Seven Steps To Creating Fictional Magic Systems, Part II

Or: Why Flex's Backstory Is Total BS, And That's Okay

If you’re writing a book, you want a magic system that drives the plot and gives your protagonists interesting choices – and fortunately for you, I’ve already discussed the first three steps in designing fictional magic systems!  But there’s four more tips to make your imaginary magic feel real, so let’s walk through the rest:

Ferrett’s Fourth Rule Of Literary Magic Systems: Make The Magic Personal To The Character 
In the Super Mario games, there’s a concept called “Expressive movement” – giving Mario so many fluid options to get around, each usable, that the player feels like Mario’s motion is an expression of their personality.  Mario gives you a billion ways to hop, double-jump, hat-jump, long-jump, and side-somersault your way across the landscape.

In this sense, nobody’s playing a Mario game, they’re playing their Mario.  Which is why fans of these games are so devoted – they’ve got a big vocabulary, but the movement is purely their speech. 

The big question is, yes, you have a magic system, but is there a way to make that magic personal to each character? 

In Flex, that was a primary goal of mine – I wanted each magician to have a distinct style, so Paul’s bureaucromancy (magical paperwork shenanigans) were very different from Robert’s Fight-Club-o-mancy (channeling hypermachismo violence, but only if it was Palahniuk cool).  And that made each character pop, that little sense that yes, they were a ‘mancer but the magic was all their own. 

Paul Tsabo: Master of magical paperwork.

Likewise, in Corded - a book of mine my agent is trying to sell to publishers as we speak - everyone fights with magic rope.  (I’d give you the reasons, but honestly, I thought “rope-fighting is cool” and backed into a bunch of justifications why swords no longer worked.)  But they don’t just fight with magic rope – some of them are lariat specialists, some are tricky knot folks, some are overpowered muscle who rely on rope for a finishing move. 

The point is, the more you can have your magic be a reflection of each person’s character, the more interesting your book will be, because now the magic is not just a static power that everyone grabs, but everyone grabs in a unique way.

And speaking of….

Ferrett’s Fifth Rule Of Literary Magic Systems: Make Your Protagonist’s Relationship To The Magic Unique
Okay, so this person wields unearthly powers.  They’re probably gonna run into other people who have unearthly powers. 

What’s the source of tension between your protagonist and the other weirdos?

When I read dull stories about magic, they often fall into one of three categories:

1. Protagonist is born with powers and is buddies with all the other power-people

2. Protagonist is the best ever at powers and everyone loves them

3. Protagonist is The Chosen One because hey, the plot says so. 

And in all of those, part of the reason they’re boring stories is because the protagonist has no interesting relationship to the culture they’re a part of.  They’re either an ordinary unearthly power-user, or everyone agrees that gosh, your protagonist is so good at this! 

(Except for that one bully lurking in the corner seething with jealousy, don’t think I don’t notice your obvious tropes here.)   

Whereas what you want is a reason for your lead character to be at odds with the magic community – not necessarily a villain (although hey, that works), but a reason why their relationship to this magic system is a little more personal than most.  Note that J.K. Rowling invented a secret magic academy that Harry got invited to, but she also gave him an origin story where he had a special scar and a deep connection to that magical world. 

So what makes your protagonist’s relationship to these unearthly powers a little different than the others?  It doesn’t have to be a magical reason; maybe they’ve got a family tradition or a mentor’s legacy to carry on, maybe they’ve got a power considered distasteful by the world at large.  Heck, maybe it’s as simple as magic is flashy and they are socially anxious. 

But the important thing is that by considering this, you’re doing two things:

1)    Making the culture of Those What Wield The Power less homogenous – the people they meet won’t all be happy allies, but folks with opinions and agendas. 

2)    You’re giving your character something that sets them apart from the other Unearthly Power People, so even within that culture they’re distinct. 

Ferrett’s Sixth Rule Of Literary Magic Systems: If They’ve Got These Powers, Why Aren’t These Folks Ruling The World? 
I mean, maybe they are.  But if they’re not, why haven’t the Muggles gone the way of the Cro-Magnon?  They’re obsolete, baby - once you’ve got People Who Can Fire Flaming Salamanders From Their Fingers versus Joe The 7-11 Clerk, one is on their way out. 

