How To Write Magical Words: A Writer's Companion Read online

  In the early days of fantasy, when most of the books being written were long quests across dangerous lands of mythical beasts or retellings of fairy tales, the magical creatures tended to be the ones familiar to us through Greek, Roman and Celtic mythology. After a while, readers started pining for something new, something different, but still fantastic. Recent trends in fantasy reflect that desire, producing writers whose work leaned toward magical creatures blending into contemporary life. In the last fifteen or twenty years urban fantasy has become its own subgenre of fantasy. Unless you’ve spent the last decade in the Brazilian rain forest, you already know about the popularity of vampires and werewolves as romantic figures. Other writers are delving into the less well-known creatures, like skinwalkers, for example. Whether you’re trying something exotic or working with the familiar, including magical creatures is definitely a plus.

  So how does one go about finding these fascinating beings? As with many things, the best place to start is by reading. Read mythology. Greek, Roman and Celtic are well-known, since most Americans studied at least a little bit of those mythologies in school. There’s nothing wrong with writing your own story about a familiar topic. What you have to do is make your idea fresh, so that even if it looks like something else, it isn’t the same at all.

  What if you want to write about some beast that no one else has tried? Despite the shrinking of the globe thanks to the internet, there are many cultures whose mythologies are still mysteries to the American reading public. Study the legends of India, for example. Take a virtual trip through the folk tales of Russia. Considering how many people think Africa is a country, you might do well to examine the many rich and diverse cultural traditions of all the countries on that continent.

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  David B. Coe

  This is a great lesson for writers to keep in mind, not only for magic, but for worldbuilding and character details as well. Plot and character drive narrative. Explanations slow things down and distract from plot and character. Yes, the magic system based on blending pop-tart ingredients is cool (and tasty!) but only to a point. And then it comes back to the things that count. Plot and character (have I said that enough yet?).

  Faith Hunter

  Over-explaining is such a trap, and the magical systems are a big lure for writers. I too, went with the MC-doesn’t-know-how-the-magic-works concept in both of my series, just to avoid being snared in it. Yes, I know how the systems work. No, the reader doesn’t have to, or not all at once. The very questions and blank spots can create as much interest (or more) as having it all spelled out (pun intended).

  Another way we writers over-explain is in the geo political, martial, or weapons systems. In the Jane Yellowrock series, my editor had me cut a lot of vamp clan stuff out of book one, and then in book two there are only four clans left instead of the original eight. Much easier for a reader to follow, and I lost nothing to work with.

  Daniel R. Davis

  By the by, this was always a favorite site of mine to go searching for odd monsters for my writing sessions and for something different to put into a story. Encyclopedia Mythica: http://www.pantheon.org/

  Creating Magic

  David B. Coe

  Today’s essay comes to us thanks to my good friend Stuart Jaffe who emailed me a few days ago to discuss the creation of magic systems. This is something I’ve done quite a bit of, and it’s one of the things I enjoy most about writing fantasy. Magic is, in many ways, the defining characteristic of our genre. Yes, I know: we often say here at Magical Words that character and plot and voice are the most important elements of good storytelling. But the fact is that fantasy wouldn’t be fantasy without magic. And besides, making up magic systems is really fun to do.

  But contrary to what some people think, creating a magic system is not an anything-goes endeavor. It takes serious thought and careful planning, not to mention a good deal of imagination. There are, of course, a thousand different ways to use magic. I’ve had magic systems that are based in a psychic bond between a mage and a familiar, usually a bird of prey. The power actually flowed from that connection and was focused through a third element, a crystal. I’ve also had psionic (mind) magic. Power was basically as immediate as thought. I’ve used spell magic, blood magic, sacrificial magic. There are endless possibilities. When I’m working on magic systems, though, I like to keep three things in mind.

  1. A magic system has to have limitations. You don’t want unlimited magic because then your story becomes a contest between mages (wizards, sorcerers, insert your favorite word here) with near God-like powers. Magic should be taxing in some way. It should tire the people who use it, or it should have some other kind of cap that keeps it from being used all the time, for everything, without end. That said, as with everything we talk about here, there are exceptions to this "rule." You can, of course, write an effective story in which your mages have unlimited power (others have done it), but you need to make certain that you pay attention to the ramifications of this decision. If there are members of your society who don’t have magic, they’re going to be second-class citizens in nearly every way, unless your magic-wielders are uncommonly (and perhaps unrealistically) benign. Call me a cynic, but I believe that unfettered magical power will lead to unfettered political, social, and military domination.

  2. In my opinion, magic should have a cost. For me, it’s not enough that magic be limited or bounded in some way. It should also have repercussions. In the Forelands books, for instance, the Qirsi who use magic shorten their lives with every conjuring. The book I’m working on right now has a kind of cool, different system that I’m not ready to discuss in detail, but those who use magic eventually go insane. In my Thieftaker series there’s no real physical cost, but there is a social one. Conjurers are outcasts. They’re hated, feared, and persecuted, and so they have to be careful where and when they use their power, lest they be arrested, tortured, and put to death.

