Micamo's Guide to Magic!

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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Ànradh »

Sal,
Micamo wrote:The first rule of writing is "Never follow any rule off a cliff." If you believe that you can improve your world by violating any of the rules I've put up here, then by all means, go for it! The guide should be taken as a list of suggestions rather than "If you don't do these things you are a horrible person."
You may note that Micamo isn't holding herself up as an expert while trying to objectively show the works of other writers are crap; she's giving a suggested method that she feels will allow one to craft a believable system.
She's also mentioned several times that she's making blanket statements and is perfectly aware that examples contrary to them exist.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Salmoneus »

Lodhas wrote:Sal,
Micamo wrote:The first rule of writing is "Never follow any rule off a cliff." If you believe that you can improve your world by violating any of the rules I've put up here, then by all means, go for it! The guide should be taken as a list of suggestions rather than "If you don't do these things you are a horrible person."
You may note that Micamo isn't holding herself up as an expert while trying to objectively show the works of other writers are crap; she's giving a suggested method that she feels will allow one to craft a believable system.
She's also mentioned several times that she's making blanket statements and is perfectly aware that examples contrary to them exist.
Two problems: first, yes, that's the ret-con added later, but it doesn't really go together with the other things they've said.
Actual quotes:
Magic is something I often see conworlders have trouble with
One of the worst (and easiest) mistakes
Magic works when... it's wasted effort when...
In general, efficient descriptions are better than inefficient descriptions
Sometimes adding more moving parts can make a system better on the net, but only because...
Let your magic system be as simple as possible
Don't use multiple types of magic in the same world
If you want different types of wizards, have them interact with the same rules in different ways
A good example of what not to do here is...
It's inefficient and thus bad
This isn't being clever, this is handwaving.
What matters is what the rule allows us to infer what the system as a whole looks like
This is why midi-chlorians from the Star Wars prequels are bad writing
Here's a much better written but very similar rule
What makes some rules more interesting than others
How to make magic affect your world in a meaningful way
The easier the audience finds it to imagine your magic, the better
Whenever possible, use descriptions of the sights, sounds, smells, and even tastes and feel of your magic
Whenever possible, describe your magic in terms of internal experiences rather than external means
Whenever you can, tie abstract parts of your magic systems to physical systems instead
Here's a better way:
Those worlds, I think, are boring and stupid
This doesn't come across as "hi, this is what I personally like to read about", it comes across as "that is bad and this is better". At which point the reader is entirely entitled to ask: "sez who?". I don't see Micamo sticking to consensus statements, and I don't see her demonstrating that their (very narrow and prescriptive) approach really is best - I just see blanket assertions and instructions.

And no, saying that there can be exceptions and that we don't have to follow the rules all the time doesn't make that problem go away. Because that's still asserting that the "exceptions" ARE exceptions (rather than the norm), and that the "rules" ARE rules (rather than a personal preference for one genre over another).
[And she isn't saying other writers are crap? Well no, not exactly - just boring, stupid, wastful, badly written, meaningless, unclever, having trouble, and so on. And given that the writers she's criticising are more commercially and critically succesful than Micamo, I find that difficult to embrace. At the very least it would be nice to see SOME attempt on their part to distinguish between general quality and conformity to their own prescriptive personal tastes.]


Anyway, I don't intend to criticise every post in this thread. If you read the thread title as "Micamo's Guide to being Micamo", it's fine, and it's probably not that bad if you read it as "Micamo's Guide to Writing Like Sanderson/Jordan/Salvatore". I just wanted to reassure anybody who didn't want to be sanderson, jordan or salvatore that this isn't really a guide to 'magic' in conworlds in general, and that you should only follow it if you want to produce a very specific product - and that the most important question is whether that's really the product you want to create or not.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Ossicone »

There's a reason why it's called "Micamo's Guide to Magic" and not the "Ultimate Rule Book on Writing Magic."
It's her advice based on her experiences. I also think that no matter what your personal preferences might be the points brought up here are important for a creator to consider in the addition/creation of a magic system.

