Micamo's Guide to Magic!

[Micamo]

"The classical wizard, I suggest, represents the ideal of magic -- everything that we hope we would be, if we had the power." - Terry Pratchett, Why Gandalf Never Married

Magic is something I often see conworlders have trouble with. Generally, it's just thrown in as an afterthought, which is really a shame: It's an extremely powerful tool, not just in the hands of the in-conworld characters but also in the hands of you, the conworlder.

What is magic?

I'm going to take a generalized approach (as I always do) and define magic as any phenomena which regularly occurs (or could occur) in the conworld but not in our reality.

Keep in mind this not only includes the standard fantasy idea of a wizard who reads magic words and blasts fireballs, but also airbenders, wushu-style kung fu, mutant powers like the X-Men, or even space ships and nanotechnology.

What matters is this world is somehow profoundly different from our own, and through conworlding we explore these differences. Why such a broad definition? Because it turns out most of the advice that works well for spellbooks and pointed hats works just as well for being able to cling to walls after getting bitten by a radioactive spider or moving into slip-space. There's some useful genre-specific advice to be had, certainly, but my general definition will get us surprisingly far.

Why magic?

The first question you need to ask yourself is: Why should I include magic in this conworld at all? Does magic make it better in some way? One of the worst (and easiest) mistakes to make in designing a magic system is to answer this question with an answer like "Because fantasy worlds have to have magic" or "Because it's cool and exciting" or worst of all "Because I feel like it."

There are a lot of good tools to have in a conworlder's arsenal, but by far the best one is purpose. Going into a conworld and tossing things in willy-nilly just leads you to running out of ideas and getting writers block. A purpose gives you a central thing to fall back on, when all else has failed. It lets you judge your ideas on something other than idle whim.

Call me an artsy-fartsy type, but I think the best conworlds are built around ideas. When you tell stories about your conworld, what themes should these stories be about? What do you want the reader to feel when they read about your conworld? Magic works when it strengthens these ideas and helps to evoke those feelings. It's wasted effort when it sits up there on a shelf, occasionally being mentioned but rarely doing anything of consequence.

One other thing I wanted to say before we begin: I hereby define "Wizard", for the purposes of this discussion, as anyone who regularly uses "magic" in any way, for any reason. So this includes both Gandalf and Wolverine. You'll probably find that this definition will be too broad (or too specific) for your particular magic system, but thinking about magic-users without needing to also think about the specifics of the magic system itself is a useful abstraction, and "wizard" just has a good sound to it.

Princeps Magicka

I have quite a few things I want to discuss, but let's start off with one of the most important: The Principle of Efficiency. Which can be defined thusly:

In general, efficient descriptions are better than inefficient descriptions. We may define an "efficient description" as one that uses few moving parts, and the entirety of the system can be derived or inferred by the interactions of these moving parts with each other and their interactions with the rest of the world. Sometimes adding more moving parts can make a system better on the net, but only because the benefit outweighs the cost of a less efficient description. So unless you know what you're doing, let your magic system be as simple as possible to achieve what you want (but no simpler).

A simple corrolary to the principle of efficiency is 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 Dungeons and Dragons, which has Arcane, Divine, Nature, Ki, and Psychic powers all at the same time, as well as stuff like Incarnum, Binders, and Warlocks on the side, none of which are related at all in terms of how they work. (Of course, individual DMs can ban and allow whatever they like, but the rules assume you use everything and the officially published settings make the same assumption. Trying to gut psychic powers from Eberron, for instance, leaves you with big gaping holes where the Kalashtar, the Quori, and Sarlona used to be.) Using multiple unrelated types of magic at least doubles your number of moving parts in the system while, most of the time, giving you very, very little gain. It's inefficient and thus bad.

To clarify further, let's give a few examples of what efficient rules are not:

"Because I say so." Not defining general rules and just arbitrarily naming what works and what doesn't as it comes up is the exact opposite of efficiency. The real rules are to be found in all of your little arbitrary assignments sprinkled onto the work, and not in your deceptive statement like "magic is mysterious and nobody really knows much about how it works." This isn't being clever, this is handwaving. Now, handwaving isn't always a bad thing: With most magic systems you'll be forced do it eventually. The best times to handwave, however, depend on the situation and must be covered later.

"Babblebabblebabble!" Inventing some cool-sounding terms and just throwing them up instead of a proper explanation is also not efficient rulemaking. 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: They don't tell us anything about the force we don't already know (and the questions they raise aren't explored in the work, like why can't midi-chlorians be put into droids so they can interact with the force), they're merely inserted as technobabble to make it sound more science-fictiony. It is merely a handwave of a different type.

