Time loop

The time loop (or temporal loop) is "a plot device in fiction whereby characters re-experience a span of time which is repeated," "possibly with one or more characters retaining the memories from the previous loop." Loops reset on a rule: "when a certain condition is met, such as a death of a character or a certain point in time, the loop starts again." The article's examples run from Groundhog Day (1993) to Edge of Tomorrow (2014). Its engine: "Stories with time loops commonly center on the character learning from each successive loop through time."

The whole method, from loop rules to earned exits, is in how to write a time loop. For the writer the loop is structure as iteration: the arc is not the events but the looper's growing knowledge of them, so every pass must change what the character does. It differs from a time skip, which jumps once, and from time travel in fiction, whose traveler moves rather than resets; like a flashback it replays events, but forward and again.