Travelling Through Time in “The Wall Isn’t a Circle”

We’ve often dreamed of travelling through time. Dropping in for a tankard of ale at a medieval tavern; twirling across the dance floor of a Georgian ballroom; riding horseback through ancient, untouched woodland. Who would you choose—if you could look through the eyes of anyone in history?

There’s something about the simplicity of it all. Of course, it’s all very “rose-tinted glasses.” No concern for the brutality of the past: the inequality, the disease, the discrimination. And to say nothing of the “butterfly effect theory” (the idea that tiny changes in time can have a ripple effect in the future—like a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane).

But still, the idea of time travel has always fascinated us. Particularly because we’re sisters, we have a shared past and childhood, we can look back on with the same nostalgia.

In some ways, it was this nostalgia that first inspired us to write together.

The Train that Took Us to the Past

It was a hot day—the air especially sticky inside the cramped train carriage we rode between the city centre and our house-share in a leafy suburb of Manchester. We’d both just finished a long day at the office and were trying to find anything to distract us from the too-close armpits and sweaty backs around us. Rose started reminiscing on the stories we’d written as children. Alice joined in, and soon, we were looking back to the past with those rose-tinted glasses, dreaming of the days when we were free to create and play and build worlds more exciting than our own. This is how we first spoke about writing together as adults. It was the nostalgia of the past that motivated us.

Years later, when we came to write “The Wall Isn’t a Circle” for the Writers of the Future Contest, the world had changed from that first conversation on the train. Social media had blown up in a big way. Every website asked for cookies, every transaction for your email address. We found ourselves in a world where eyes were everywhere, and data was everything. Georgian dance floors and medieval taverns couldn’t have felt further away. And so, it’s no wonder that we dreamed again of that simplicity, of being able to drop back into the mind of somebody whose life might be less complicated.

Our Winning Story Brought Together the Past and the Present

“The Wall Isn’t a Circle” is set in London, in a world not too dissimilar from our own. At the start of the story, we meet Macy, a trainee lawyer who has been invited to the launch party for a new app. The app’s developers are already on Macy’s radar, and not for good reasons. They’ve got a string of legal scandals, including one that’s already put Macy’s career in jeopardy. Soon, we learn that the app they’ve created allows its users to time travel virtually. To look back through the eyes of anybody in history. But Macy knows this won’t be the end of the story, not when its creators have already proved themselves to be dangerous and deceitful.

Macy is a character that we both resonate with. She feels something that a lot of people—especially young people—often struggle with: pressure. Pressure on the career she’s chosen, on her appearance, and even how much she likes herself as a person.

As the story unfolds, the nature of the technology evolves, and Macy is forced into a world where the barriers of privacy are dismantled. The eyes of the world—that she already felt to be judging her—are amplified. But she too has a chance to see through the eyes of others. This trade-off mirrors our modern world of social media and privacy. In some ways, the chance to see through other people’s eyes helps us understand each other better. But in other ways, it breaks down our self-esteem: if others are watching, judging us constantly, how can we separate what we want, and what other people expect of us?

Writing Together Has Been Almost Like Looking Through Each Other’s Eyes

We’ve always been close, but by putting our feelings on paper, in developing believable characters, we’ve had to confront conversations we might’ve shied away from previously—our deepest, darkest insecurities and regrets, even memories that’ve shaped our views on trust, betrayal, and the world around us. As we wrote “The Wall Isn’t a Circle,” our bond as sisters naturally forged into the story, appearing as a love-hate relationship that so many siblings can identify with: driving each other crazy whilst also being essential to each other’s lives.

Ultimately, “The Wall Isn’t a Circle” is about our sense of self. Each of us lives inside our own heads, knowing our own feelings, our own insecurities and the reasons why we do what we do. And in letting other people in, we risk seeing ourselves differently—changing who we are, or trying to be someone we’re not—but we also have the chance to understand each other better, empathise, make peace, and improve the world around us. It’s a fine balance, but as technology advances and privacy erodes, it’s a balance we’re going to get used to.