"Numbers!" Merely another type of babble but this is something that deserves more attention as it's something I see a lot. Putting numbers into your description does not automatically make it more compact and concise. Here's an example of numbers being abused:

"Every location in the world has a level of ambient magical energy, rated from 0 to 9. Each spell has a Spell Level, also rated from 1 to 9. For a spell to be cast in a particular area the area must have an ambient magical rating less than or equal to the Spell Level."

It does a good job of sounding well-defined when it actually isn't. What determines spell level? What kinds of places have what levels of ambient energy? How can these ambient energy levels change over time? Yet many conworlders who don't know any better think they're done, just because it has numbers in it. Here's a much better written but very similar rule:

"Every location in the world has a level of ambient magical energy that builds up over the course of several months. Casting spells drains this energy, with bigger spells draining more."

This rule is more efficient because not only is it shorter (and notice it doesn't bother to quantify things with numbers) but it explains a lot more. For example:

- Places with more energy are untouched places where wizards haven't been in a really long time. Casting big spells in cities is a lot harder because there's lots of other wizards there also casting: To do a big ritual you need to find a nice secluded spot, way out in the wilderness.

- If a place gets really low, to get its energy back up again you merely have to just stop casting any spells for a while.

- In a wizard's duel, you'll usually want to open with the biggest spells you can at first. Not only are they more likely to end the duel outright, or at least give you a huge advantage early on, but big spells also drain the area of magic, thus restricting your opponent's ability to cast in return.

Note though, it leaves "big spells" undefined. Are mind-control spells "bigger" than lightning blasts? Why? We'll still need another rule to cover that, but it's a much better start.


Even nice and compact rules aren't created equal, though. Next time we'll look at what makes some rules more interesting than others, and how to make magic affect your world in a meaningful way.

[zee]

That post was magical
(See what I did there?)

Anyway, I can't wait for the next part as this one has given me many good ideas for my conworld :)

[Lambuzhao]

Wow! A lot to process, here.

Just a few observations:

midi-chlorians from the Star Wars prequels are bad writing

You just had to go there! {but you're right *sniff*}

"Numbers!" Merely another type of babble but this is something that deserves more attention as it's something I see a lot. Putting numbers into your description does not automatically make it more compact and concise. Here's an example of numbers being abused:

"Every location in the world has a level of ambient magical energy, rated from 0 to 9. Each spell has a Spell Level, also rated from 1 to 9. For a spell to be cast in a particular area the area must have an ambient magical rating less than or equal to the Spell Level."

Ugggh. Sounds like my puerile attempts at mimicking AD&D aeons ago. I was in the middle of all these numbers and was like "What the h3ll is this all supposed to mean, anyway?" Then I changed it mirror my pattern on armor-classes based on metals (lead, braze, steel, platinum) and stones (coal, alabaster, granite, diamond). To me, tangible and hard made more sense than level 5 or level 12.3687.

- If a place gets really low, to get its energy back up again you merely have to just stop casting any spells for a while.

- In a wizard's duel, you'll usually want to open with the biggest spells you can at first. Not only are they more likely to end the duel outright, or at least give you a huge advantage early on, but big spells also drain the area of magic, thus restricting your opponent's ability to cast in return.

I think this rule is extremely practical and well-nigh overlooked. At first, I would have proffered a counter of preferring a mix of weak and hard spells, as in martial arts. However, if two wizards are taking from the same energy-pool in a particular spot, well, then now it's more like a "spinning log in water" contest and less of a WWF cagematch, if you catch my drift. I almost think that approach is "too practical": the big Harry Potteresque wizard army clashes would only occur at like, say, the Graveyard of Wizards, the Hall of Exalted Wizards (I guess the Hogwarts would have that much ambient energy to fuel them all?). I guess part of the trick is to lure your opponent to face you where "your specie" (bad choice of words, I know) of magical energy is most vibrant.

BTW, wands shorting out as the battle draws on - very funny mental image indeed!

[Creyeditor]

I like the quote in the beginning
My conworld is going to have wizards that are in fact computer geeks. So they may not be wizards following your definition, because I have not yet decided, if there is something possible there, which is not possible here (although, there may be some robot-like beings, which are called demons, or something like that)

[Lambuzhao]

Indeed. My conworld uses magic which turns out to be technology. As Micamo suggests, sort of two sides of the same coin.

