- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You know what, I'm an aspiring fantasy writer. I'm going to talk about my personal experience with building magic into a setting.
Omicron Toots His Own Horn
Snowflake Quest is a quest run by yours truly on this very forum, currently on hiatus. The Twilight Age is a novel manuscript currently in the Hell of Editing. What maters here is that both are set in the same setting, yet present magic in vastly different ways.
Magic in the Twilight Age
The Twilight Age (placeholder title) is a story of supernatural investigation in a modern urban fantasy setting, whose protagonist is a mythological creature. The setting of the Twilight Age is one in which powerful magic has withered through the ages, and the potential for its return to prominence is both enticing and menacing.
Therefore, magic must serve a number of design goals.
1) Magic is intuitive to the characters yet opaque to the reader. This may seem odd or counterintuitive but serves thematic purposes. Supernatural beings in the TA setting largely live in insular and standoffish communities when they have communities at all. Their forms of magic are varied and usually unknown to each other. Furthermore, the main character and antagonist both use old, forgotten forms of magic which are further unknown. Having characters treat their magic as familiar without their rules being clear to he audience emphasizes how characters in the setting feel towards each other. Magic is weird, not a known quantity, and its full capabilities and limitations a hazardous guess at best. While the protagonist does unveil some aspects of her magic, having it remain in parts obscure and not fully understood serves to keep her as a bizarre, not quite understood figure despite the story being told from her point of view.
2) Magic is ritualistic and oblique. Precisely because of the above, magic must be constrained in its use as a problem solver, or it will undermine all tension in the story due to its nebulous scope. As a result, even though the rules and scope of magic are kept blurry, it is made clear early on that it requires preparation and ritual that is increasingly esoteric the more powerful it is, and that its effects are often - though not always - not straightforward but instead create effects with strong aesthetics and intricate effects.
Ultimately, however, magic is supposed to be surprising, and its intervention in the story often lacks direct foreshadowing, because it exists as a menacing, ambiguous force that has mostly faded from this world and which cannot yet be fully grasped.
By contrast, most characters involved have "capabilities." This is not a term used in the story, and I only use it here to clarify concepts involved. While magic is weird, some people are just very strong, or clairvoyant, or some other gift that is part of being whatever supernatural creature they are. These are not thought of as "magic," or even "powers;" they're just part of being what the character is. Because such powers are more immediate, convenient and straightforward in their implications, they are much more often used to solve or cause problems, and as a result must be more carefully explained and foreshadowed, their scope and limitations established earlier and more clearly.
So, as an example, here are some examples of supernatural "powers" established, then used:
The magic of the Twilight Age is built on symbolic and thematic associations as understood by whoever is practicing them. There is no manual which clearly outlines its capabilities, bit if I do my job well there does not need to be: If I succeed, the reader eventually gains an intuitive sense of how things work based on their imagery and ritual.
The main character is a monster/deity from a religion based on human and animal sacrifice, whose goddess has in her portfolio butterflies, bats and claws of flint. As a result, she sheds her blood to grow stone claws, and sacrifices an image of a butterfly to summon bats. The antagonist worships a god of war and the sun, and so costumes himself in the image of his god to gain strength and speed, and summons "warriors" of "sunlight" in the form of fiery birds from sacrificed animals. The ambivalent ally is of a completely different nature, one the protagonist knows little about, and so her magic appears arcane to her except where she can get explanations - but when that magic begins to serve to solve problems in the plot, rough guidelines on its symbolism are provided.
In this conception, magic is mystical, esoterical, but still not completely obscure. It is understood by imagery and thematic portfolios rather than any explanation of how it works on a fundamental level - there is little explanation of where power is drawn from and how such effects are made to happen. Magic id powerful, but steeped in ritual, dramatic in effect, and often with the potential for collateral damage or running out of control. Magic is foreign, external to some extent.
This is by contrast with the various characters' more simple, physical abilities, which are simply who they are and which they do not think of as "magic." They simlly happen to be fast, or strong, or able to see ghosts or turn into smoke, as an innate part of just being who they are.
Oof. That was a lot of words talking about my stuff. Sorry. I started writing this up intending to contrast the above approach to that of my Quest, but this felt a lot longer to write on a phone than it actually is. Maybe later.
I hope this was useful to someone somewhere to some extent.
Omicron Toots His Own Horn
Snowflake Quest is a quest run by yours truly on this very forum, currently on hiatus. The Twilight Age is a novel manuscript currently in the Hell of Editing. What maters here is that both are set in the same setting, yet present magic in vastly different ways.
Magic in the Twilight Age
The Twilight Age (placeholder title) is a story of supernatural investigation in a modern urban fantasy setting, whose protagonist is a mythological creature. The setting of the Twilight Age is one in which powerful magic has withered through the ages, and the potential for its return to prominence is both enticing and menacing.
Therefore, magic must serve a number of design goals.
1) Magic is intuitive to the characters yet opaque to the reader. This may seem odd or counterintuitive but serves thematic purposes. Supernatural beings in the TA setting largely live in insular and standoffish communities when they have communities at all. Their forms of magic are varied and usually unknown to each other. Furthermore, the main character and antagonist both use old, forgotten forms of magic which are further unknown. Having characters treat their magic as familiar without their rules being clear to he audience emphasizes how characters in the setting feel towards each other. Magic is weird, not a known quantity, and its full capabilities and limitations a hazardous guess at best. While the protagonist does unveil some aspects of her magic, having it remain in parts obscure and not fully understood serves to keep her as a bizarre, not quite understood figure despite the story being told from her point of view.
