Helping Authors Build Marvelous Magic Systems One Stage at a Time
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
Updated May-26-2021 / Originally Published Dec-11-2016 Formerly “Types of Magic Part 1: Hard Magic, Soft Magic, and Everything In-between” What’s up storytellers? I’m C. R. Rowenson, the magic engineer, and it’s time to talk about magic. It’s here. The time has come for us to talk about the types of magic systems. So in this article, we’re going to talk about the four. Yes, four universal types of magic systems.
Magical effects determine what your magic-users can do, but magic system variables determine what your system actually is.
Here are the five most important magic system variables of them all.
I’ve got lots of ideas and I have the bones of a story. What I need to know is which type of magic system I need to build… and I suppose you already know the answer because of the post title… Maybe I could have planned that better.
Today, we will look at how I took the knowledge gained from my research and developed more ideas for the viral magic system. That’s right, more brainstorming!
I told you before this post would dig into the details of the magic in Stage 3: Definition… well, I lied.
I didn’t mean to! Let me explain.
Generating Deadly Ideas for Our Viral Magic System Part 1 of Building a Viral Magic System I’m so excited! This system has been kicking around in my head for over a year; I can’t believe I’m finally building it. This will be an awesome series, and I can already tell. Whenever I work with someone starting a new magic system, I always recommend beginning with Stage 0 to pinpoint where to
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
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