Muchas gracias for this new thread, O Stewardess of Magickal Nortelrye and Holy Royal Tsarina of the Agyonnar Continuum.



BTW, a link to Pratchett's funny, interesting speech -
http://ansible.co.uk/misc/tpspeech.html

[Salmoneus]

No no no!!!!!


What the OP says is reasonable in itself, but far too broad and dictatorial. It begins at the wrong place. Where you should begin is: what world is this? How do I want this world to appear? How can magic contribute to this appearance?


The OP assumes one particular type of conworld, and hence wants to dictate one type of magic, which we can broadly characterise as "everyday" magic - magic that's predictable, simple, easy to express.


But here are some conworlds that don't have everyday magic: Arda; The Cthulhu Mythos; Discworld; Realm of the Elderlings; Foundation (iirc), etc.

Tolkien's Arda is a highly Romantic conworld, whose author intentionally shied away from descriptions that were prosaic, technical, or scientific. As a result, we have virtually no idea how magic in Arda actually 'worked'. We can probably say that there are two important elements, 'power' and 'craft', where the latter includes both technological and supernatural expertise - 'power' is probably as simple as being able to do what you want to do, but includes magical puissance, physical strength, willpower, influence over others, luck, etc etc, both with and without explicit 'spells'. There are no mechanics given, and very little clarity about what can be done and what can't be done (and when, and where). This isn't an accident - Arda isn't MEANT to be D&D. It's meant to be, for want of a better word, magical, and more dependent on romantic narrative conventions than on definite laws and principles.

Lovecraft's Mythos, likewise, has very under-described magic, although this time there are plenty of hints at description - lots of learned grimoires, lots of cults of ancient wisdom. But the whole point of the Mythos is its worldview: that humanity and sanity rest as a thin skin upon a vast unfathomable abyss of uncontrollable, incomprehensible powers. Thus, the ancient tomes fail to describe reality, the narrators fail to understand the ancient tomes, the narrators are unable to tell us what they understand, and we fail to understand what the narrators are able to tell us. Similarly, there definitely seem to be different 'kinds' of 'magic' at play - there's no particular reason to think that, say, Yithian technological consciousness-switching works the same way as plutonian fungoid brain-surgery, or the dark rites of cannibals in louisiana, or the dream-quest, or the cryogenics of the elder things, or the strange fascination of a book describing primitive customs of the congo, etc etc. Because that would actually take away from the setting: there's not just one thing we don't understand, there's a whole bunch of things we don't understand, which may or may not be entirely unconnected to each other.

Pratchett's Discworld also has a number of different types of magic. In this case, it's because of an underlying principle that belief shapes the universe, so what people think will work will work. What people think will work varies a lot from place to place. There are also suggestions that there is some sort of underlying order at work that perhaps can be approached objectively. But on the surface, you have traditional wizardry, you have explicitly distinct sourcery, you have both traditional witchcraft and 'headology', and the magic of manipulating fairy tale logic, and the eldritch beings of the dungeon dimensions, the magic of not doing magic, and the glamours of the elves and the interdimensional rites of the old sacred places, and the interference of the gods, and the geometry of libraries, and reified life force, and spellbooks from beyond the dawn of time, and high-energy scientific thaumaturgical magic research, and so on and so on, and none of it is MEANT to necessarily go together, and certainly not in a way that can be put down on paper.

Hobb's Realm of Elderlings, too, has multiple forms of magic: the Wit and the Skill, the memory-absorbing and life-giving properties of wizardwood and soul-stealing properties of certain stones, dragon telepathy, the 'skill river', hedge magic, the predictive power of the Other's beach, the Prophet and the Catalyst... and yes, it looks as though somehow everything probably does fit together, but it fits together in a way completely beyond the knowledge of anyone alive 'now' in the world. In the conworld as we actually explore it, these things are presented as wholly different, and not because they're part of riot of possibilities a la pratchett, or because they're intentionally confusing and intimidating a la lovecraft, or because they're intentionally ineffable and illimitable and romantic a la tolkien, but simply because they're down-to-earth, part of real life in a dark-ages-ish setting. In the same way that, say, coopers and cabinet makers and carpenters and shipwrights all have different trades having something to do with shaping wood, so too the different types of magic are different things, even if the really scholarly might wonder whether they're somehow connected at some level. And the rules of these magics are underspecified - whether because nobody has known what the rules are for a long long time (eg the artifacts from the elderling cities), or because people did seem to know what the rules were but poor institutions and malicious influences have lead to a lot of the knowledge being lost quite quickly (eg the Skill), or because maybe people know what the rules are but it's a trade secret so nobody explains it to the viewpoint characters (eg hedge magic) or because the people who do know aren't the sort of people who go around formulating rules and writing treatises and suchlike (eg the Wit).

