r/Fantasy Virtual Con: Magic Systems

[u/lrich1024]

Welcome to the r/Fantasy Virtual Con panel on Magic Systems! Feel free to ask the panelists any questions relevant to the topic. Unlike AMAs, discussion should be kept on-topic to the panel.

The panelists will be stopping by throughout the day to answer your questions and discuss the topic. Keep in mind the panelists are in different time zones so participation may be staggered.

About the Panel

Join panelists Devin Madson, L. Penelope, Michael R. Underwood, and Sarah Beth Durst as they discuss the ins and outs of Magic Systems in Fantasy.

About the Panelists

Devin Madson ( u/DevinMadson) is an Aurealis Award-winning fantasy author from Australia. Her fantasy novels come in all shades of grey and are populated with characters of questionable morals and a liking for witty banter. Starting out self-published, her tradition debut, WE RIDE THE STORM, is out June 21 from Orbit.

Website | Twitter

L. Penelope ( u/lpenel) is the award-winning author of the Earthsinger Chronicles. The first book in the series, Song of Blood & Stone, was chosen as one of TIME Magazine's top fantasy books of 2018. She lives in Maryland with her husband and furry dependents. Visit her at: http://www.lpenelope.com.

Website | Twitter

Michael R. Underwood ( u/MichaelRUnderwood) is a Stabby Award-finalist and author of ANNIHILATION ARIA among other books. He is a co-host of the Actual Play podcast Speculate! and a guest host on the Hugo Award Finalist The Skiffy and Fanty Show.

Website | Twitter

Sarah Beth Durst ( u/sarahbethdurst) is the author of twenty fantasy books for adults, teens, and kids, including RACE THE SANDS, FIRE AND HEIST, and SPARK. She won an ALA Alex Award and a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and has been a finalist for SFWA's Andre Norton Award three times. Vist her at sarahbethdurst.com.

Website | Twitter

FAQ

• What do panelists do? Ask questions of your fellow panelists, respond to Q&A from the audience and fellow panelists, and generally just have a great time!
• What do others do? Like an AMA, ask questions! Just keep in mind these questions should be somewhat relevant to the panel topic.
• What if someone is unkind? We always enforce Rule 1, but we'll especially be monitoring these panels. Please report any unkind comments you see.

[u/lrich1024]

Hello panelists and thanks for joining us today! Do you prefer using magic systems with a lot of rules or do you like magic to be a bit more mysterious and hand-wavy? Do you think one is better than the other or does it depend on the type of story you're telling?

[u/MichaelRUnderwood → u/lrich1024]

Growing up on tabletop rpgs from Dungeons & Dragons to 7th Sea and the White Wolf games, I have a great fondness for magic systems with definite shape and form (especially something like the magic system in Mage: the Ascension).

I think there's a sweet spot for me where a magic system is well-defined enough that you can then improvise within boundaries so that everything will still feel coherent. Ultimately, my goal when creating and implementing a magic system is to write something so that that reader won't feel like you as the author have just cheated to create an out for your characters or to untangle a knot you've created.

While I tend to write magic systems that at the very least have firm boundaries on what they can and can't do, I think storytellers should feel free to create magic systems/forms however they want, and that it's more important to me as a reader that the magic system feel like it adds to the feeling of the world, to the emotional reality of the characters, or helps create the situations that make for good storytelling.

The LitRPG subgenre is a place where I think reader expectations are heavily weighted toward magic systems that feel like they follow strict, understandable logic. Progression and power levels are part of the fun of the genre for many readers, so it's probably wise for storytellers in that form to let the reader behind the curtain in order to understand the mechanics and find joy in the creative application of knowable forms of magic.

Like a lot of aspects of craft, I think that good enough execution can make nearly anything work, from unreliable narrators to exposition to mysterious magic.

[u/sarahbethdurst → u/lrich1024]

Love them both!

For some books, I like to know all the rules of the magic (right down to the nitty-gritty of how it affects everything from politics to plumbing), and then I pick and choose how I present those rules to the reader.

