Fantasy writers are often advised “to know the rules for your magic.” But “knowing the rules” does not necessarily mean that writers need to make up a list of dos and don’ts and a lot of magical theory. What they do need to know – and keep consistent – are the things about how magic works that are most likely to affect the story.
The most critical aspects of magic that affect the story are often obvious from the idea, characters, or plot that the writer is starting with. If the writer knows that the story climax will involve the magical equivalent of the gunfight at the OK Corral, their magic probably needs to be something that an individual can cast quickly, and that has the potential to be lethal. That still leaves more loose ends than you might think. And if there’s nothing in the initial story-seed that nails the magic to the wall, taking a systematic look at what the magic could be like can give the writer lots of interesting ideas for making their story different.
The first question is whether the magic in the story is active or passive or both. I define active magic as something that is done – casting spells, performing rituals, creating magical artifacts. Passive magic is something that is just there – magical animals like dragons and unicorns, for instance; vampires, ghouls, or werewolves; a magical gift that allows some people to grow wings, breathe underwater, or see otherwise invisible creatures. Or to put it another way, active magic is something people (or other sentient creatures, like elves) do; passive magic is something that just is.
While the majority of modern fantasy novels involve both spells and magical creatures or objects, there are some in which non-magical heroes battle magical menaces. The writer still has to consider the properties of magic; they just have to look at everything through a slightly different lens, because it isn’t the protagonist who is casting or creating magic, it’s the antagonist.
The next group of related possible properties fall under the general heading of “how does it work?” These things will definitely affect any plot or storyline that involves lots of active magic. The first one is speed – how fast can a mage, wizard, sorceress, or whatever, cast what kinds of spells? At one end of this are “point and shoot” spells that a wizard can cast with a flick of a finger; at the other are rituals that take lots of specific ingredients, careful preparation, and hours or days of chanting or reciting before the spell goes off. Again, most modern fantasy uses some variation of “point and shoot” spells for most everyday magic, with complex and time-consuming versions reserved for times when the spell-caster(s) need greater power to affect a larger area.
The range a magician can achieve is the next thing that comes to mind. There are innumerable variations here, from magic that is limited to whatever the spell-caster can touch or see to spells capable of destroying cities thousands of miles away. Range is often, though not always, related to power level – it seems intuitively obvious that it would take a lot of power to affect a person or thing from miles away.
The mechanics of spell-casting includes any tools (wands, rings, staffs, specific ingredients) that a magician may need. “Mechanics” also includes things like whether spells must be cast in some other language, or in poetry, or whether they become more powerful/effective with repetition or less powerful (or whether repetition has no effect whatever). I would stick specializations in this category as well – whether “specializing” means there is more than one type of magic (dividing magic up according to traditional elements, so that you have earth mages, water mages, air mages, and fire mages, for instance), or whether it means magicians can do everything, but often choose to specialize in one specific aspect of magic, like transformation, healing, mixing potions, or enchanting magical artifacts.
The question of specializations also relates to how common magical ability is in society in general, and at what level. Magicians may be incredibly rare or incredibly common, and this has implications for your story. If only one person in one billion has magical ability, there probably aren’t going to be a lot of magic schools around to train wizards. If everybody (including children) can work magic to some level, schools (or at least classes) are highly likely, as is the integration of magic into everyday life. To put it another way, magic can be a common tool that most people are expected to learn to use, like a computer or phone or driving a car, or it can be more like the Hadron Collider or the International Space Station – something that requires not only lots of ability but years of specialized training to use.
Timing often comes into play somewhere around here. Timing involves the way magic plays out across a magician’s lifetime – whether it’s something that gradually grows stronger (or weaker) with age or whether magical ability is triggered by something, like going through a ritual, reaching a certain age or maturity level, or having a particular experience. Finally, there’s the source of magic. Lots of authors don’t bother to deal with this – it’s just magic, that’s all – but it’s well worth a look. Larry Niven’s “What Good Is a Glass Dagger?” postulates “mana” as a magical power source that can be used up; Lois Bujold’s Five Gods series presents two varieties of magic, one that comes direct from the gods and one that results from becoming the host of a supernatural chaos-driven entity; Diane Duane’s The Door Into Fire has magicians casting especially powerful spells by using up some of their lifespan. Each of these things has a profound effect on the ways people think about and use magic…and on the kinds of plot-problems her characters have and the solutions they come up with.
Every fantasy has a slightly different mix of all these properties in its magic. Depending on the story, some will be really crucial for the author to have a good grasp on, and some will be unimportant and can be ignored. The important thing is to think about them enough to see which is which for this particular story.
Yup, 100% agree.
Fantasy and science fiction are about places different from our own, and exploring the difference is a key element in many (but certainly not all) stories. World-building is essential to making that element satisfying.
Disclaimer: It’s not the only element to satisfy readers, you don’t have to spend months or anything working this all out. I’m fond of working up historical timelines for my stories; one novel I’ve written but not revised I worked it out back to the Mesolithic. But the one I’m working on now doesn’t have anything like that.
As our hostess says, you just need enough for your particular story. Great entry – as usual!
Thinking about this some more, I will say that, if we want our work to stand out, worldbuilding is one way to do so.