Finally, Asimov's Foundation universe is very different from all the above, in that nothing happens that is not completely bound by scientific laws, allegedly. But here, much of the science is so completely beyond us that there's no point explaining it to us - we have only the vaguest impressions of how psychohistory works in practice, and not the slightest clue as to how miniaturised nuclear reactors work, or positronic brains, and not much idea about the rules of faster than light travel. Those are the things that we ought to understand if we're the characters, but the readers don't understand them... and then there are other things that even the characters don't understand. The Second Foundation's psionics are a totally different type of 'magic' from the First Foundation's nuclear physics. We have at least six different types of mentalism - the Second Foundation, Gaia, the Mule, the Solarians, and Giskard/Daneel, plus possibly the Cepheids if they're still cannon - do they all work the same way? [it seems likely that the Solarians at least are doing something different]. Then there's at least two methods of time travel...
Asimov's world is unexplained and varied as a reflection of optimism - the world for Asimov is an endless fascinating place in which, even thousands of years in the future, there are still mysteries left to be explored. There is no omniscient position from which everything can be explained because there is always something that hasn't been explained yet.


In all these cases and many others, the authors defy the OP's rules, but their works don't suffer for it - on the contrary, breaking the rules is central to the nature of the projects the authors were attempting.

That, i suppose, is my point - all the rules depend on what you want those rules to achieve. And different authors may be attempting to achieve very different things.


I'm not trying to sound too critical of the OP... the post is fine, for what it is, in terms of explaining one particular approach to magic. It just isn't the only legitimate approach.

[Micamo]

The OP assumes one particular type of conworld, and hence wants to dictate one type of magic, which we can broadly characterise as "everyday" magic - magic that's predictable, simple, easy to express.

I had a feeling someone would raise this objection. I fully intend to cover this, but it's something I wanted to have wait until later. I'll just have to answer you by explaining it in brief summary now.

When I refer to "rules of magic" I am not referring to why, but what. To use the example of Arda (as it's the world you mentioned that I know best) it actually has well-defined rules everywhere. The One Ring turns you invisible Sauron and the Ringwraiths know where you are, it has the ability to change its size and weight, it can affect the mind of the bearer, it has a mind of its own and wants to be reunited with Sauron, and it's impervious to all damage except the fires of Mount Doom. Sting is unnaturally sharp and warns its owner of when orcs are nearby by glowing.

The real difference between Arda is that it has well-defined rules in some areas and not-so-well defined rules in other areas. Or, to re-use my wording in my above post, it makes frequent use of hand-waving so as to not bog the audience down with things they don't need to know to enjoy the story. You're quite right that the amount of handwave you need and where it is best applied depends very heavily on the type of story you're writing and the roles you want magic to serve in building this story. I intend to explain my ideas on how to do this later, but if you want a general idea for now you can take a look at Sanderson's First Law, of which my ideas on the subject are heavily based. You'll also notice my generalized definition of "magic" is pretty much stolen straight from him.

[Salmoneus]

The OP assumes one particular type of conworld, and hence wants to dictate one type of magic, which we can broadly characterise as "everyday" magic - magic that's predictable, simple, easy to express.

I had a feeling someone would raise this objection. I fully intend to cover this, but it's something I wanted to have wait until later. I'll just have to answer you by explaining it in brief summary now.

When I refer to "rules of magic" I am not referring to why, but what. To use the example of Arda (as it's the world you mentioned that I know best) it actually has well-defined rules everywhere.

No it doesn't!

The One Ring turns you invisible

Does it, really? Sauron wasn't invisible when he was wearing it. The vision of what Galadriel would be like if she were to wear it didn't include invisibility either.

Sauron and the Ringwraiths know where you are,

sometimes they do, sometimes seemingly they don't, at unspecified ranges and in unspecified circumstances. And sometimes they can smell the ring itself, and other times they need you to actually be wearing it.

it has the ability to change its size and weight,

To what extent, and how much of this is just illusion? Unknown.

it can affect the mind of the bearer,

Seemingly, although we don't know whether this is actually the Ring or whether it's just power and temptation in general that does that it (in Plato's version, the Ring had no power to change the mind, but the minds of those who wore it inevitably changed because of the temptation it posed).

has a mind of its own and wants to be reunited with Sauron

It's not clear that it actually has 'a mind', though that analogy is used. It's also not really true that it wants to be reunited with Sauron - it generally does, but sometimes it doesn't. It can want to be worn by one person, for a while, until it becomes bored and wants to be worn by someone else. It's like Sauron's fickle lover.

and it's impervious to all damage except the fires of Mount Doom.

