Creating a new magic system isn’t all that hard. Do I hear a few dissenters in the audience? For the sake of the next exercise, let’s assume I do. Time to play a quick round of Magic Mad-libs!
Fill in the blanks:
“In a(n) adjective world populated by noun, practitioners known as made-up-word can call upon energy source to fuel a form of noun magic.”
What’d you come up with? In a forested world populated by squirrels, practitioners known as fuzzummoners can call upon mystical oak trees to fuel a form of acorn magic? Me too! Weird.
Once a basic concept is pinned down, it’s still not difficult to flesh out the system. There are so many types of magic systems swarming the shelves these days, they’ve started to lump into familiar categories. Here are a few common approaches:
- Beakers full of fairy dust – This is magic as science. The fuzzummoners exist within a universe that has an extra level or two of physics, with established rules that govern their acorn spell-casting. (Think pretty much any book by Brandon Sanderson.) Or the fuzzummoners have stumbled across mysterious, ancient—possibly alien—doohickeys that are so far beyond their comprehension it might as well be magic.
- The mythology wood-chipper – Fuzzummoners are just one supernatural faction alongside Norse gods, dragons, trolls, vampires, and whatever else gets thrown into the mix for variety’s sake. (Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series is a great example.) Bit of a magical free-for-all where anything goes (Also look at T.A. Pratt’s Marla Mason series).
- Is that a D20 in your pocket? –The fuzzummoners magic originates from a roleplaying world with game mechanics complicated enough to boggle Jeopardy’s Watson. Whether a tabletop or video game, the gameplay came first, the stories came later. (Look to the Pathfinders Tales series as a current example, plus plenty of other media tie-ins.)
If creating the magic system isn’t hard, what’s the difficult part then?
Making the magic matter. Arcane acorn bombs and fire-wielding fluffy tails are all well and good, but if the reader never gets beyond the “Oh, that’s kinda cool” reaction, something is wrong.
What, then, makes magic meaningful? It must be part of a tripod. No, not a War of the Worlds-style tripod. Let me clarify.
There’s a debate that pops up every so often in writerly circles. Which is more important to a novel: the plot or the characters? The answer, of course, is both (argue that in the comments, if you want). For fantasy novels, though, I submit that you’ve got to add a third element. Which is more important: the plot, characters, or magic system?
All three must be equally invested in and reliant on each other; otherwise, you end up with an off-balanced or toppled tripod. When working on a novel, I ask myself a number of questions regarding the balance of characters/plot/magic. They usually run along these lines:
- Is magic just a tool for the characters, or does it impact them on a deep mental, emotional, or spiritual level, fueling their growth and change throughout the story?
- How do the plot and characters affect the magic system? Does magic gain a “personality” of its own or offer its own internal landscape for readers to navigate?
- If the magic system substantially changed, would it impact the characters or plot, or would life go on its merry way unaffected?
- Could the events of the plot occur without any magic whatsoever? If so, why am I including magic in the first place?
- Do the magical elements basically comprise a mystical Rube Goldberg machine that exists just to force characters and events to end up where I want them?
If these questions are truly taken into account and addressed, magic can become much more than just a few nifty ideas cobbled together. Readers can be engaged by the magic because it’s intertwined with characters and events they care about, rather than sitting off in its own little corner, waiting to be called upon when the story demands.
If not, though, a magic system can devolve into a handful of glitter and a few golden stars stuck to the page, able to catch the reader’s eye but quickly revealed as little more than window dressing.
And, call me crazy, but I think most readers prefer books that don’t leave their clothes covered in glitter. My next guest post will research this vital issue further: Glitter-dispensing fantasy novels…yay or nay?
This concludes the emergency test of your magic system.