For other books, it's better not to know about the midichlorians.

So it really does depend on the type of story you're telling and the effect you're trying to create. The magic system is a tool that serves the story.

Really, everything needs to serve the story.

[u/HiuGregg]

Hi folks! Thanks for doing this!

I guess my question would be... When the time comes to spell out the specifics of a magic system to the reader, do you guys have any preferences on how to handle that? How much information to give, when to give it, and what should be withheld — that kind of thing?

[u/MichaelRUnderwood → u/HiuGregg]

I don't think there's a universal "right" answer here, but I think the difference speaks to reader expectations.

Some readers want to tackle a new magic system like an eager rpg player diving into a new game book (aka me at ages 14-20). They want to absorb it all and achieve mastery, fluency. To be able to ride along with the protagonist and brainstorm innovative magical solutions to problems and be interested in how the protagonist addresses the problem using a set of tools that the reader understands. That type of reader is likely to have a much higher tolerance for the kind of mechanical exposition about the ins and outs of the magic system.

Other readers don't care as much about the mechanics and/or don't have much of a tolerance for rulebook-style exposition. They either want to learn by watching/reading something unfold in its own fashion. Both reader styles are correct because they're about personal preference.

[u/sarahbethdurst → u/HiuGregg]

Great question! I think about this a LOT. In fact, I devote an entire draft of each book to handling exactly this issue.

A writer's goal is to cast a spell on a reader, to make them believe in people and places that don't exist. If something happens in a book that causes a reader to think, "Hey, that's not possible!" then you've broken the spell.

So you want to make sure the reader not only knows but believes in the rules of magic in your world before the Extremely Important Plot Event happens that relies on magic. What I do is try to sprinkle hints and examples throughout the book so that the magic feels inherent and natural by the time we get to Extremely Important Plot Event.

(Side note: you can totally mislead the reader as to what those rules are -- that's doable -- but the logic has to be able to withstand a second read, or else the reader will feel cheated and sad and not want to read your books any more.)

Exactly when and what info to give (and withhold) depends on the specific story you're trying to tell and the effect you're trying to achieve, but I think it's important to be very deliberate and careful about your choices.

[u/lpenel → u/HiuGregg]

I think it's just like any other part of worldbuilding. You sprinkle out morsels of information at a time until you really need to feed the reader a full meal. It also depends a lot on POV. If we're in the POV of a magic user, the information will come out different than if a novice is just learning about it. And those techniques can be used depending on the complexity of the magic and how important it is for the reader to understand the rules.

Since a POV character is immersed in its usage, they're going to get a lot more in depth about the specifics, how it feels, the difficulties and/or fears inherent in its use. However, it could be useful to also have them explain it to a novice or a non-magic user.

[u/eriophora]

Hi all, thanks for coming by today!

• What part of building a magic system do you find most fun?

• How do you decide what to define and what to leave unknown within a system?

• Other than your own, what book has your favorite magic?

[u/DevinMadson → u/eriophora]

• Hmmm, I think the most fun part for me is looking at how people would react to it (to having access to it themselves, or seeing other people use it) both as individuals and societies, and how that might change over time depending on new knowledge. Magic systems are fun in and of themselves, but since I use them to tell stories about people and societies, it's how it interacts with those that I find the most interesting.

• I have tended to leave this one dependent one the story I'm telling at any given moment, but my general rule is if you don't need to know for the story to make sense then it's better to leave it as a mystery.

• Given I have more of a hard magic system in my books, it may be surprising that a lot of my favourite magic in books is on the softer side. It's still ages until it will be out, but most recently I absolutely adored the dark, earth/plant/flower magic in Tasha Suri's upcoming THE JASMINE THRONE, it is just... lush and sublime and I can't wait to shout about it more when it comes out.

[u/sarahbethdurst → u/eriophora]

Lots of really fun parts: the moment when you have the first idea and think, "Ooh, I want to write that!", the moment when the rules click into place and feel whole, the moment when you're in the middle of writing using those rules and suddenly have an idea for a loophole or a consequence that changes everything for your characters...

