Icon by Peg Ihinger
Every so often, I run into someone who is…a bit confused about the way magic works in fantasies. They generally fall into one of two categories—either they have read that “a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” and interpreted it to mean “all magic is/should-be just wildly advanced technology,” or they have read that “in fantasy fiction, magic must have rules, magic must have limits, magic must be consistent, etc.” and interpreted it to mean that all writers have to begin by making ups a bunch of logical rules, limits, etc., which they then have to follow…and by “logical” they generally mean “similar to the laws of physics and chemistry.”
This is typified by the gentleman who wanted to know how I could believe in fantasy stories when so many of them have magic systems that break the law of conservation of energy.
The literal answer is that I don’t “believe” in fantasy stories, because they are fiction. What I think he meant to ask was how I could suspend my disbelief long enough to enjoy a story that broke the laws of physics. The answer to that question is that obviously, I have more robust disbelief suspenders than he does.
In actual fact, super-advanced-technology-as-magic, rules, limits, consistency, etc. are all writing tools that can be used in different ways to enable or encourage readers to suspend their disbelief and enjoy the story. For readers who demand that “consistency” means that magic must be consistent with currently known laws of physics and chemistry, a magic system that depends on medieval principles of alchemy, or on the Greek system of four elements, is just not going to be something they accept.
Similarly, the “rules” of magic—which usually involve things like the limits of magic, the price or cost of spell-casting, and the mechanisms by which magic works—do not have to look or sound like the laws of physics. They can—and it often makes it easier for readers to accept magic if it has “laws” like “you can’t transform rocks into food that will actually sustain you” or “the laws of Similarity and Contagion.” But if that’s not what the story needs, it is perfectly fine to have magic that works based on different rules of poetry or intuition.
“Rules of magic” also don’t have to be made up in advance. I’ve had very good luck in several books by writing ten or twelve chapters and then looking at what the characters have done successfully (or not), and deducing from that what magic can or can’t do in this world.
I’ve written several books in which what the characters think they know about how magic works is wrong in some fundamental way. Sort of the way astronomy started with a geocentric system, then, as better data became available, accepted a heliocentric system, and then moved into relativity and the Big Bang. People could just as easily come up with a logical-sounding theory of how magic works that gets some things right, but that is incomplete, incorrect, or inadequate to explain in detail how higher/stronger levels of magic work.
Some readers (and writers) get invested in a particular set of rules, limits, or explanations for “how magic works,” and have trouble suspending disbelief if the magic system in a story doesn’t follow whatever things they have decided are the most plausible foundations for magic systems. These folks are the ones who like to argue with authors about whether the magic in their books is “realistic” or “plausible” because it breaks the law of gravity, or conservation of energy.
But magic in fiction is made up. It only has to be predictable and consistent within the particular story. It doesn’t have to be consistent with the real world. You can have a fantasy universe in which a magical experiment cracked the world into asteroid-sized bits…but there was enough time for other magicians to put up a spell to keep all the bits confined within an atmosphere, so people are living on a bunch of islands floating in air, and have to cope with things like large bubbles of seawater splooshing into their fragment. You can have actual gods who gift mortals with specific types of magic, or power spells with someone’s emotions or health or life force. You can make magic a substitute for technology–refrigerators based on cooling spells, medical treatment based on sticking needles into models of bacteria to kill them off.
Making up these kinds of “rules of magic” in advance can make it easier for a writer to stay consistent during the course of writing the story, which, in turn, makes it easier for many readers to suspend disbelief. Making up magical rules, limits, prices, etc. in advance also allows the writer to make sure that the magic doesn’t get in the way of the story. If the central problem of the story is destroying a magic ring, you don’t want the wizard to be able to dematerialize it on page 2 when he realizes that said ring is dangerously evil. You also don’t want the wizard to be able to teleport over to a handy volcano and drop the ring in (unless you’re writing parody or trying for a really, really short story). So you design the magic so it can’t do those things, but can (for instance) make lightweight high-energy food to make the trip to the volcano easier, or magical camouflage cloaks so people can avoid the guards.
If one can keep track of this on the fly, or is OK with straightening out inconsistencies in the rewrite, there’s no reason to make up a list of rules for magic in advance, or even at all. As long as what magic can and can’t do is consistent in the finished story, how one gets there is irrelevant. The writer doesn’t need to explain how it works and why it “breaks the laws of physics” unless that’s relevant to the story. And it is perfectly possible that what the characters think is the explanation for how magic works is wrong, the same way the geocentric model of the universe (everything revolves around the earth) was replaced by the heliocentric model (everything revolves around the sun), and eventually by the current Big Bang theory (everything, including the sun and the earth, is flying away from the middle of a giant explosion).
I admit I love to write stories where the truth and what people believe is very different. And beliefs vary considerably across cultures and subcultures. Because I like making extra work for myself. Or actually because that’s part of my personal engine of beliefs: if even my sister and I don’t remember things the same, why in the world would an entire planet have similar beliefs? They’re going to come at the same facts from different angles, and draw different conclusions. All will be wrong, all will be right, the author is sovereign.
Thoughts of insufficient caffeine:
There’s also “Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.”
