A Sense of Doubt blog post #2609 - Magic Systems and World Building
MAGIC SYSTEM WIKI
https://simmonslis.libguides.com/c.php?g=1108602&p=8086179
Overview
What are magic systems?
Magic systems define the way magic and magical elements are used within a fantasy novel or short story. They are the way the reader understands the magic components of the story--how magic works, including its restrictions and abilities. Magic systems aren't always a heavily or even clearly defined thing, but that doesn't mean that they aren't there. For example, in The Lord of the Rings, we as the reader don't completely understand where Gandalf gets his powers, or what he can do with them, but we do have an idea of his abilities, such as his knowledge of many languages, the magical might of his staff, the color-coordinated "wizard ranking system", and the fact that using his magical powers is taxing on him.
Why are they important?
While your fantasy novel doesn't have to include magic at all, if you do choose to do so, it's important that you as the author understand how magic in your story works. Having an understanding of the magic in a novel allows authors to incorporate it into the plot and use magic as a tool, rather than a sparkly gimmick, and creates a stronger impact upon readers. Magic can be used to foreshadow plot elements, develop characters, establish a world, and so much more. A well written magic system also makes your story easier to read, since readers who understand how magic works in your world are less likely to be confused when encountering it.
Hard vs. soft magic
Magic the way we see it in Tolkien novels is very different from the magic in the Harry Potter novels and from the magic in the Mistborn series. Magic systems are often categorized on a spectrum ranging from hard to soft magic. Hard magic is defined as magic with clear and strict rules--for example, in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series, the reader is taught how Allomancy works on an intimate level, and the books even have a chart at the back to help readers remember which metal grants what power. Soft magic on the other hand is far more loosely defined. Tolkien falls into this part of the spectrum. Harry Potter is somewhere in between.
While most magic systems fall somewhere in between hard and soft magic, learning how authors structure their magic systems and utilize them in their stories can be helpful in creating your own compelling system.
https://simmonslis.libguides.com/c.php?g=1108602&p=8086179
Here are 12 great fantasy books with interesting magic systems to read:
- The Naming by Alison Croggon
- The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
- Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
- Rhapsody by Elizabeth Haydon
- Magician: Apprentice by Raymond E. Feist
- Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
- The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
- Smoke and Summons by Charlie N. Holmberg
- The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima
- Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
- The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
- The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
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Five Types of Magic Systems
Although magic is not a requirement for fantasy settings, they are a staple of the genre. When it comes to how new and unique a novel’s magic system is, well, they can be just as varied as fantasy as a genre. Yet there are a few categories that most magic systems either fall into or meld together. Below, I’ll discuss all five and use examples to explain how each author adapted them to make it fit their own story.
For more updated definitions and examples, please see Five Branches of Magic Systems (Revisited).
Elemental Magic
-usually draws from either four or five elements (water, fire, earth, air, and sometimes spirit). Either a person can only use one type of magic, or the elements can be combined in some way or another, etc.
The clearest, best-known example of this would likely be Avatar the Last Airbender. Each nation had people who could bend one element and a single person, the Avatar, who could bend all four. In this setting, there were only four elements, though there was an inclusion of a spirit world–whose rules are far more murky–and special abilities of certain, incredibly skilled benders such as lightning (fire), metal (earth), and blood (water) bending.
But! In terms of books! The Wheel of Time includes an element-based magic system in which certain channelers can learn how to weave the elements into specific functions. For this universe, spirit is one of five elements. There is the ability to make single-element weaves like fireballs, but most weaves are far more complex. For example, to amplify one’s voice primarily uses air, but a touch of fire can make it more effective. Healing, especially by the most skilled or Talented in that area, often uses all five. There are differences to what male channelers and female channelers can do–for example, women are often weaker at any weaves including earth–and while a Talent does not usually make a channeler profficient in a single element of a weave, it allows them to perform specific types of weaves better than others–such as Healing or the making of gateways.
Superpower Magic
-a varied magic system; practically any ability is on the table. Usually, there is some element of uniqueness to each person’s “superpower” so that even if two people share similar abilities, they are not quite the same.
While one would expect to find this primarily in superhero novels, there are actually a plethora of examples even in epic fantasy. The best example of this in its more basic form would be Marie Lu’s Young Elites series. A blood fever sweeps across the nation and the surviving children wind up having magical powers. Some such examples are manifesting illusions (Adelina), wielding fire (Enzo), manipulating emotions (Raffaele), and controlling animals (Gemma). All Young Elites are physically marked in some way or another by the fever, making them stand out in a crowd.