At this point the discussion is feeling more like derailment rather than on topic. I might split the thread depending on where it goes.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Lambuzhao »

XXXVII wrote:
Micamo wrote:Again, maybe it's just because I've read too much TVTropes, but isn't a Deus ex Machina, by definition, the characters getting bailed out of a problem without having earned it?
I thought so...
Nor is it where characters bail themselves out with something inherently within them.
It isn't called "cooperatio (teamwork) ex machina" or "intelligentia ex machina" or "sagacitas ex machina", neither "fortitudo ex machina", nor "charisma ex machina". If it were so, it wouldn't need to come from the "machina" (i.e. off-stage) in the first place.


Cripes, I sound almost like Glenda the Good Witch of the North.
Ossicone wrote: I might split the thread depending on where it goes.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Trailsend »

Ossicone wrote:There's a reason why it's called "Micamo's Guide to Magic" and not the "Ultimate Rule Book on Writing Magic."
It's her advice based on her experiences.
Well, sure, but I think Sal's points are still valid critiques. This isn't the first time that Micamo has put forward what was intended to be a general framework but which turned out to be problematic. I agree that this is certainly her own advice based on her own experiences, but I also think that the whole point of a discussion forum is to discuss, so that you can get other people's advice based on other people's experiences as well. Since Micamo does not represent other viewpoints in her contributions to the guide, I'm in favor of letting others voice them in replies. (I'd be in favor of that even if she did make a point to represent contrasting views, because you're always going to miss something.)

Which is to say:
House Rules wrote:1. First and foremost: No flaming. In some places on the net, it's apparently considered acceptable to resort to insults and name-calling at the slightest provocation, but this board isn't one of them. This doesn't mean you aren't allowed to disagree with people, of course. You do have the right to criticize other people's posts, as long as the criticism is constructive and aimed only at the content - but as soon as you start attacking them personally, you're crossing the line.

...

3. Don't put words in other people's mouths. Or thoughts in their heads. Occasional misunderstandings are inevitable in all human communication, and especially on the internet - but you can reduce the chances of them happening by trying to stick to responding to what people have actually said. Don't make further extrapolations on what someone "really" means or why they're saying what they are, not to mention broader generalizations on what kind of person they are. It's extremely rude and, at least unless you have a degree in psychology, very likely to go wrong. And by the way, this includes extrapolations made based on things like someone's gender, religion, ethnicity, etc.

...

Also, expressing your views on matters once in a discussion should be enough. If people disagree with your point, then discuss the matter (or just quietly back off if that's what you prefer), but don't keep repeating the same point over and over again and expect it to somehow become more valid. If you feel you're being ignored, you can of course refer to what you said earlier - but if people still keep ignoring you, it's probably best for everyone if you just ignore them back.


But otherwise, do carry on, because this is an interesting discussion.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

Trailsend wrote:But otherwise, do carry on, because this is an interesting discussion.
Indeed it is! [:)]
Last edited by Thrice Xandvii on 16 Feb 2013 07:01, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Ànradh »

Micamo wrote:Here's a better way: "In this world, a person's living or dead status is determined by their heartbeat. If your heart stops beating you're dead, but if your heart keeps beating, you're still alive and can recover. Some insane wizards attempt immortality by cutting out their own hearts and putting it inside a special machine to keep it going. Sometimes it even works." Just as with the incorporeality example above, "life force" is abstract and hard to visualize, but it's much easier to visualize someone nuts enough to cut out their own heart.
In my world, ones magical potential is a function of ones intelligence, but only self-conscious beings may manipulate it.
My idea had been that mana, when shaped by intelligence, becomes a soul. Of course, this ends up being a chicken and egg problem and also requires me to assign a threshold for when a soul may form. Perhaps I could make it that souls are only formed when mana encounters self-conscious beings, but I still have to decide where mana comes from.
I had originally decided on an ethereal realm, but whereas I can state that the material realm had a natural origin and point people to scientific literature, I can’t really do that with the ethereal realm, so I want to eschew it entirely. Is the idea of another boson (manon?), remotely plausible? Or does it leave more gaps than it fills? I don't want to get too in-depth with this, but the idea of simply deeming magic a strange kind of force is appealing.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Systemzwang »

