Helping Authors Build Marvelous Magic Systems One Stage at a Time
What’s up storyteller! Thank you so much for stopping by. Whether you’ve been reading my articles for a long time or this is your first foray into my corner of the interwebs, I appreciate your time. Unfortunately, due to my current workload, all further web articles are on hold. But don’t worry! They WILL resume once I find some help and have a chance to smooth out the creation process.
What’s up, storytellers? I’m C. R. Rowenson, the magic engineer, and it’s time to talk about magic. As in all the other articles (Using Magic-System Tropes and Making Necromancy Fresh Again), I’m going to be using my three steps for twisting tropes. You can read the first article here or honestly; you can just stick around. It’s self-explanatory. Step 1) Understand the Trope Elemental systems focus on the fundamental forces
What’s the first thing you think of when I say “magic system”? As a savvy, hard-working magic builder I’m sure many different monsters, effects, and technology spring to mind. That’s because you, my friend, are a marvelous exception. Upon hearing the words “magic” or “magic system”, most people jump to the wands and wizardry of Harry Potter or some other classical concepts. Systems like alchemy, divine magic, energy manipulation, and
In this article, we’re talking all about magic system tropes and archetypes. We’re digging into what they are, why they can be both good and bad for your magic system, and to make them your own. You ready? Let’s get into it. What is a trope? It’s best to think of tropes these as conceptual figures of speech. They aren’t actually idioms or turns of phrase or anything like that,
These five questions should help you think about how your magic system or systems could shape the balance of power in your world.
What’s up, storytellers? I’m C. R. Rowenson, the magic engineer, and it’s time to talk about magic. In this article, we’re going to be digging into the magic of the Mistborn trilogy and looking at how you can build a similar magic system of your own. We’re going to be using the Magic-System Blueprint to analyze the core attributes of primarily Allomancy so that you can see how it fits
What’s up, storytellers? I’m C. R. Rowenson, The Magic Engineer, and it’s time to talk about magic. In this article, I’m going to give you a NaNoWriMo magic system that you can use in your novel. In fact, I’m going to give you five. If you aren’t aware of what that is, that is National Novel Writing Month. It happens every November, all of November, and it, uh… it snuck
Are you ready? I hope you are. Because this is a topic I’ve been wanting to talk about for a really long time now. In this article, we’re going to be talking about the structure of Allomancy in Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy. I’ve wanted to do this for so long. Oh my God, this is going to be great! I want to be clear upfront, this is not going to
When possible, I like my videos and articles to get into the details of building magic systems and tweaking them, how they work and how to fix them. This one is less technical and more fun as we look at three magic systems that I really like and I think you should check out. I’m just a little overloaded at the moment. I just finished running an Indiegogo campaign for
The Magic System Blueprint in Action Normally I’d make a proper blog post out of this content, but I am currently swamped managing the Indiegogo Campaign and editing my book. For now, I have simply added the video transcript. What’s up, storytellers? I’m C. R. Rowenson, The Magic Engineer, and it’s time to talk about magic. If you’re new to the channel. Welcome. Here’s where we talk about how to
