Time Loops: The Things We Return To
Series: The Art of Time - Explorations in storytelling and perception
We like to think time moves forward—that life progresses, that we shed our past selves like old skins. But the truth is, we loop. We return to the same places, the same thoughts, the same questions. Some moments refuse to stay behind us. They surface unexpectedly, echoing through our lives in different forms.
Memory doesn’t unfold in a straight line. It circles back, revisits, reconfigures. The best writing knows this—and leans in.
Let’s start here:
There are stories you keep telling yourself. Maybe you don’t even realize it. A phrase you always come back to. A scene that lingers. A relationship you write and rewrite, hoping one day it will make sense.
The brain is wired for repetition. It clings to the unresolved, the things that refuse to be filed neatly into the past. This is why in writing, loops feel true. When a moment recurs—slightly altered, slightly frayed—it carries weight. The past is never quite past.
Loops don’t just mimic memory. They build meaning.
How to Write a Time Loop
Repeat with Purpose – Repetition, done well, isn’t redundant—it’s revelatory. Each time the same image or phrase returns, it should shift, deepen, reveal something new.
Echo Emotion, Not Just Events – A time loop doesn’t have to be literal. Sometimes, it’s a feeling that recurs: the same loneliness in a different city, the same hesitation before love, the same hunger for something just out of reach. Let the echoes carry through different contexts.
Vary the Wording – If you return to a moment, alter the language. A sentence stripped down. A metaphor sharpened. A phrase repeated with one word changed. The difference matters.
Play with Structure – A story doesn’t have to begin and end in different places. What happens if the last line mirrors the first? What if the reader has the sense that, despite everything, we are right back where we started?
Creative Connections: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life & Ismail Kadare’s Before the Bath
Some stories move forward. Others circle like animals in a cage.
Malick’s The Tree of Life resists linear time, unfolding instead in memories that ripple outward. The same images return: water, hands, light filtering through trees. The film isn’t structured around plot but around recollection—circling, repeating, accumulating weight. It’s not about what happens next. It’s about what won’t leave us.
Kadare’s Before the Bath takes this idea of looping even further, trapping its protagonist inside the same moment, again and again. A soldier is preparing to bathe. That’s it. That’s the story. But every time the scene repeats, something shifts—tension builds, small changes creep in, the inevitability of fate thickens like mist. The story reshapes itself through each iteration, creating an almost unbearable sense of suspense. Will the bath ever happen? Does it even matter? The loop itself is the point—the way dread accumulates, how the same event, told differently, can feel increasingly weighted with meaning.
Both Malick and Kadare use time loops not as gimmicks, but as a way to unearth something deeper. Each return to the moment isn’t a repetition—it’s a transformation.
Invitation to Play
Write a short piece that loops. Introduce an image, a phrase, a moment—then let it return later, altered. How has time changed it? How has the meaning deepened?
What do you keep circling back to? What refuses to let you go?
Try it. Let time repeat.
About Me
I’m Rena—a writer, educator, and relentless explorer of stories. Originally from Southern California, I’ve spent the past 20 years making my home in Costa Rica, where I live with my husband, two children, and a pair of Rhodesian Ridgebacks who refuse to acknowledge their size.
My writing has appeared in places like Brevity Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Five on the Fifth, New Flash Fiction Review, Headland Literary Journal, and more. Along the way, I’ve collected more rejection letters than I care to count—a badge of honor for any writer chasing the next story.
At my core, I believe in the power of ideas, in listening for what’s unsaid, and in finding beauty in the unexpected. Stories connect us—and together, I believe, we’re better.
Come write, wonder, and explore with me.
This is a big theme in my life at the moment. Thank you for sharing!! 🙏