My preference is for magic to be an alien sort of technology, riffing off John Campbell’s idea of an alien as a creature that thinks as well as a man but not like a man. I try for magic that works as well as mundane technology, but not like mundane technology.
So food might be preserved, not by magically chilling it, but by putting in a box full of magic smoke, or in a chest full of magic salt. A warm loaf of bread placed in such a preserving chamber will develop a smokey or salty tang, but it will remain warm and will be slow to spoil or go stale.
There’s a good bit of science fiction out there that violates conservation of energy, although it’s generally handwaved as having the energy ‘actually’ coming from hyperspace or the deep structure of space-time or some such.
Magic can vary by location (“Rules change in the Reaches”) or by time (“When the Stars are Right”). If the plot or (especially) world-building calls for it, it can give some things for free, or at least for very cheap.
My head-canon for LOTR is that Sauron had weather-control powers and used them to turn Mordor into a no-fly zone for anything not badged as belonging to him – down to the flies. The eagles could only fly into Mordor to rescue Frodo and Sam after the Ring was destroyed and the weather-control was coming apart – and even then it was dangerous.
I love the phrase “more robust disbelief suspenders”!
> “Rules of magic” also don’t have to be made up in advance.
Absolutely. But for me, that’s part of the fun. I can keep the world-building consistent, if the “magical” creatures are subject to the same constraints as the people are. Working out the rules also generally gives me ideas for the story, too.
Then, I also enjoy any fight/conflict scenes as they come up. “Okay, so the hell hound’s every exhalation is flame, and they’re slowly stalking the viewpoint character, whose only ability is to draw upon the earth for strength. How will she handle the thing?”
It’s why I don’t go with stock dwarves, elves, etc. when writing a fantasy. I’ll know how every confrontation comes out before it starts. Much more fun to make up something new.
But that’s just me.
And some people have to be that way or they end up with plot holes galore.
Oh sure. If there wasn’t every kind of writer, there wouldn’t be every kind of story.
I am personally not fond of “magic is a kind of technology”–it seems to me to limit the kinds of stories you can tell, and it rules out the ones where the magic actually feels magical to me.
Folkloric magic, and much fantasy magic, has a subjective component. Intent, purity, state of mind, these can all matter, so that two people enacting the exact same steps may not get the same result (as they should with technology).
It’s valid to ignore this and make science-y magic. I just don’t like it particularly and don’t think it’s in any way obligatory.
I also don’t particularly like the alternative that magic is completely arbitrary. I’d like, as a reader, to feel there’s something orderly there, just not a scientific order. _The Curse of Chalion_ or _The Riddlemaster of Hed_ do a good job of this for me. You get a pretty clear idea of what magic can do, and it’s not much like physics at all.
I’d say that magic as alien tech (“as well as mundane-world but not like mundane-world”) can stretch to cover intent, purity, state of mind, etc. and so be orderly without being orderly in a physics sort of way.
Re science versus magic, I am continually amused by people who think that Star Trek is science fiction.
While I don’t feel the need for conservation of energy in magical systems, I do strongly believe that magic must have a “cost”—not necessarily in something like mana but rather consequences or sacrifice. This is why I found the ending of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series so disappointing. Willow just waves her hands, and everyone who could potentially be a Slayer is now a Slayer. No cost, no consequences. Ho hum.
And disbelief suspenders definitely need to be a thing. I’m certain there’s a market for them.
Technically, the magic doesn’t need to have to have rules and limitations. Your character’s ability to accomplish things with magic needs reasonably consistent limitations. They’re not the same thing.
Imagine that magic is performed by summoning inscrutable eldritch abominations and trying to persuade them to do what you want. The abominations could be functionally omnipotent – a no-limits magic system – but if summoners have great difficulty communicating with the abominations, who are just too alien for most human concepts to translate, then you could have all sorts of plot-relevant problems when characters try to do things by magic.
I wonder what the sufficiently-advanced-technology types would make of that magic system *evil laughter*
You do have to ensure that no one thinks that the characters getting this the first time and that the second is the hand of the author.
This ties to the ideas of “soft magic” and “hard magic”. I like what Brandon Sanderson has written about them. Paraphrasing, it’s about how readers need to understand the rules of magic for the author to be able to plausibly use magic to solve the plot’s problems.
Causing problems with magic on the other hand is easier. For example if Gandalf had beaten the balrog with magic that we readers hadn’t heard about before, that wouldn’t have felt quite deserved, but his defeat despite his magic powers felt quite dramatic.
It’s a good point that I hadn’t really thought about, how even in the cases where the reader might need to understand the rules of the magic, that doesn’t mean the author needs to know them before starting writing, as long as they end up on the page before the book is sent to the press. It could be generalized also to a lot of other writing things.
I note that if your magic should seem full of wonder to the characters, it probably should not be under their control. It’s the surprises that inspire wonder.
It seems that fantasy writers write fantasy rules that make more sense than Superhero powers.
If you make your superheroes too coherent you may end up not writing superheroes. If they are all wearing Iron Man type suits, they are mecha. If they are all wizard, they are urban fantasy. Etc.