: Re: Referring to different instances of the same character in time travel I am writing a story that involves time travel, and I have a chapter where a character from the future interacts with his

@Sims2267584

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I think it may be solved using the same term consistently.

From what you wrote:

"the man", "his older counterpart", "his future self", "his older self", "Older Adrien", and "his other self".

Those are a lot of synonyms. While they are correct and they do convey the idea, a reader is going to be pulled out if you change "the name" of a character every third sentence.

Establish a single nick to distinguish between the two; if you can keep it short, the better (Older Adrien or Adult Adrien could be good and straightforward). You could also use "old adrien", maybe playing on the fact that from a teenager‘s point of view, being 20 years old seems like "a big deal".

Once you choose a "name" for your character, readers will become accostumed to it, even if it gets repeated a lot. Those repetitions tend to become invisible to the readers, since our brains "filter" them out.

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