Lodhas wrote:
Micamo wrote:Here's a better way: "In this world, a person's living or dead status is determined by their heartbeat. If your heart stops beating you're dead, but if your heart keeps beating, you're still alive and can recover. Some insane wizards attempt immortality by cutting out their own hearts and putting it inside a special machine to keep it going. Sometimes it even works." Just as with the incorporeality example above, "life force" is abstract and hard to visualize, but it's much easier to visualize someone nuts enough to cut out their own heart.
In my world, ones magical potential is a function of ones intelligence, but only self-conscious beings may manipulate it.
My idea had been that mana, when shaped by intelligence, becomes a soul. Of course, this ends up being a chicken and egg problem and also requires me to assign a threshold for when a soul may form. Perhaps I could make it that souls are only formed when mana encounters self-conscious beings, but I still have to decide where mana comes from.
I had originally decided on an ethereal realm, but whereas I can state that the material realm had a natural origin and point people to scientific literature, I can’t really do that with the ethereal realm, so I want to eschew it entirely. Is the idea of another boson (manon?), remotely plausible? Or does it leave more gaps than it fills? I don't want to get too in-depth with this, but the idea of simply deeming magic a strange kind of force is appealing.
Easy solution for your problem:
make intelligence and mana a thing that is present to some extent present in biological brains. Make sentient brains all those that have a sufficient concentration of both to cause souls to come about reliably. Maybe some animals have sufficient concentrations that an occasional soul is generated.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Ànradh »

Systemzwang wrote:Easy solution for your problem:
make intelligence and mana a thing that is present to some extent present in biological brains. Make sentient brains all those that have a sufficient concentration of both to cause souls to come about reliably. Maybe some animals have sufficient concentrations that an occasional soul is generated.
Actually, that's very good. I do like the idea of mana being biological.
I am still wary of using intelligence as a magical criterion though, so still think self-awareness is a better choice (it even still allows magic-using animals in the form of crows and dolphins etc., which is cool).
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Micamo »

Lodhas wrote:I had originally decided on an ethereal realm, but whereas I can state that the material realm had a natural origin and point people to scientific literature, I can’t really do that with the ethereal realm, so I want to eschew it entirely. Is the idea of another boson (manon?), remotely plausible? Or does it leave more gaps than it fills? I don't want to get too in-depth with this, but the idea of simply deeming magic a strange kind of force is appealing.
The boson explanation raises a few questions.

- How, exactly, does this new "Manon" interact with other particles? If the answer to this question is merely "however I say so" then we're back to the midi-chlorians problem.

- How does the soul "control" manons?

- The most natural explanation is that the soul interacts with manons using the same field interaction rules used when manons interact with anything else, but this raises another question: What exactly is the soul made of?

- For that matter, what's Mana made of? Why does it form a soul when it finds a self-conscious being? How does it even recognize consciousness from non-consciousness?

Personally, I think these questions are harder to ignore when you give your system the pretense of a quantum-mechanical explanation. When I hear a writer start talking about particles and field interactions I expect them to have at least a nominal level of respect for the hard work and theoretical rigor that goes into actual quantum science. When they don't, I instantly lose respect for the story.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Systemzwang »

Lodhas wrote:
Systemzwang wrote:Easy solution for your problem:
make intelligence and mana a thing that is present to some extent present in biological brains. Make sentient brains all those that have a sufficient concentration of both to cause souls to come about reliably. Maybe some animals have sufficient concentrations that an occasional soul is generated.
Actually, that's very good. I do like the idea of mana being biological.
I am still wary of using intelligence as a magical criterion though, so still think self-awareness is a better choice (it even still allows magic-using animals in the form of crows and dolphins etc., which is cool).
I never said, btw, that mana should be biological - maybe brains just happen to have properties that make them good conduits for mana. There's any number of possibilities, really.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Ànradh »

Micamo wrote:The boson explanation raises a few questions.

- How, exactly, does this new "Manon" interact with other particles? If the answer to this question is merely "however I say so" then we're back to the midi-chlorians problem.