Yes. But none of this addresses the question of what the Ring actually does - when it's said that a huge part of Sauron's own power is in the Ring, that's not just the power to turn invisible. When Boromir wants to use the Ring as a weapon against the armies of Mordor, it's not because one invisible warrior will turn the tide. The fey Galadriel isn't a terrifying queen just because she can turn invisible. No, the Ring has other power - but all we know about this power is that it's a powerful power.

More importantly, these aren't rules, these are anecdotes. About any one magical thing in any conworld, you can always draw up a list of stuff that it does in the story - but that's not a rule, that's just an observation. There is no, as Sanderson puts it, "magic system" in Arda. [When can Gandalf cast 'fireball' and why doesn't he do it more often?]

The real difference between Arda is that it has well-defined rules in some areas and not-so-well defined rules in other areas. Or, to re-use my wording in my above post, it makes frequent use of hand-waving so as to not bog the audience down with things they don't need to know to enjoy the story.

Give some examples. There's actually, I think, a surprising LACK of hand-waving in Tolkien - he doesn't hand-wave things away, he just lets them stand. He doesn't even try to explain. I think that viewing all fiction as an attempt to be Brandon Sanderson, most of which fails, is a fundamentally wrong way to look at it. Tolkien isn't Sanderson with more hand-waving - Tolkien is something totally different. It's not a system where the rule aren't fully explained - it's not a system to begin with.

You're quite right that the amount of handwave you need and where it is best applied depends very heavily on the type of story you're writing and the roles you want magic to serve in building this story. I intend to explain my ideas on how to do this later, but if you want a general idea for now you can take a look at Sanderson's First Law, of which my ideas on the subject are heavily based. You'll also notice my generalized definition of "magic" is pretty much stolen straight from him.

The problem is, if you follow Sanderson's approach, you'll end up with something like Sanderson. And I'd like to think we can do a little better than that! In fact, the magic in Sanderson is often cited as one of his big problems (for exactly the reason he gives - no sense of wonder).

[It's really frustrating how he manages to completely ignore criticism by seeing it as agreement with him. How he can seriously hand-wave away all other authors with the assumption that they're all doing the same as him, just "holding back" the laws and not telling the readers - no, you fool, they're not holding back the laws, there just AREN'T laws. Coming to the thing with this framework of a "magic system" is just wrongheaded. Sanderson is also foolish in just assuming that the deus ex machina is something to be avoided - the deus ex machina, as the name should remind us, has an extremely long and succesful history, and will continue to be popular with both readers and writers. The problem occurs when a DEM has not been earnt by the author or the characters, but that earning doesn't have to be in the form of explaining a magic system in advance - indeed, it rarely is.]

[[And dear lord does that man come across as ignorant. Asimov is disapproving of the fantasy genre and wouldn't like to be discussed as having magic? Ahem. I seem to have on the shelf next to me a collection of Asimov's fantasy short stories and his essays on the genre - the title is "Magic". The guy edited eleven anthologies of fantasy stories, for heaven's sake. And it's not like he was unaware of Clarke's Law, which is after all basically what Sanderson is repeating when he calls Asimov 'magic'. Although of course, Asimov disagreed with Clarke to some extent, as in his essay, 'Magic'. Sanderson makes reference to Asimov's essay 'Sword and Sorcery' (failing of course to recognise that Asimov was writing about S&S, not Fantasy, though maybe this is just because Sanderson doesn't know the difference) - but if he's going to call Asimov's stuff 'magic', and acknowledge that Asimov might disagree, it would behoove him to actually address Asimov's actual answer to this in the essay Asimov wrote on the topic. And yes, Asimov sometimes seems critical of the state of actual fantasy writing, but he's also pretty positive about the potential of the genre itself.]]

He also fails to distinguish between consistent and rule-based magic. Consistent magic is magic where the reader is able to get a general sense of what is and isn't possible. Most authors use consistent magic (though not all). Rule-based magic is where the reader is able to know what is and isn't possible because magic follows clear rules. Asimov's robots, for instance, are genuinely rule-based magic - we know what the rules are up-front, and they follow those rules.

[Ànradh]

Note though, it leaves "big spells" undefined. Are mind-control spells "bigger" than lightning blasts? Why? We'll still need another rule to cover that, but it's a much better start.