Another such example, the Graceling Realm series, has a bigger variety of superpowers, many of which are purported to be useless. There are many Graces that are similar to each other. Mind-readers and fighters are the two most-discussed groups. Yet even these seem to have some amount of variety, as one mind-reader can read a person’s desires while another can only sense what one is thinking about in regards to them. Some are Graced with singing, with holding one’s breath for ridiculously long periods of time, or for being able to sniff person and know exactly what kind of food they are most craving at that moment. Like in the Young Elites, Gracelings are physically marked as well, but it’s simpler: when they’re young, their eyes settle into two different colors. Sometimes, it’s two shades of the same color. The inclusion of useless Graces helps set this world apart, as some of them try to find some use or another for their Grace while others try to live a normal life despite them.
Even series like the Grishaverse and Strange the Dreamer have a somewhat loose connection to the superpower category. Strange the Dreamer has a small cast of magic-users, but their abilities are unbound to any technical rules. One pukes out moths whose eyes she can see by, and another can call clouds to them. For the Grishaverse, there are five categories of Grisha, and, like in Avatar the Last Airbender, a person can only fall into one category. There are tailors, who can completely alter someone’s appearance; squallors, who can generate storms; durasts, who make really strong armor; and so on. Yet, due to the varied nature of the magic–unbound as it is by an element or any other particular thing–it could still be considered “superpower” magic.
Spellwork Magic
-uses incantations (chants), spells, or potions of some way. It is your traditional witch or wizard, albeit often with some twist.
Harry Potter is the most obvious example of spellwork magic. It literally includes witches and wizards in its vocabulary, and at Hogwartz, the students learn how to cast spells with their magic wands and make potions with magical ingredients. Not everyone can use magic; it separates the witch and wizarding world from the non-magical Muggles.
Yet in terms of more epic or high fantasy, one can also look to the example of the Inheritance Cycle. Though the magic relies most heavily on spellwork from the Ancient Language–allowing for anything from fireballs to scrying (communicating over far distances)–there are prophecies and potions used in the text as well, primarily from Angela the witch.
I found The Magicians twist to be even more interesting, as, especially in the TV show, the magic relies heavily on not just the words (which could come from any language, alive or dead) but also on the intricate finger motions required for a spell to work. It was something of an art form, different from the flailing of hands and arms that usually accompanies spellcasting. For a less obvious example, however, while I have admittedly not read Brandon Sanderson’s work outside Wheel of Time, his Mistborn series utilizes the burning of metals to grant specific abilities. As it involves the use of some natural elements in order to grant extra abilities, it would qualify as spellwork magic as well.
Animal Magic
-some form of animal bonding is used, whether it’s an animal companion or the ability to shapeshift into some beast.
When it comes to animal bonding, there are none more tightly connected than those found in His Dark Materials. At least, when it comes to Lyra’s world. Everyone here is born with a daemon, the animal personification of their soul. There do not appear to be any unbound animals, nor are there any humans born without an animal daemon. Killing a human invariably kills their daemon, and killing a daemon kills a person’s soul so that they usually do not survive long afterwards.
But animal bondings do not always need to connect one person to one creature. Wargs in A Song of Ice and Fire can sometimes see through many different animals, although there are ones they are closest to that they often use to see out of.
As for shapeshifters, the traditional choice is human/wolf that creates werewolves (or even werecats, as seen in The Inheritance Cycle). However, this does not have to be specific to existing animals. In Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, dragons have a human form that they can take. This human form can result in half-human, half-dragon children, who generally cannot take dragon form although they usually are “deformed” by some dragon characteristics. These half-dragons have superpower magic, allowing for abilities like literal gut feelings, sensing out other half-dragons, skill at climbing, growing unnaturally large, and so forth.
Multi-World
-certain characters are able to enter an off-world location, one with rules that differ from their own.
Multi-verses are something of an anomaly for fantasy. When it comes to magic systems, they certainly are one of the rarest. How is it even a magic system, and not simply a part of the setting, you ask? Well, the ability to walk between worlds is usually confined to specific characters, often making it something of a magical trait.
The best defining example I can think of is the Shades of Magic series. Anatari are rare people who can walk between four different worlds. They likewise carry the ability use blood magic for other means, paired with a spell to trigger the magic. Other people are able to use magic as well, but only Antari can walk through worlds.
His Dark Materials and Chronicles of Narnia are, of course, other examples of multi-verse magic, as each world is different from the last, with different rules, and the only constant is that certain people can step between one and the other.
Less obvious ones would be the likes of Inkheart and Daughter of Smoke and Bone series. Inkheart requires a magical voice to bring things to life, including the ability to walk from the real world to worlds of make-believe. They can bring others with them. For the DoSaB series, there are slits in the sky that allow for people to travel from one universe to the next. (I believe Laini Taylor connected the series to her new Strange the Dreamer series, technically putting them in the same universe.)
Wrap Up
Obviously, not all magic systems fit neatly and clearly into a specific category, but I spent a lot of time combing through magic systems I’m familiar with to make sure I wasn’t missing some obvious categories. It, of course, falls to the author to blend and twist any form of magic system so that it reads as entirely their own, rather than some trope tossed in for good measure.