  3. And finally, (this is pretty basic) a magic system has to be internally consistent. You have to establish rules and then those rules have to be as iron clad as the physical laws of our natural world. I know that sounds self-evident, but you’d be amazed by the number of writers who don’t get this one, who allow their magic to work as deus ex machina again and again. Once you set up your system of magic, you have to write around it. As soon as you start messing with it to fit the needs of your characters or your plot, you undermine the credibility of your world. Just as you wouldn’t start changing your world map in the middle of series to fit the travel needs of your characters, you shouldn’t change the rules of your magic system.

  As writers of fantasy, we ask our readers to suspend their disbelief every time they open one of our books. We are saying, in effect, "This couldn’t really happen, but I’m going to create a world that feels so real to you that you’ll come to believe that it actually could." Magic, of course, is part of the fiction we create, and it has to be every bit as "realistic" and believable as the rest of our worldbuilding. You want your maps and your histories to seem credible. Your magic should, too. It shouldn’t be a perfect, boundless, painless tool; it shouldn’t stretch and bend to meet the needs of your characters or your plot. That’s too easy, and it will make your work less interesting. Limitations, costs, consistency: in my opinion, these are the hallmarks of a workable magic system.

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  David J. Fortier

  One thing I notice in a lot of stories in writing workshops is char-acters with limitless magic. I like limitations, costs, and consistency.

  Initially, I tried to stay away from assigning numeric values to the magic in my world, but I found it hard to determine who had the capability to do what. I eventually buckled in and wrote up a brief number system to help me keep track of character abilities and potential power. Unfortunately, it started to work like a gaming system, so I try to avoid looking at it unless absolutely necessary. I have heard of other authors using numeric values for their systems, particularly th
ose who are also professors.

  Any thoughts on numeric magic systems?

  David B. Coe

  Dave, thanks for the question. I have done very little gaming, so I come at magic from a strictly fiction-oriented perspective. Perhaps for that reason, I don’t like the idea of giving numerical values. To me, that would be akin to rating my characters’ looks or morals on a similar scale, which doesn’t work for me either.

  That said, for writers who do come at this from a gaming background, I’d imagine that a numbering system could be very helpful for keeping track of which mage is most skilled or most powerful. But I would think that it would be most valuable as a tool, rather than as something actually written into the story. I think as soon as you introduce some kind of numerical rating into your story you run the risk of having it read as a gaming story, which might hurt you with some publishers. On the other hand, as with martial arts, you may come up with a system that acknowledges the achievements of wizards by ranking them on various levels. As long as the standards are consistent and the rituals of graduating wizards from one level to the next are appropriate to your world, that could be a really cool basis for a magic system.

  Mark Wise

  My issue right now is that when the system is held up against your three hallmarks, I feel it is lacking #2 and #3. I have limited it by making it purely a constructive magic, it cannot do harm to most living things since it is the residual Power of Creation left over from my world’s god. However, I don’t have a real "cost" right now, and I haven’t quite worked out the actual mechanics of it though I am thinking along a psionics/funneling of energy path.

  But I guess my main sticking point would be #2, Cost. So far, there is not a cost to use it.

  David B. Coe

  Okay, let me start with the usual Magical Words caveat: my hallmarks are just that—mine. Just because your magic system doesn’t conform to all three of them doesn’t mean in any way that there is something wrong with what you’ve got. I like the origins of your system and the built in limitation—that’s a nice backstory for the system. Very cool. It may be that you don’t need a cost, although if you intend to warp this power in some way for the purposes of your story—in other words, if there is going to be some bad guy who comes along and manages to twist the power into something dark—having a cost might be handy for your story line. Or if you have been feeling on your own that there is something missing, then having a cost to the magic might fix that. But you certainly don’t need a cost just because I say so. Make sure it’s something that will truly add to the story and the world before you add in an element of that magnitude. Looking forward to seeing your work in print, Mark!

  Wrestling the TMP

  A.J. Hartley

  I’ve been re-watching some old Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes on BBC America lately, remembering how much I liked the show’s innovative approach to familiar sci-fi scenarios. But I’m also reminded of something that always drove me nuts: Deanna Troi’s intermittent empathic sensory perception which allowed her to read people’s unspoken feelings. I say intermittent because her ability was often crucial to the episode’s story, but at other times—when it would have been really useful—it went on the blink: the emotions of the crew were running too high, or there was atmospheric turbulence of some kind, or the target being scanned was the wrong species . . . In each case, she was suddenly unable to get a clear fix on how someone was feeling.

  Of course, the truth is that in most of those episodes Deanna’s abilities had to be switched off or else the episode would fall apart. Without all those convenient blockages, intentions would be stripped bare, duplicity revealed, and villains unmasked. We would know by the end of the teaser all the stuff we weren’t supposed to know till the last few minutes of the show. Suspense, mystery, and dramatic conflict would all go out the window because Deanna was just a bit too powerful.

  I call this an example of the TMP: a plot device which has Too Much Power.

