Helping Authors Build Marvelous Magic Systems One Stage at a Time
Sanderson’s Exploration of the Metallic Arts And Why I Love It Welcome to Part 9 of Why I Love The Mistborn Trilogy We’ve already discussed the simple elegance of the Metallic Arts from The Mistborn Trilogy, their deliberate combination with Newtonian physics, why Hemalurgy makes me both scared and happy, and more besides. By this point, I’m sure you know what I’m about to say: “Blah, blah… I Love Mistborn!…
Did you know we’ve been talking and working on building better magic systems for over two years now? Crazy how time flies when you’re talking about something you love. We’ve covered lots of information in those years, and I mean a lot, so this year I thought we’d do something special. I’m taking that age-old writing advice “show, don’t tell,” and I’m putting it to use right here and now.
20 Interesting and Underused Subjects for Your Magic System Welcome back! I’m glad you came willingly and any protests to the contrary will be ignored. If you’ve been following this mini-series on subject-matter expertise, then you’re probably in a pretty good place. You know what subject-matter expertise is and the biggest pros and cons of using it. You even know how to identify, track, and extort obtain help from the subject-matter
Disturbing Body Horror Delivered Courtesy of Hemalurgy Welcome to Part 8 of Why I Love Mistborn Today’s talk about one of my favorite aspects of my favorite Mistborn Magic System. Okay, okay, okay. I know that’s what I say every time I start one of these posts, but today is about Hemalurgy, and the horrible price it demands of its wielders. You see, every magic has a price. Every. Single.
How to Find a Subject Matter Expert for Your Magic We’ve covered the basics of using Subject Matter Expertise for your magic and some of the pros and cons of its use. If you’re still reading this mini-series, then you have probably decided to build a magic system around the structure of a specific subject matter. And if you are 100% convinced you want to do this, then you are
Feruchemy: Making Boring Objects Awesome Again Welcome to Part 7 of Why I Love Mistborn Symbolism is a powerful tool in any writer’s tool belt. This is true whether you’re planning your plot, strengthening your theme, or refining your world. Because of who I am and where you are, you’ve probably guessed this applies to magic systems as well. Over the course of a story, a reader comes to associate
3 Big Reasons to Use Subject Matter Expertise in Your Magic Welcome back! This is Part II of our little discussion on using Subject Matter Expertise with your magic. A couple posts back we took a look at this topic, discussing in broad terms some of the ways it can help you, how other authors have used it, and how to use it yourself. Today we’re going to take a
The Metallic Fuel of Allomancy is Just Awesome Welcome to Part 6 of Why I Love the Mistborn Trilogy There are lots of things I love about the magic of The Mistborn Trilogy. I guess that’s pretty obvious given the length of this series and how I start pretty much every post with that statement… but you get the idea. We’ve discussed a lot of things so far including the
Welcome back! Let’s get right to it. No time for delay and funny business; I’ve been drinking green tea all day and I’m FREAKEN PUMPED!!! That’s all the silly, I promise… for now. Last time we talked, we discussed the concepts of hard magic versus soft magic and rational magic versus nebulous magic. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go back and read Types of Magic, Pt 1.
Post Originally Published on Dec-11-2016 Everything we’re talking about today comes down to one simple question: What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? What kind?… You know what, nevermind. I’ll just file that away with the rest of my dead jokes and move on to the topic at hand. If you’ve been following me for a while, or if you’re a fan of a certain unnamed author (Sanderson…
