The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this subject is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-traveling forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from a standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.
Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up; and in fact in later editions of this book all pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs. (1)
Got it?
Ok, now pretend it's in a foreign language, and that you have an exam over these tenses on Monday.
And that is how my Spanish class went today.
(1) From The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
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