How I decide what to define is by asking myself what's necessary to the story. Anything essential to the plot or the character's psychological journey goes in. Anything unessential... well, then I ask myself the key question: "Is it awesome?" If yes, it goes in.

Keep the essential stuff. Keep the unessential but cool. Toss out the unessential and boring.

Come to think of it, that's a decent rule for all writing.

And the book with my favorite magic... WILD MAGIC by Tamora Pierce (all sorts of animal magic, from talking with them to transforming into them).

[u/SharadeReads]

Hello panelists and thank you for doing this!

My favourite type of magic systems are the ones that are seamlessly blended into the world's everyday life. Magic = mundane (yeah i AM fun at parties).

Do you have examples of this trope? What do you think are the right ingredients for it to be coherent & fresh and interesting?

[u/sarahbethdurst → u/SharadeReads]

I am fascinated by the intersection of reality and magic. So many fantastic stories can rise out of the space where they collide!

My favorite author for this kind of magic-in-the-real-world is Charles de Lint. Especially his short story collections, like DREAMS UNDERFOOT. Whenever I read his stories, I come away expecting to see magic lurking around every corner.

I think the most important ingredient to making this kind of story work (or, really, any kind of story work) is a character that you are 100% invested in, so that you're with them when they see magic in the world -- the way the Childlike Empress says Bastian is with Atreyu in the Neverending Story.

[u/MichaelRUnderwood → u/SharadeReads]

I think the Eberron setting for D&D is meant to fit into this framework - it's a more steampunk-ish world compared to the Medieval/Renaissance European setting of Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms. Magic is technology in Eberron, with trains running on enchanted lines of spell-stone, crystals powering magitech machines, etc. I like that aesthetic, as it makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar. Especially since so many people now (myself included) don't really understand more than the basics of how the machinery and technology around us actually works.

When you're playing with the balance of the familiar and the strange (aka cognition and estrangement, shout out to Darko Suvin), I am reminded of a great framework presented by N.K. Jemisin, which I will attempt to paraphrase: the stranger the world, the deeper into point of view you can and maybe should go to ground the reader.

A world strange to us is normal to someone who lives it and has never known anything else. If that PoV is delivered in a way that gets a reader to invest, they don't need to understand the full technical/magical specs of the spectral elevator, they just need to know that it gets the character from the street to the office where they have to face their domineering necromancer boss.

[u/fanny_bertram]

Hello there panelists, thank you for coming.

• How do you set about creating a magic system for your books and what is the biggest challenge at the beginning?

[u/sarahbethdurst → u/fanny_bertram]

I write by what I call the Rule of Awesome. When I sit down to write, I ask myself, "Given what I already know of the world and its characters, what's the most awesome thing that could happen?" So that's exactly where I begin with creating a magic system: I choose one awesome thing.

For RACE THE SANDS, my one thing was monster racing. And for my Queens of Renthia trilogy (which starts with THE QUEEN OF BLOOD), my one thing was bloodthirsty nature spirits.

Once I have that one awesome thing, then building the magic system is all about asking as many questions as possible. If this one quirk of the world is true (whether it be monsters that can be ridden or nature spirits that want to kill you or whatever), then what else has to be true?

If you make your magic system feel coherent, logical, and inevitable, then it (and the world and your story) will feel real and true.

[u/DevinMadson → u/fanny_bertram]

I think a lot of magic systems start with a 'what if' question. My particular 'what if' question, was "what if my aunt is right?" She had been enlivening our long drive with a description of all the past lives she had been regressed through and I ended up wondering... if we do live again, how would it change us? How many times? Would we remember? Could you tell which life someone else was up to? And slowly by the asking of a bazillion (totally a real number) questions, I chipped away at the idea, shaping it bit by bit with a bit of logic, some imagination, and a big handful of coolness. And a lot of years. I was probably about 17 when that conversation happened, which is... not quite half a lifetime ago but getting very close. The books I've since written using this system have also added to and shaped the way it works.