This is something I have a habit of being stumped on... My current magic system's pretty cheap, honestly.
There's an other realm that basically just comprises of manna (no, I don't have an explanation for its origin and I'm trying really hard not to get into one; it's especially difficult given the lack of real deities). It can be tapped in various ways that I've simply stolen from 'real' magic systems.
I've got sigil magic, qi (sort of), potions etc. but they're all simply different ways of harnessing the same energy.
The method by which it does so and how much is needed for what effect is... hard.

[Micamo]

Yes. But none of this addresses the question of what the Ring actually does - when it's said that a huge part of Sauron's own power is in the Ring, that's not just the power to turn invisible. When Boromir wants to use the Ring as a weapon against the armies of Mordor, it's not because one invisible warrior will turn the tide. The fey Galadriel isn't a terrifying queen just because she can turn invisible. No, the Ring has other power - but all we know about this power is that it's a powerful power.

More importantly, these aren't rules, these are anecdotes. About any one magical thing in any conworld, you can always draw up a list of stuff that it does in the story - but that's not a rule, that's just an observation. There is no, as Sanderson puts it, "magic system" in Arda. [When can Gandalf cast 'fireball' and why doesn't he do it more often?]

It appears we disagree as to what a "rule" is. When I say "The ring has the power to turn you invisible" I'm referring to the fact that Bilbo uses the Ring's invisibility powers to get himself out of trouble (and cause a little bit of it himself) several times. When the audience sees Bilbo in trouble, they think "Oh, it's alright, he can use that ring to sneak away!" It's that reaction that makes the ring matter, what makes it more than a mere MacGuffin. The fact "Bilbo can put on the ring to make himself invisible" is what I call a rule, because it makes the audience expect B when presented with A. To be honest, I thought this was kinda obvious but it clearly is not. I'll have to work an explanation into the guide proper.

Maybe I just need to use a better word to describe what I mean here. What would you suggest?

Give some examples. There's actually, I think, a surprising LACK of hand-waving in Tolkien - he doesn't hand-wave things away, he just lets them stand. He doesn't even try to explain. I think that viewing all fiction as an attempt to be Brandon Sanderson, most of which fails, is a fundamentally wrong way to look at it. Tolkien isn't Sanderson with more hand-waving - Tolkien is something totally different. It's not a system where the rule aren't fully explained - it's not a system to begin with.

Really? I always thought handwaving was saying "You accept it JUST BECAUSE, okay!?" The handwave is the point where the audience is expected to suspend their disbelief and stop asking questions. The Force in the original star wars trilogy is just as handwaved as it is in the prequels, it's just much better executed there. What does handwaving actually mean?

The problem is, if you follow Sanderson's approach, you'll end up with something like Sanderson. And I'd like to think we can do a little better than that! In fact, the magic in Sanderson is often cited as one of his big problems (for exactly the reason he gives - no sense of wonder).

I've never read any of Sanderson's actual books, only his blog. Can't agree or disagree with this assessment.

The problem occurs when a DEM has not been earnt by the author or the characters

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?

[Thrice Xandvii]

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...

[Salmoneus]

It appears we disagree as to what a "rule" is. When I say "The ring has the power to turn you invisible" I'm referring to the fact that Bilbo uses the Ring's invisibility powers to get himself out of trouble (and cause a little bit of it himself) several times. When the audience sees Bilbo in trouble, they think "Oh, it's alright, he can use that ring to sneak away!" It's that reaction that makes the ring matter, what makes it more than a mere MacGuffin. The fact "Bilbo can put on the ring to make himself invisible" is what I call a rule, because it makes the audience expect B when presented with A. To be honest, I thought this was kinda obvious but it clearly is not. I'll have to work an explanation into the guide proper.

Maybe I just need to use a better word to describe what I mean here. What would you suggest?

I don't know - I don't understand what your point is. Yes, anything you can be describe can be repeated. If Bilbo turns invisible when he puts the ring on, you can say 'sometimes the ring makes Bilbo invisible'. But so what? That's basic reading comprehension on your part, it's not something Tolkien is doing.

It's also evading the point. Because even if you insist on defining rules as 'everything that we see happen', then these authors still don't have, as you put it, 'efficient' rules.

Really? I always thought handwaving was saying "You accept it JUST BECAUSE, okay!?" The handwave is the point where the audience is expected to suspend their disbelief and stop asking questions. The Force in the original star wars trilogy is just as handwaved as it is in the prequels, it's just much better executed there. What does handwaving actually mean?

