Helping Authors Build Marvelous Magic Systems One Stage at a Time
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?
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.
I was thinking about it the other day while staking myself some vampires — you’re welcome — and I realized there were more reasons one might use a SME for their extraordinary system.
What fascinates me is how Hemalurgy seems to dig and worm its way into the world around it, sapping away vital energies to extend and strengthen its own existence. It is a parasite draining its host to grow and thrive.
no, I’m not done talking about the trilogy, though today’s topic differs from those we’ve had before. Today we’ll look at how the magic connects to the story in a broader sense.
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!…
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
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