As for the biggest challenge at the beginning, for me that was definitely coming up with terminology. I wanted to use words that got across what the magic was without needing an infodump of explanation, but none of them could be too modern or scientific, or at all unwieldy to say, and sounding cool was an added bonus. Which meant I had to give a lot of thought to what I would call everything. Especially since I'd always intended to write all my books in this one world, so anything I put to paper now can't be changed.

[u/Alexander31415]

What kinds of problems are best solved with the character(s) using their "magical" ability? How do you know when you must rely on "magic" to solve a character's problem instead of having a character solve their problem by using their wits or physical strength?

[u/lpenel → u/Alexander31415]

I think if a problem can be solved by magic, and the character has the ability to do so, and the cost is one they're willing to pay, then by all means use magic :) That's part of the beauty of having magic as one of the tools in your arsenal. Conflicts increase when the costs of usage must be weighed, and then the story could get even more interesting. Also, it says a lot about the character and the world when someone could use magic but chooses to use their physical strength or wits instead. Why would they make that choice? What do other characters think about that? So the answer to your question really depends on several factors, including what the author is trying to say or focus on.

[u/sarahbethdurst → u/Alexander31415]

It depends on the cost of using magic in whatever magic system you've established. If it's prohibitively high, then the characters will exhaust all other options first and chose magic as a last resort. But if it's the easy option or if the characters are willing to pay the price... then call in the winged monkeys!

[u/SharadeReads]

Another question, there are a lot of magic systems that rely on inheriting power through genetics (the Force for example - and yes I am saying that to spark a riot about the eternal question for SW: sff or scifi). Can it still be written today in a good way, and not "hogging privileges"/"magic supremacy" manner?

[u/MichaelRUnderwood → u/SharadeReads]

My personal take on strictly bloodline-oriented magic systems is that it's become hard for me to not equate them with the aristocratic/monarchic ideas that go into something like The Divine Right of Kings and eugenics.

As I said in another comment thread, I think good enough execution can make things work that maybe I wouldn't try to do myself. I could see a story that addresses inherited systemic privilege through a bloodline magic system, but I don't know that I have a good way of doing it that doesn't end up replicating the supremacist implications. If someone else has done that or is going to do it, I'll be happy to check it out, since I think there's good work to be done in talking about how privilege warps people's perceptions, lets them not see problems and/or opt out of dealing with problems that impact people with less privilege.

[u/CoffeeArchives]

Hello everyone! I have a few questions:

• How do you feel about "hard" vs. "soft" magic systems?

• How do you keep track of what your magic system can and can't do?

• What's an idea for a magic system you'd love to write about but haven't yet?

[u/sarahbethdurst → u/CoffeeArchives]

As far as how to keep track of my magic systems... I make a file for every novel that I label "Rules of Magic," and I write up a bulleted list. (I love making lists.)

In general (and there are of course exceptions!), I think the magic systems that work best are ones that can be boiled down to only a tiny handful of very clear rules. Those rules can have massive far-reaching and fascinating consequences, but the system is strongest when the core is cohesive and straightforward.

[u/lpenel → u/CoffeeArchives]

I think there's a place for both hard and soft magic and I enjoy stories with both. With hard systems, you have to spend a good deal of time ensuring the reader understands the rules. I think this works best when those rules are integral to the plot. If you have a magic system where one must pronounce spoken spells very carefully, and then introduce a character with a lisp or speech impediment, then your plot, magic, and character are interwoven very tightly and the rules have a reason for being there and in fact cause conflict in the story.

On the other hand, softer systems de-emphasize the magical rules. I think this type of magic lends itself more to stories where other conflicts are more significant and the magic is just another part of the worldbuilding.

As for keeping track, I create a story bible in Scrivener for each of my story worlds. I have a template for magic systems which includes things like: costs, how it's taught, properties, limitations, etc.

And since I'm a web developer, I have an idea for coding-based magic system that I'm hoping to get into a story one day.

[u/fanny_bertram]

Welcome, panelists! Feel free to introduce yourselves, share a little about your work, and tell us why you might be on this panel :)