Then again, maybe our hostess can weigh in on this. *Should* we try to make our work stand out? The benefits *seem* obvious, but what might the costs be?
“You just need enough for your particular story” is one way to do it, but some of us turn magic into another iceberg: 7/8th of what we work out is hidden below the surface of the story.
Something I’ve found useful is to think in terms of what is easy for magic to do vs what is hard. I have one setting where I made healing magic super-trivial easy, because I wanted sword duels to be frequent occurrences that everyone takes lightly.
For the same reason, I made protective amulets ubiquitous. You have to make your own, and if you’re a gentleman you know enough magic to do so. (With the magically advanced Island Kingdoms stretching that definition of “gentleman” to cover any pirate, rogue, or ordinary guy.)
Of course, the price you pay for that is that it means your conflict has to be something where healing magic can’t fix the problem.
It’s an ambiguous price. In that setting, at least, I’m just as happy not to be forced to deal with the usual conflicts created by expensive or non-existent healing magic.
I frequently start with feel: what does it feel like to work magic? Is it tedious? Exciting? Routine? How exhausted are you going to be afterwards? Will you expect it to be painful, so you’re feeling your way through it cautiously, or will it be exhilarating and you’ll throw yourself into magic with wild abandon? What happens if you get interrupted? If you have to sneeze and lose your concentration?
An aspect of magic that you touched on only lightly is its cost. There are plenty of stories wherein magic is used more or frivolously, but I find it more rewarding when the use of magic has consequences—and I don’t just mean of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice type.
Among the worst wrap-ups to a television series was that of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Willow simply cast a spell to disarm the Big Nasty and then cast another spell to turn every potential Slayer into an actual Slayer. Ho hum. If this were possible all along—and it didn’t cost anything to do—why wasn’t it done long before? Something with such far-reaching consequences should require some kind of sacrifice, or at least a hefty withdrawal from some kind of bank or reserve.
Another possibility is to have certain powerful spells or rituals work only when cast at the proper place and time. “When the stars are right…”
I once had villains attempt an extremely powerful ritual. It was costly, requiring multiple human sacrifices. But that wasn’t costly enough; I didn’t want the heroes to have to worry about the villains (or a new set of villains) trying again later. So I made the required location about a mile offshore, with a time-window that wouldn’t reoccur for thousands of years.
An example of magic costing the caster is the villainous Koura in the Harryhausen film _Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger_. Every time he casts a spell, he weakens and ages. He will do anything to attain the three Magical Widgets of Power, but … aside from that, he’s not such a bad guy. When he summons a homunculus and it shrinks away from him, he stops to play with it and reassure it before sending it out to spy for him. His servant, Ahmed, genuinely cares for him and keeps trying to persuade him to abandon the magic that’s going to kill him. He, in turn, cares enough about Ahmed to send him away to safety before the final confrontation. Some nice characterization in the scripting, and a stellar performance by a youngish Tom Baker.
I’d say that cost often falls under “source”? (E.g., if the source of magical power isn’t infinite and isn’t easily renewable – or isn’t renewable at all – someone is going to pay a cost for every piece of magic.)
I’m having way too much fun with costs right now; my characters fuel their ~high-school-physics-inspired magic with their bodies’ blood sugar/fat reserves/eventually protein from muscle, in the same way that they fuel any mundane action, but with a much higher maximum rate of energy expenditure. (…I realize that there may be some physiological problems with that; I’m going to try to run this piece by a biologist once it’s finished, and ask how much handwaving or revising I need to do to have that work.) Their magic works extremely rapidly, but if a character hasn’t been eating well enough for the past few weeks/months and isn’t paying enough attention to their own physical condition, that ability to rapidly expend energy can kill them. Because I don’t plan out plots far in advance, I wasn’t thinking of specific consequences when I first wrote in that detail – especially because the two main protagonists have relatively low-power-use abilities, and therefore aren’t endangered by this – but now that I have several underweight characters with more power-intensive fighting abilities wandering around in the aftermath of a blizzard (without much access to food), I’m going to enjoy putting them in danger and seeing whether the most aggressive character in the story *really* wants to try fighting off a pack of large carnivores right now.
And if you want a character to be able to make up a new spell to save the day, you need to lay out the rules to making up spells. Enough so the readers don’t think it’s a deus ex machina.
Fascinating discussion — and a great summary of what goes into making a “magic system.”
To my mind, a great detail of that detail rests on where the magic comes from, how and why it works — what one might call the metaphysics of magic. It comes from one’s own physical reserves? We get K.M.D.’s sugar-level magic, where those skinny girls who have starved themselves are at a distinct disadvantage. 🙂 It comes from a resource in the earth? We get Niven’s “Magic Goes Away.” It’s from the Force? We have an (apparently?) inexhaustible reserve of energy generated by all living things. From the Source? Robert Jordan’s source of power also seems to be effectively unlimited.
One can of course start with a theory and then develop the operating limitations — or start with the limitations you want and develop the theory to fit. Either way, it’s a great help to consistency if we have a coherent idea how it all works — like being able to tinker and engineer better if you understand a little physics and chemistry.
Rick
Hey. Most people are at a disadvantage when they’re starving in this world, too.