Generally, in my experience, 'handwaving' is when you recognise that the audience may have a problem with something, and give them a reason why it's OK - where that reason doesn't really make any rational sense, and is ultimately given just to look as though you're giving a reason. Like when somebody tells you that they can't use the warp engines to avoid this plot point because the warp matrix has been destabilised by local subspace anomolies caused by galonium particles from the exploding nebula, that's handwaving. The audience don't actually understand what this means, and nor do the writers - it's just the writers saying "we can't do this because we have a good reason why we can't do this, honestly!"

Whereas they COULD just not use the warp engines and not explain why not. Or, they could say "we can't use the warp engines" but not give any reason why. Neither of these, in my opinion, would be handwaving.

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?

No! Deus ex machina is when a problem is suddenly resolved through 'external' processes. This means that the characters have not caused the resolution, and have not been able to solve the problem themselves - but they can still 'earn' the resolution in some other way. (It's also wider than just the characters not causing it - it's when the resolution doesn't arise from any of the internal, visible proceedings of the story - the main antagonist deciding to save the heroes for his own purposes, if properly justified through his character and his previously observed actions, isn't a deus ex machina. A stranger wandering along and killing the antagonist, however, IS a deus ex. Aristotle's version is "the solutions of plots should come about as the result of the plot itself").

For instance, "O Brother Where Art Thou" ends with an perfect example of a Deus Ex Machina (no coincidence, given its homeric roots). Throughout the film, the characters are pursued by the Law, who want to execute them as evildoers; by the end of the film, they've somehow managed to extricate themselves (through a series of coincidences and contrivances) from any legal sanction... but the lawmen still catch up with them and are going to kill them anyway, before they are rescued by what may as well be divine intervention (though there is a tiny bit of foreshadowing). This works because through the course of the film the heroes have shown us that although they're criminals, they are not necessarily bad people, so the danger they face is unjust. They earn their salvation by showing us their humanity, and also by having been the victims of a whole load of terrible coincidences - their karmic account, as it were, has built up enough to allow the final salvation.

Or "Snow White" - the heroine is murdered, only for some handsome prince to wander along and kiss her so that she spontaneously springs back to life. Deus ex machina! But it's justified because the character is good and the person who murders her is very bad.

More specifically, "Snow White" (or "Sleeping Beauty" for that matter) show three common prerequisites for a DEM: the protagonist is not only good, but innocent; the protagonist has suffered unjustly; and the antagonist has won through nefarious, rule-breaking means.

In other traditions DEMs can be earned in other ways - demonstrating bravery and intelligence in overcoming certain challenges, for instance, or showing charity and self-sacrifice in helping people who later turn out to be gods.

[Micamo]

Hello! For today's post I'd like to discuss a principle I call the Principle of Empathy. The easier the audience finds it to imagine your magic, the better. There's a lot of ways to apply this principle to your writing, but I'll discuss the three big ones:

First, whenever possible, use descriptions of the sights, sounds, smells, and even tastes and feel of your magic, instead of just using the abstract.

Let's look at an example. "Hevnar the Mystical looked over the young subject and found she was attuned to the grey wind." All well and good, but this description doesn't give us too much of an idea as to what "being attuned to the grey wind" actually means. It can be tempting to answer this question with more abstraction, like "The Grey Wind is the embodiment of the god Alverin, who lives in his grand library at the edge of time, collecting all the world's secret knowledge."

But we can do one better. "Hevnar the Mystical looked over the young subject: As she entered the room, all the candles began to flicker, and the shadows on the walls and the floor swirled and took unfamiliar shapes. Her hair was thin and white despite her young age, she had no reflection in any of the mirrors in the room, and her hair and clothes were blown about by a constant, gentle breeze with no source. When he leaned in closer to her, he could just barely hear hundreds of voices whispering to her in unusual tongues. Hevnar recognized the symptoms immediately: She was attuned to the Grey Wind, a chosen of Alverin. She could be a powerful illusionist someday, if only she could find someone to train her in her newfound powers."

Through the visual and audial description, the reader knows something is wrong with this girl, before they get the explanation that she is this way because she has undeveloped magical powers.

Second, whenever possible, describe your magic in terms of internal experiences rather than external means. Example time! "Incorporeal things, such as ghosts, can move through solid objects freely. However, they may not move through more than 30 feet of solid material at once." So you couldn't, for example, use your incorporeality to move through the core of the planet and appear on the other side.