- How does the soul "control" manons?

- The most natural explanation is that the soul interacts with manons using the same field interaction rules used when manons interact with anything else, but this raises another question: What exactly is the soul made of?

- For that matter, what's Mana made of? Why does it form a soul when it finds a self-conscious being? How does it even recognize consciousness from non-consciousness?

Personally, I think these questions are harder to ignore when you give your system the pretense of a quantum-mechanical explanation. When I hear a writer start talking about particles and field interactions I expect them to have at least a nominal level of respect for the hard work and theoretical rigor that goes into actual quantum science. When they don't, I instantly lose respect for the story.
I have decided what ways the mana can be manipulated, i.e. what types of magic are possible, but I can't think of any way a boson could behave appropriately, but then, I can't think of anything that would behave this way. Magic is supernatural after all, so at some point I’m going to have to introduce some amendments to natural law.
As for control, the intent was semi-inspired by the measurement problem, where it seems that particles are 'aware' of some method of measurement occurring, but to a much greater degree, such that they could be manipulated by thought alone, which would be a property unique to manons. Again though, even if I don't use bosons, I'd have to answer this question.
My intent was that whatever causes a being to achieve self-awareness would react strangely with the mana, so the mana would acquire a 'shape' that could persist as a sort of capsule for the being's mind. i.e. souls are mana. This shape could persist after death, but is more likely to dissolve back into shapeless mana.
The idea is that magic is supposed to be the name for some fundamental property of nature, like electricity; electrons move-> electricity. My problem is what ‘moves’ to create magic. Whatever I decide, I’ve given to it the name ‘mana’. The name could be anything, but the problem still exists that I have no idea what it should be.
I will note that, due to the setting, quantum mechanics isn't going to arise, but I would like something to fall back on as a system, otherwise it really will be a case of 'because I said so' regardless of how consistent I am.
Further, I am aware of the level of work required to study quantum mechanics, but if it isn’t quantum mechanics that I have to ‘streamline’ then it’ll be something else; I’m not omniscient.

This whole post just highlights the problem; what is magic?
I want to include it because it does shape a large part of the culture and conflict in the story, but it's looking like I'm just going to have to say, "Magic is magic. Stop asking questions."
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Micamo »

Lodhas wrote:...I will note that, due to the setting, quantum mechanics isn't going to arise, but I would like something to fall back on as a system, otherwise it really will be a case of 'because I said so' regardless of how consistent I am...

This whole post just highlights the problem; what is magic?
I want to include it because it does shape a large part of the culture and conflict in the story, but it's looking like I'm just going to have to say, "Magic is magic. Stop asking questions."
Well, like I said in the guide, eventually there's a point where the reader stops asking questions and must simply suspend their disbelief. Before I called that "handwaving" but that had some problems, so now I choose to call that point "the bottom." Hard truth is your magic system has to have a bottom somewhere. There's no avoiding it. The decision to be made is what things you should try to explain and what things are best left to stand.

Unfortunately, there's no easy solution to this problem either: Not only is each person's individual tolerance different, but also the same person's tolerance in different situations, and even for the same persons reading about the same situations in different genres. Maintaining the reader's suspension of disbelief is a difficult, subtle art, and it's something you could write tens of thousands of pages on (and much more brilliant writers than myself have done so). I can only provide some broad (and obvious) advice:

- Global outlandishness excuses local outlandishness. If your world is crazy in general, then one more crazy thing will hurt much less than if that same crazy thing were introduced in a saner setting. For example, a twist involving angels sent from heaven will go over much better in a setting where angels are clearly established and appear all the time than in a hard sci-fi setting.

- If it's significant to the story, be sure to back it up. "Bilbo escapes by using his magic ring to turn invisible" is much better than "Bilbo escapes by turning invisible for no reason at all." This, I believe, is what Sanderson was trying to get at in his blog post that Salmoneus hated so much, and I still think it's good advice. (It's also why I feel that Bilbo can use the ring to turn invisible is a "rule" and not merely an observation. We don't really care about the Ring's exact powers but we do care about its effects on the story, nebulous at times they may be.)