  Somewhere in those early script meetings it sounded really cool to have an empath on board, someone to balance the (supposedly) emotionless logic of Data by being not just in touch with her own feelings, but clued in to everyone else’s as well. But once the series was well underway the script writers constantly had to turn her emotional radar off, and the result was not just annoying: it exposed the plot as a machine which was all too easy to derail.

  There are lots of these in fantasy and sci-fi: wondrous artifacts which have mystical properties, innocent looking weapons which have the effect of a nuclear strike, characters whose magical abilities allow them to summon tornadoes or turn lions into hatboxes. The TMP device often looks cool, a great way to get out of a plot difficulty or raise some interesting character issues, but at some point it turns on you and you have to start trying to explain why—sometimes—it doesn’t work at all, can’t be allowed to work, if all your other work on plot, character etc. is going to hold together. The TMP is a Pandora’s Box or—if you prefer—a ring of power, an idea you can use to give your story something special, but which then tunnels into it and eats it from the inside (not so much fun now, is it, precious?).

  I’ve been thinking about this a lot of late because I have a WIP which flirts with time travel, a TMP if ever there was one. Think of the dreaded Time Turner in the (otherwise excellent) 3rd Harry Potter novel: an artifact of extraordinary power that can unleash all manner of potentially fatal chaos, which has been entrusted to a school girl so she can take extra classes? Really? Okay. I can just about accept that for the purposes of the story. But then it’s not used in future books as the body count mounts because that would somehow destabilize the universe or something? I don’t want to get too literal-minded about this, but no. Sorry. Not buying it. If you commit to the TMP, you have to be prepared to use it wherever and whenever it seems reasonable to do so. Expect no mercy from your readers if you use it only when it suits you to do so.

  There are two ways of handling the TMP device to your advantage. One is to do the Next Gen thing and hedge the device with limits and boundaries. But if you do this, those limits need to be consistent and self-evident. Deanna’s occasional empathic abilities drove me mad because turning them off was so obviously a ruse: there was no clear pattern as to when they worked and when they didn’t (so far as I could see), so the moment was exposed for what it was: a plot point. If you give a character a powerful ability or artifact, think about limiting it in definitive ways: it won’t work under water or, for that matter, it ONLY works under water. Whatever. Just set the rule and stick to it.

  The other way of foiling the TMP device before it eats your story head first is simply not to use one. Fantasy and sci-fi writers seem to find it almost impossible to resist the lure of the TMP, bent as we are on showing how the world in our stories is not the one outside our windows, but I can think of no easier way to paint yourself into a corner you can never get out of. So I say this. Beware the TMP and all its works and all its empty promises. It is one of those green-eyed monsters which mocks the meat it feeds on, and the meat—don’t forget—is what was going to be your book.

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  David B. Coe

  "Not so much fun now, is it precious?"—you crack me up!

  I run into this a fair amount, dealing as I do with magic in all my books. This is one of the reasons why I believe that not just limitations but also COSTS have to be built into a magic system. When wielding magic weakens the mage or her familiar, when it requires blood or some form of sacrifice, when it destabilizes the space-time-granola continuum, you have a built-in reason NOT to use that cool spell that might have otherwise saved the day. I’m not saying this works with every narrative circumstance, but it does give the author (and the author’s readers) something to chew on as they contemplate magical solutions to big problems.

  My favorite TMP moment? The first Star Wars movie, when the empire’s forces have to wait for the MOON to move out of the way in order to use their weapon that destroys PLANETS.


  "Um, Lord Vader, sir? Can’t we just blow up the moon?"

  Snap Thy Holy Fingers

  Misty Massey

  I love movies and books about the mystical nature of religion. Constantine, Stigmata, The Seventh Seal, The Prophecy . . . I just cannot resist them. The other day I watched a movie trailer for Legion, in which God sends his angels to exterminate the world’s population. The archangel Michael (played by the wonderful Paul Bettany) is the only one standing between mankind and the apocalypse. I whispered, "Ooh, I want to see that." My teenager, sitting next to me, frowned. "If God’s tired of humanity," he mused, "why go to all the trouble of sending the battling angels? Why doesn’t He just snap His fingers and make the people disappear?"

  He was right. If an omnipotent being is tired of his creation, why would he bother with the trouble of watching them run and scream and die? Isn’t that a lot of effort for no real return? This is the problem of using an omnipotent being and trying to limit it.

  Religion is an important part of worldbuilding, and you should give it at least as much thought as your magic systems. Every culture in real life has its own beliefs and rituals, some rudimentary, some highly sophisticated. It has great influence over some societies, while others treat it as just another thing to do. In your fantasy culture, it’s up to you, the author, to decide how much power the religious community and the god they worship wields, and then to display that power properly in the narrative. Even if your characters aren’t particularly religious, it’s a good idea to weave those aspects into the story, for depth and richness. My pirates, for example, occasionally mention a god or two, but there’s no real devotion shown to them. I, the author, know exactly who those gods are, what their spheres of influence include, and what they can be expected to do when their worshippers ask. It didn’t come into play in the story, so the reader didn’t see it. But I definitely know.