Here's a similar rule that uses our principle to be much more descriptive: "Incorporeal things, like ghosts, can move through solid objects freely, but however they still need to breathe." It's hard to visualize 30 feet of material, but it's much easier to imagine needing to resurface for air when you "dive" into a solid.

Third, whenever you can, tie abstract parts of your magic systems to physical systems instead. "In this world, a person's living-or-dead status is determined by the Life Force inside their body. If all the life force gets out, they're dead. If you can somehow keep life force inside of you, however, you're immortal."

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.

[Chagen]

Well, this is going to be useful when I work on Thōselqat magic, a contract system where compacting with spirits grants you power. Of course, one must pay the proper price for the spirit's services...or some VERY bad things can happen.

[Thrice Xandvii]

Isn't it possible that you, as writer, would WANT to use the concept of "life force" precisely because it IS hard to visualize? While I can certainly see some very good ideas coming from these posts, Micamo, I do think that this seems a bit too... structured and prescriptivistic to make sense in all situations.

[Micamo]

Isn't it possible that you, as writer, would WANT to use the concept of "life force" precisely because it IS hard to visualize? While I can certainly see some very good ideas coming from these posts, Micamo, I do think that this seems a bit too... structured and prescriptivistic to make sense in all situations.

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."

But I will say this: I've never in my life encountered a conworld that was flawed because it was too easy to visualize what it was like there. The problem, far, far, FAR more often, is that the magic feels distant and disconnected with the actual day-to-day goings-on in the world, like you could take the magic out entirely without changing much else of anything. I think one of the ideals we should shoot for in a magic system is that the magic is deeply tied into the world and leaves its mark on everything.

[Thrice Xandvii]

The first rule of writing is "Never follow any rule off a cliff."

That might be something you want to make explicitly clear here... to avoid arguments like the one a bit upthread.

I think one of the ideals we should shoot for in a magic system is that the magic is deeply tied into the world and leaves its mark on everything.

I think that is probably the best way... but it sorta leaves out the type of world that is very much like our own... except for "magic." In that type of world, most things wouldn't really be touched by magic, because it isn't in our own world. In high fantasy, or sci-fi, that type of ideal is far easier to get to, I think. *shrug*

Keep in mind here that I am not calling you wrong, or trying to be argumentative. I just understand things best when I can test their limits, and discuss around the edges of a thing. Most times, this looks like playing "devil's advocate" a fair bit.

[Micamo]

I think that is probably the best way... but it sorta leaves out the type of world that is very much like our own... except for "magic." In that type of world, most things wouldn't really be touched by magic, because it isn't in our own world. In high fantasy, or sci-fi, that type of ideal is far easier to get to, I think. *shrug*

Easier, maybe. Worlds like "Exactly like our world except that there are hidden groups of vampires" work for the good old "Group of ordinary Joes get in way over their head when they discover the vampires by accident and now the vampires want them dead" plot or stories where the vampires are supposed to be a metaphor for something else (like how they serve to represent slave owners in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), but outside of those specific uses those worlds, I think, are boring and stupid. There's a not-unsubtle difference between writing a setting solely to serve the purposes of a single story (where this kind of thing can work) and writing a setting intended to be interesting in and of itself (where I think it really can't).

The notable exceptions are things like the World of Darkness and Harry Potter universes, but the things these exceptions have in common is:

- They focus all but exclusively on their supernatural elements.

- Have way, way, WAY more going on than just a single point of departure.

[Thrice Xandvii]

There's a not-unsubtle difference between writing a setting solely to serve the purposes of a single story (where this kind of thing can work) and writing a setting intended to be interesting in and of itself (where I think it really can't).

That distinction makes a world of difference (no pun intended ) in my understanding of what this little guide is aimed at. Up until this point, I wasn't making that distinction.

[Salmoneus]

Riiight, so now an entire genre is simply 'boring and stupid'. OK.

Who are you exactly, again? Wouldn't it be more honest to label this thread 'Micamo's list of things that Micamo personally likes to read'?

Because again, this 'rule of empathy' is completely contrary to the actual practice of a great many succesful writers, who set out to make their magic (and often many other parts of their setting) DIFFICULT to imagine. Do you really think Lovecraft's occultism is easy to imagine? How do YOU imagine what a 'non-Euclidean angle' looks like?


You don't give any reason why the professionals are wrong and you are right - you just assert that you are right and everyone else is wrong.

[You've also drifted away from conworlding and into just general writing style. Whether you use sensational terms or abstract terms in your prose when describing something that happens is a matter of writing style, and has nothing to do with the setting itself]