2) Magic is ritualistic and oblique. Precisely because of the above, magic must be constrained in its use as a problem solver, or it will undermine all tension in the story due to its nebulous scope. As a result, even though the rules and scope of magic are kept blurry, it is made clear early on that it requires preparation and ritual that is increasingly esoteric the more powerful it is, and that its effects are often - though not always - not straightforward but instead create effects with strong aesthetics and intricate effects.
Ultimately, however, magic is supposed to be surprising, and its intervention in the story often lacks direct foreshadowing, because it exists as a menacing, ambiguous force that has mostly faded from this world and which cannot yet be fully grasped.
By contrast, most characters involved have "capabilities." This is not a term used in the story, and I only use it here to clarify concepts involved. While magic is weird, some people are just very strong, or clairvoyant, or some other gift that is part of being whatever supernatural creature they are. These are not thought of as "magic," or even "powers;" they're just part of being what the character is. Because such powers are more immediate, convenient and straightforward in their implications, they are much more often used to solve or cause problems, and as a result must be more carefully explained and foreshadowed, their scope and limitations established earlier and more clearly.
So, as an example, here are some examples of supernatural "powers" established, then used:
- The protagonist encounters a locked door, and breaks it open with a strong push. This establishes the scope of her strength as later used in more high-stakes confrontations.
- The protagonist gets into a minor fight, and suffers shallow cuts. These barely bleed and quickly become painless. Later, she is threatened with a shotgun, and her internal monologue comments that the blast would injure her, but that she would survive it. This establishes her resilience; she later becomes involved in a much more serious fight, and survives injuries which would have been lethal to a human being.
- A jaguar-like creature manifests out of a cloud of smoke and is associated with a god of smoke and shadow, then during a fight with the heroine turns into smoke to avoid her blows, then later performs other such tricks.
- A character with ties to the ghostly generates an aura of cold which increases in intensity with her anger in her first appearance. Later, she is shown using that very aura to cross a burning building without harm from the flames.
- The protagonist carries a knife for what she says is self-defense. While it initially seems like the knife is a weapon of its own, when she becomes involved in her first fight scene she instead uses it to cut her arm and shed her own blood, which crystallizes into flint and cause her hands to become claws of stone.
- A priest of an Aztec sun-god rips out the hearts of this god's totem animal in sacrifice, then consumes these hearts to summon images of the birds made out of flame which he sends to burn his enemy. Later, when backed against the wall, he instead consumed all his remaining hearts in a single crude burst of fire.
- The protagonist crushes a figurine carved out of obsidian and mixes the shards with her blood, then out of these shards summons a swarm of bats, in a mirror image of the priest's actions; indeed, the bats are used to devour the flaming birds.
- The protagonist is informed that a ritual which would summon a ghost to be interrogated is both dangerous and unethical, but her lack of familiarity with such magic leaves her misunderstanding or disbelieving the extent of this. She manages to get someone to conduct that ritual for her; its symbolism is largely lost on her, and it goes very wrong for reasons she at the time cannot fully understand.
- The main antagonist paints himself blue and wears a mask in the effigy of his god. This enhances his ability in ways which are not fully explored, beyond a sense of making him faster and stronger, as the protagonist only fights him briefly, and in their second bout shatters his mask as her finishing move.
The magic of the Twilight Age is built on symbolic and thematic associations as understood by whoever is practicing them. There is no manual which clearly outlines its capabilities, bit if I do my job well there does not need to be: If I succeed, the reader eventually gains an intuitive sense of how things work based on their imagery and ritual.
The main character is a monster/deity from a religion based on human and animal sacrifice, whose goddess has in her portfolio butterflies, bats and claws of flint. As a result, she sheds her blood to grow stone claws, and sacrifices an image of a butterfly to summon bats. The antagonist worships a god of war and the sun, and so costumes himself in the image of his god to gain strength and speed, and summons "warriors" of "sunlight" in the form of fiery birds from sacrificed animals. The ambivalent ally is of a completely different nature, one the protagonist knows little about, and so her magic appears arcane to her except where she can get explanations - but when that magic begins to serve to solve problems in the plot, rough guidelines on its symbolism are provided.
In this conception, magic is mystical, esoterical, but still not completely obscure. It is understood by imagery and thematic portfolios rather than any explanation of how it works on a fundamental level - there is little explanation of where power is drawn from and how such effects are made to happen. Magic id powerful, but steeped in ritual, dramatic in effect, and often with the potential for collateral damage or running out of control. Magic is foreign, external to some extent.
This is by contrast with the various characters' more simple, physical abilities, which are simply who they are and which they do not think of as "magic." They simlly happen to be fast, or strong, or able to see ghosts or turn into smoke, as an innate part of just being who they are.
Oof. That was a lot of words talking about my stuff. Sorry. I started writing this up intending to contrast the above approach to that of my Quest, but this felt a lot longer to write on a phone than it actually is. Maybe later.
I hope this was useful to someone somewhere to some extent.
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