Helping Authors Build Marvelous Magic Systems One Stage at a Time
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
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,
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.
Updated Mar. 31st, 2021 Originally Published Sept. 5th, 2018 What’s up, storytellers? I’m C. R. Rowenson, and it’s time to talk about magic. Specifically, about how to create a magic system I’ve built a lot of magic systems over the years, dozens of them, both on my own and while helping various authors build their own systems. While going through all of that, I discovered that there’s a seven-stage process
I throw the term “Magic System” around a lot these days, especially building and blogging about them. Today we are going address some of the basics. By the end of the post, you will have a better understanding of what magic is, where it fits in with fiction, why you need a system, and most importantly, start you on the road to building one yourself.
Ready?
We recently talked about several of the more important magic system variables you need to address, but they’re only the start. To finish mapping out your system, there are five more magic system variables you need to know about. If this is your first time hearing about magic system variables or want a refresher, this post will tell you what you need to know about magic system variables. Now, let’s
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.
Congratulations! You’ve generated oodles of ideas and optimized alignment, and you’re finally ready to start defining your magic system. Stage 3 is where your magic system should start taking on shape, becoming more awesome and more unique with every step. This stage is also massive, so we’re just going to take it one piece at a time.
That starts today as we take a closer look at the basics of magic system variables, what they are and how they affect your magic.
You might already know, but let’s review what limitations are and some of their many forms. From there we can discuss exactly why you need them and end the day in perfect, harmonious agreement regarding limitations and their importance.
