Magic

Magic is one of the most ubiquitous concepts in fantasy. By magic, of course, I mean the ability to do things which the natural laws of this universe say are impossible. Magic may or may not include "sixth sense" abilities: telepathy, telekinesis, foretelling. But you can't just use magic all willy-nilly...or you can't and still write well. Though the rules may be different, magic needs rules just as badly as physics or math or music.

You should think carefully about how magic is going to work in your world. Are you the wand-waving type, i.e. Harry Potter ? Are you the special words and/or symbols type, i.e. Diane Duane's Young Wizards ? Perhaps you need staves and not wands: Gandalf , for example, or the wizards of Earthsea . Perhaps you're the herbal magic variety, like Juniper . Perhaps the source of your magic is gods or other supernatural beings. Perhaps you need special help--i.e. the painted magic of Charles De Lint's Memory and Dream . Or maybe every person's focus as different, and it's only the fact that they have a focus at all that matters. Just make sure you know how it works; it's silly to have someone who can summon a storm with a thought and someone who needs a wand to light a candle, unless you have very specific reasons in the kind of magic or the kind of mage.

Next, you should think about what kinds of effects your mages are allowed to create. You can have a world of weather-witches, a world of demon-summoners, a world of magical artists...just about anything your mind can imagine. But make sure you're consistent. If every person with the slightest bit of magic can kill, change history, change the crust of your planet, and read everybody's mind...well, no ordinary human being stands a chance.

Last, you need to think about the cost of your magic. If there's no cost at all, why would anyone do anything any other way? And, again, if your mage can do magic any time for any reason, no ordinary human being stands a chance. So. Perhaps your mages have inner magic which can be used up by spells and takes time to replenish. Perhaps it's even life-energy that your mages must use. Maybe the stronger the spell the more likely it is to backlash and maim or kill the caster. Your spells might need difficult-to-find ingredients, or might result from years and years of intensive study, or might require a trial by a deity. The cost could be any of these, or more than one, or something completely different--but never doubt that there should be a cost, or really your mages aren't any fun at all. There's not much else I can tell you, so here I go again, spamming you with examples...

	The wizards of Diane Duane's Young Wizards series can be any type of creature, but they can all talk to each other in the same language. This language is the language of Creation; it is the language of the Book of Night with Moon, which holds every detail about everything everywhere in the entire universe. Everything from stones to stars to people understands this language. Spells are simply a request in the Speech for whatever the wizard desires; the more powerful a wizard is, the more persuasive he or she tends to be, and the more abstract forces he or she can call upon. Many spells require naming the objects or participants, and this can be very dangerous--because if something is named wrong, that aspect of the thing or person will change. The cost of the magic is mostly in the wizard's own stamina and physical well-being, but it's also that wizards must work for the good--and so the Lone Power, the god that created death, is always after them.

	Juniper and Wise Child, by Monica Furlong, deal with a very earthy type of magic. The magic occurs through the work and time of the caster; Juniper's magic includes weaving her own cloak--from carding the wool and picking the plants for the dye onward. Juniper and Wise Child, and other witches like them, live in simple poverty. Their magic comes from their knowledge of nature and of the interactions of life, not from supernatural sources, or at least not directly. The time and investment of learning all the natural lore and being careful with how their herbs and other ingredients are harvested and treated serves as both the means of the magic and the cost.

	The magic of the Harry Potter books is a mishmash of a lot of different types of magic, and I'd be wary about doing what J.K. Rowling does: there's a spell for everything she needs, as far as we know, and the magic is unpredictable--from the clues we're given in the earlier books, is there any way to know what happens at the climax of the Goblet of Fire? And perhaps it was important that we didn't have a clue, but still, it's often impossible to predict what magic wizards have. Unpredictability can be exciting, but it can also show a lack of an underlying logic structure, which is often the case in Harry Potter's world. There is some structure--Transfiguration often works along lines of wordplay or oddball connections, for example--but in general the magic is unconnected. Also, there are a huge number of magical categories, which seem somewhat arbitrary: the difference between charms, hexes, and jinxes seems to be intent only, for example. And, according to my friend Andrew, the Harry Potter magic system isn't any good because "there's only one spell to kill people." You can make of that what you will.

	The magic of Terry Pratchett's Discworld is fairly ordinary magic, in general, except a for one small fact: you can see it. It's an eighth color, visible to witches and wizards. This of course has some interesting side effects; Rincewind, one of the main characters of the first book, remains obstinate that he's a wizard because he can see magic, even though he's an absolutely terrible one. The magic of Discworld works on lines which are logical in very skewed ways, like some of the Transfigurations of Harry Potter, but more coherent. Pratchett also discusses the dangers of magic, or rather of using magic: wizards cling to power so long that by the end of their lives, they're often doing nothing but keeping themselves alive.

	I try to stick to book examples on this site, but I'm really very fond of the magical system of the White Wolf role-playing game Mage: The Ascension, so I'll discuss a little bit of it here. In Mage, there are nine spheres of magic, and each sphere controls what you can do; for example, if you're good in Matter, you can do things like create blocks of pure uranium, and if you're good in theoretical magic, you can shoot out a bolt of pure magic that'll knock a block of uranium off its course so that it doesn't crash into another block and cause a nuclear reaction. Not that I'm speaking from experience, of course. Anyway...how good you are in each sphere controls how much of that sphere you can do. Furthermore, you can't just wave your hand and do magic (usually): you need a focus. Every person has a different focus, and yours depends on what your talents and interests are. I had a female character who wrote runes on anything she could find in order to do magic, while one of her companions had to be listening to music. Finally, the cost of magic is something called Paradox. Essentially, doing magic violates the natural world, and so you start to build up paradox...and if a normal human observes you doing magic, your paradox skyrockets. When you have more paradox than you do magical grace, Very Bad Things happen. If you're interested, check out the games.