Magic is used frequently in fiction. In fantasy, science fiction, romance, there isn’t a genre in which magic doesn’t work, if its written properly. But you can’t just throw magic into your story and expect it to work straight away without thinking through a few things first, something I touched on slightly in a previous blog post, world building, which can be read here, but now I’ll go into a lot more detail.
In my recently published e-book, ‘The Travellers; First Blood’ I created a magic system known to the characters as ‘The Void’, and before I began writing this into my WIP I didn’t delve into its backstory at all, and this became evident to me when I began editing. The rules, I created as I went along, contradicted themselves over and over, or they just didn’t make any sense. I corrected these over time, but it was a lot of unnecessary work that had to be completed because I didn’t take the five minutes at the start to hash out a structure.
So, this is for all you who want to use magic in your work, and don’t know where to begin. Now, I’m sure there are a great many extras you can add to this list, you can submerse yourselves in lore and so much detail your head cant take it, carefully explaining every kind of magic and every kind of spell, how it’s used, what its used for, who can use it and where people learn each individual spell, but unless you’re writing some kind of spell book for whatever reason, that’s a great deal of needless work.
So, with the introduction out of the way, it’s time to begin.
I think the first place you should start, when it comes to planning your magic system, is who can use it? Who can tap into this mystical power, and wield it for their own needs?
Can everyone practice magic? Or do you need to have a specific connection to some otherworldly power? If so, how do you procure this connection?
Is it hereditary?
Do you have to make a deal with the devil, or some other kind of spiritual being?
Are there magical items or sources of power you have to ‘feed’ from, absorbing magic in some sort of ritual like a magical battery?
And how is power measured? Does everybody have the same capacity for power?
Can an individual reach a point and progress no further, whilst a separate individual can progress further and faster? Or does everybody have the same capabilities, and its merely a matter of practice makes perfect?
If so, where do people learn about Magic?
Harry Potter has Hogwarts, Star Wars has the Jedi Academy, so what do you have?
Is there a school or institution solely focused on training young magic users in how to properly harness their gifts? Are there small covens who teach their own beliefs and spells? Or do magic users teach themselves?
I think one of the worst representations on how magic is passed on, that I have witnessed, is in the television show ‘The Vampire Diaries’. Now, I haven’t read the vampire diaries books, and so I can’t comment on those, but in the television show, magic is passed on by recording spells in a grimoire, and any witch or warlock can come along, pick up the book, and learn the spell.
The script writers might drag it out for ten minutes or so, but the spell is learned.
Now there are several issues with this. One, what if the witch or warlock didn’t want to write down their spell? They didn’t want their book stolen by an enemy faction and used against them? or what if they did write it down, but they used some sort of code. I mean they would have to be an idiot not to encode the book that holds the knowledge of their and their anscesters power.
Two, how can someone, who has no prior knowledge of any magic, pick up a book and cast a spell, and then repeatedly cast the same spell with no effort or difficulty. I imagine it’s like making a car engine work. Now, I’m sure if I had a very detailed guide, and several guides explaining the guide, I could build a car engine no problem, but it would take a long time for me to do, probably many months, and I certainly couldn’t do it a second time from memory. There are probably a few people who can, but I’m not one of them. Perhaps there are simple spells, but there are simple moters and i still wouldnt know what im doing if i picked up one of those either.
Ok, I’m rambling, time to move on.
Will you have just the one kind of magic in your world? Or will there be various kinds of magic present? One thing I think that the vampire diaries got right, was that they had various types of magic in their world, and each one built on the last. They had spirit magic, ancestral magic (which were different somehow) elemental magic, and something called expression (I didn’t understand that one either) along with various others.
How will it work in your world? Will the same person be able to use more than one kind of magic? How can they be used together? Do they behave the same way? Or differently? Are they all taught the same way? Are there schools dedicated to each individual style? Ok, so that’s a lot of questions. A lot more than you need to answer in your actual work, but they’re always good to know, for some sort of behind the scenes continuity.
But that’s not all folks.
No, there are more!
Does the world know about magic? And if so, what are their thoughts on it?
If everybody has access to magic, do they know?
Does everybody practice? Or is it a coveted skill that only the few are taught?
Is there tension between non-magic users and magic users? Or do they live in harmony? Who is the dominant force? Do magic users rule over the world? Or are they oppressed? Or are they just there, going about their everyday business, just a little differently?
Are magic users feared? Are they shunned?
If your son started showing signs of magic would you throw them out? Try to suppress their gifts, if so what happens to them? Are there any consequences to not using magic?
(that will depend on how magic exists of course, if its an internal thing, does it damage the individual? Does it affect them mentally or physically, or both?)
Are places of learning legal?
What kind of punishment is there for practicing magic illigally?
Or at the other side of it, what if magic isn’t general knowledge?
How to people keep it a secret? Is there a governing force, or is it just general understanding (the latter being the worst option in my opinion) are there those in the magical world that want to go public?
How are they kept in line?
Ok, now not so much a question that needs answering.
In fact, it’s not even close to a question, it’s a plea. Please don’t make your magical characters over powered. I’m going to hate on the Vampire Diaries again for a little bit.
It always annoyed me how there would be some kind of unwinnable situation, or an unsolvable problem, or something that went against the goals of the main cast, and along the magic user would come, right at the last minute, after reading their spell book for five minutes would know the exact spell used to get them out of a jam. It takes away all the tension, just knowing that no matter what the problem, that one character can overcome it easily.
Time to insert a shameless plug... In my Travellers series, Void magic is the only magical system I have explored so far, although I do have others ready to implement in further works. The Void can only be used by those given a connection to it, which are currently only Nightwalker Vampires, and their thrall slaves. It’s a relatively simple magical system, which has left me plenty of room to grow it in further work, as it is only briefly touched on in First Blood, but in my current WIP I go into a lot more detail as the one of the first books secondary characters, Alice, comes to terms with her new life, and is taught how to wield her new gifts.
Right, enough of my words in your face. Bye
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