I’m not saying this has to be a plot point, but at least make it a justification.  If there’s too many mortals to fight off at once, cool, Secret Cabal will do.  In my book Flex, I purposely made magic focused around obsession so that the people who were best at magic were too wrapped around the axle of memorizing every episode of Record of Lodoss War to take over the planet. 

And it’s fine if they have taken over the planet!  In Corded, that book I hope you will read some day, the bad kinds of magic-users have very much dominated the planet, and the struggle to get out from underneath their mastery of the leylines is a problem that dominates the narrative. 

But seriously, giving a set of humans powers that break the laws of physics will either give them a serious advantage, or – as in the case of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy – it will make them such a target that they’ll be exploited and enslaved by society. 

Ponder if your magic-wielders need a drawback that lets the Average Jill get the drop on them.  And if not, then take a moment to ask the question of how these powers have either elevated people, or endangered them, or both. 

Ferrett’s Seventh Rule Of Literary Magic Systems: Design The Little Ways Your Magic Affects The World
I’m not talking the huge, world-sweeping details: I’m talking the tiny, personal moments that make an imaginary place come alive.  Harry Potter has a lot of Big Voldemort Moments, but what people fell in love with were the chocolate frogs and the talking paintings and the every-flavor jellybeans. 

If you’ve got a character who can conjure flaming salamanders from their hands and she doesn’t have cutesy nicknames for them, playing favorites because Snarltongue likes to cuddle (which you can do with a fireman’s blanket) and stupid Scaldwell gets under the couch and sets it on fire, well…

You’re missing out. 

People are drawn to the big-picture stuff, but they fall in love with the tiny details.  Sure, Gandalf can fight Balrogs, but he’s also a hell of a pyrotechnician.  Run with that. 

Side Note: To Heck With History!
The worldbuilding for Flex has an ugly hole punched right through its center, and that flaw this:

The history makes no sense at all.

Canonically, in Flex’s backstory, World War II was ended when a bunch of ‘mancers overloaded and blew a hole through space-time called The Broach, which a) drove the world to outlaw magic, and b) lingers in Germany as a non-Euclidean snarl of growing antiphysics. 

Yet we have Valentine, our favorite videogamemancer, cheerfully referencing Mario and Metal Gear Solid!  Everyone’s snarfing down Dunkin’ Donuts, living in a modern New York!  Which is nonsense.  If WWII had ended that way, geopolitics would have changed, culture would have changed, there’d be no Mario as we know it.

And you know what?

Who cares?

Flex was written to be an urban fantasy, and the point of urban fantasy is “Our world, but with a twist.”  If I’d come up with an alternate backstory and alternate culture and alternate videogames, most readers would have found that level of detail so dense that they would have set the book down. 

Instead, I blatantly fudged things, aaaaand mostly, people went with it. 

The lesson here is that consistency is not what’s important; your story is what’s critical, and you can bend any rules to make it work.  As I noted last week, Harry Potter is full of fudges but it works because most of those handwaves strengthen the story.  What ultimately matters is how your magic contributes to the characters’ situations, not how detailed it is. 

The Wrapup
All right!  That’s seven rules, all right.  But in my next newsletter (two weeks from now), I’ll do you one better – I’ll dissect a novel that I am planning right at this very moment, and show you how I design a magic system in real time. 

I may also tapdance. 

The Usual Plug
Also, the latest episode of my podcast …And We Will Plunder Their Prose is out – this one discussing Mary Robinette Kowal’s latest entry in the Lady Astronaut series, The Relentless Moon.  She does a trick with close-perspective narrative that you don’t see too often, obscuring a critical fact about a character in a really intriguing way, so, you know, check it out if you see fit. 

A Comment Upon Recent Troubles In Substackland
So I just started at Substack six weeks ago, and they may apparently be doing some pretty hinky stuff with regards to funding transphobic newsletters.  Just to be clear: I’m pro trans people, I’m not happy about this, and if you’re for any bias against trans folk, well, you’re gonna have a bad time here. 

However: I just got here, finding a place to relocate again would be painful, and I’ve heard some rumors that Substack may be bending to the pressure.  I’d like them to come around again, though it’ll probably be some Chik Fil-A thing where they just go for the PR and not necessarily any substantive change.  But what I have decided to do for the time being is wait and revisit, in the hopes that they change. 

I’d rather they change.  But we’ll see.

Love and light,
Ferrett Steinmetz