.
Available Now
A vow of silence. A mission across centuries. One assassin holds the fate of humanity in his hands.
Adam never chose to be silent; the Phylax demanded it. Trained from childhood as a time-traveling enforcer, he slips through centuries to eliminate those who threaten the future. His latest mission: assassinate Emperor Qin Shi Huang before a ruthless plot ultimately destroys humankind.
Grab your copy of The Silent Guardian today to embark on a time-travel adventure unlike any other.
3. Give Your Assassin a Heart (Eventually)
Sure, the phrase time-traveling assassin sounds cool. But readers won’t care unless your character evolves.
Adam, my protagonist, starts out as a silent agent indoctrinated by a secretive order called the Phylax. He’s efficient. Obedient. Deadly. But throughout the novel, he begins to question everything—including the truth about his past and the people he’s killed.
His vow of silence? Not just a gimmick. It becomes the emotional backbone of his arc—his silence is both his shield and his prison. When he finally speaks, it’s seismic.
Tip: Make your assassin confront the human cost of their actions. The internal battles are what make the external ones hit harder.
4. Worldbuild in Layers of Time
Here’s the real trick to a time-travel world: don’t just build one world. Build many versions of it, across time.
The world of The Silent Guardian spans ancient China, Byzantine strongholds, and dystopian futures ruled by a hidden temple beneath the Acropolis. Each time period has its own rules, customs, and tech—and they all interlock in subtle ways.
Tip: Use artifacts, architecture, and language to reflect the passage of time. Small recurring details (a symbol, a phrase, a ritual) can connect timelines without over-explaining.
5. Handle Paradoxes with Precision (or Embrace the Chaos)
Paradoxes are like glitter: a little is magical. Too much, and everything’s ruined.
I embraced the bootstrap paradox—objects or knowledge that exist because they loop through time. Adam carries a talisman he didn’t create, but it has always been his. Later, he finds out that even his abduction as a child may have been orchestrated by… himself?
Tip: Choose one paradox (bootstrap, grandfather, predestination) and build your plot around it. Readers love trying to untangle the logic—just make sure it can be untangled.
6. Embed Philosophical Themes
Time travel is the perfect playground for big questions. Free will. Fate. Memory. Identity. Throw those into your story and watch the emotional stakes skyrocket.
The Silent Guardian asks: What if your entire belief system was a lie? What if you were the villain and didn’t know it? What if saving the world meant breaking everything that made you who you are?
Tip: Choose a core philosophical theme and run it through your characters, plot, and setting. It’ll give your story weight beyond the action.
Final Thoughts
Writing a time travel assassin story isn’t just about action—it’s about building rules and then watching your characters break them. It’s about layering timelines like a very unstable cake and hoping it doesn’t collapse. But if you do it right? You’ll give readers a story they won’t forget.
If you’re curious how I put these pieces together, check out The Silent Guardian. Just be warned: once you enter the Phylax’s world, you may never see time the same way again.
Want to learn about character development using the third rail? Click here.