- Violate convention at your own peril. Generally, familiar and boring stupidity is easier to swallow than new and exciting stupidity. So long as you use them with the full expectation that the reader won't find these aspects of your story interesting (and thus don't focus on them) cliches make helpful tools.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Ànradh »

Micamo wrote:Global outlandishness excuses local outlandishness. If your world is crazy in general, then one more crazy thing will hurt much less than if that same crazy thing were introduced in a saner setting. For example, a twist involving angels sent from heaven will go over much better in a setting where angels are clearly established and appear all the time than in a hard sci-fi setting.
I suspect this will be my method. The setting's fairly low magic, with a lot of the methods used based on real-world folk-magic.
That fact that everyone inscribes runes on their door frames can only make the concept that they actually work less shocking.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by CarpeMors »

This is overall pretty interesting...

I do wonder, though, if it would actually work better if you split your observations into a sort of quasi-fantasy and quasi-sci-fi bit, Micamo. This is because when it comes to fantasy/sci-fi there's a lot that *cannot* ever be explained, such as the nature of magic or how psionics works. If one says "magic is a sentient omnipresent force" what does that even mean? It's magobabble. If we say "psionics works by creating activity in the telekinetic subcortex of the neo-oblique frontal lobe of the Ruputupu specie's anterior brain" what does this actually mean? It's technobabble. I like the general tenor of your rules, but ultimately, aren't we dealing with things that do not exist, and so attempting to explain and/or order them will only ever have a certain amount of utility and no more?

I personally, like to make sure my rules are structured and consistent, but after a while, there's only so much to do, because this is all entirely fictional. Not knowing how a fictional gauge boson works to interact with magic is ultimately not going to harm any story or conworld-building.

Cheers
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Cacafire »

Micamo, thanks overmuch for writing this guide. It has a lot of useful material inside it, which will come in handy when I start to work on my conworld. :D
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Melend »

I also appreciate this thread greatly.

It occurs to me that, while it may be a good idea for the magic to have certain rules so that solutions involving magic aren't deus-ex-machina like, there's no absolute need for the readers to be told what those rules are. Likewise, creating the impression of a hidden system is more important than actually having that system.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Ear of the Sphinx »

Right.

In my opinion the issue is the fact that the guide is directed slightly more towards what Sanderson calls "the hard magic", i.e. system with explicit rules, as this is the way the con-magic tends to be described in, e.g. on this bboard.
It's not that the Tolkienesque fantasy is wrong with its magic system based on implicit rules. It's just the other way, neither better or worse. But this guide is about "how to describe your rules to a reader", so a story with little to no rules described openly will hardly fit.

And about the "sense of wonder", well. Even the most staple magic system (i.e. "science") based on four elemental forces (i.e. weak, strong, heavy and light) makes us wonder sometimes.
Sanderson is making it as well, just in his own manner. Reading his novels is like: "I know nothing", then "I know something, let's explore it", then "I know (almost) everything", then repeat step 1. And at the end you realise that what you thought was a complete (and maybe overly elaborate) rule-based magic is just a tiny fraction of what is in the (fantasy) reality.
For comparison, Tolkien is like: "I know nothing", then "wizard, where are you?", then "thanks, wiz, but I still know nothing".
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Melend »

Tolkien's magic has rules, but we see so little of it that we can't determine precisely what they are from examples. It is clear that the Elves do not consider what they do to be 'magic', that is, separate from the act of making. The magic we're present for, and that we can perceive, seems to be centered around the use of language. That magic is just an especially emphatic form of 'art' means that all of the limits and properties of artistic expression limit it as well.
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Re: Micamo's Guide to Magic!

Post by Ear of the Sphinx »

Melend wrote:Tolkien's magic has rules, but we see so little of it that we can't determine precisely what they are from examples. It is clear that the Elves do not consider what they do to be 'magic', that is, separate from the act of making. The magic we're present for, and that we can perceive, seems to be centered around the use of language. That magic is just an especially emphatic form of 'art' means that all of the limits and properties of artistic expression limit it as well.
Of course. That's why I call "implicit rules" and what Sanderson calls "soft magic".
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