How to Build an Amazing Magic System for
Your Fantasy Novel
A wizard casts a powerful spell. An alchemist transmutes lead into gold. A genie grants three wishes—with a twist.
This is one of the most exciting things about writing fantasy: getting to design your own magic system.
If you’re new to the genre, it’s easy to fall back on tropes you’ve seen before. As a quick example, just think about how many movies and books reuse the theme of elemental magic—fire, water, earth, and air.
There’s nothing wrong with using classic tropes, but if you want to stand out in the crowded world of fantasy, you’ll need to learn how to use them in an innovative and unique way.
This article will help you write a magic system for your fictional world that readers will remember long after they’ve turned the last page.
Hard Magic Systems vs. Soft Magic Systems
Before you build your magic system, you’ll need to decide what kind of system you need to create for your story, because different magic serves different purposes.
There are two types of magic systems: hard magic systems and soft magic systems. These terms, originally coined by Brandon Sanderson, are widely used by fantasy fiction writers today.
In general, hard magic should solve problems for your protagonists, while soft magic should cause problems for your protagonists.
Let’s take a closer look at what these terms mean.
What’s a Hard Magic System?
A hard magic system is magic with a clear set of rules. In any scenario, the reader should have some sense of what magic can and can’t do in the fictional world.
Why is it important for a hard magic system to have rules? Well, your protagonists will use magic to solve some of their problems. And there’s nothing less exciting than a story where the protagonists can escape from any danger just by wishing it away.
Imagine if Harry Potter could vanquish Voldemort in the first chapter just by making up a spell called antagonist defeatium. Not very exciting, right?
Since there are clear rules in the Harry Potter series, we don’t wonder why Harry doesn’t just make up an all-powerful spell. Each time Harry, Ron, and Hermione find themselves in danger, they can only escape that danger using magic that we’ve already seen them learn.
In the first book, Ron doesn’t know any troll-slaying spells, so he uses the Levitating Spell to knock out a mountain troll instead. In the fourth book, Harry doesn’t know any flying spells, so he uses the Summoning Spell to call his broomstick.
In both these cases, it’s their clever problem-solving that saves them, not the power of the magic itself.
Hard magic systems provide interesting limitations that allow your protagonist to solve problems using their own wits, not raw magical power.
The key traits of a hard magic system are outlined in the graphic below.
Some well-known examples of hard magic systems:
In Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa, magic is like chemistry. All magic is governed strictly by the Law of Equivalent Exchange, which says that “in order to obtain something, something else of equal value must be lost.” When the protagonists need to create something, the readers understand exactly what materials they need to sacrifice.
In The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, magic is like law. Magicians summon magical spirits, like djinni, and command them to do their bidding. The protagonist’s wording must be airtight, because the djinni will look for loopholes.
In the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, wand magic is like language. Witches and wizards need to learn each spell individually and practice speaking their enchantments in exactly the right way in order to achieve the intended results.
What’s a Soft Magic System?
Soft magic systems are the opposite of hard magic systems: they don’t need to have a clearly defined set of rules.
As the reader, you may never truly understand what can and can’t be accomplished with magic, but that’s okay—you don’t feel you need to in order to enjoy the story.
Soft magic is vague, undefined, and enigmatic. The purpose of soft magic is simply to create a feeling of adventure, and wonder.
As a general rule, antagonists can use soft magic to solve problems, even though protagonists should only use hard magic. This is because an all-powerful antagonist makes the story more exciting and perilous, while an all-powerful protagonist achieves the opposite effect.
The key traits of a soft magic system are outlined in the graphic below.
Some well-known examples of soft magic systems:
In The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, we never find out exactly what Gandalf can and can’t do with magic. However, not understanding Gandalf’s magic doesn’t detract from the story, because the protagonists have to undergo most of their journey without Gandalf’s help.
In the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away, the entire spirit world operates under a soft magic system, from the magical bathhouse customers to the killer paper airplanes. Most of the time, magic hurts the protagonist rather than helping her, so the fact that we never understand the rules makes it even easier to empathize with her.
In The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss, the magical discipline of Naming is a soft magic system. We learn the limits of the hard magic systems in the series, such as Sympathy and Sygaldry, while we never learn the limits of Naming. The protagonist doesn’t understand Naming well either, so we never expect him to solve major plot problems using soft magic.
Which Type of Magic System Do You Need for Your Story?
Hard vs. soft magic is a spectrum, not a binary. Most magic systems fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.
For example, you can create a magic system that has very clear rules for your protagonist but only vague rules for your antagonist. The Harry Potter series is a splendid example—we know what spells Harry can do, while we never find out the exact bounds of Voldemort’s magical abilities.
When you’re deciding which type of magic system to use, ask yourself:
Do you want magic to solve conflict for your protagonist (hard magic) or to create conflict for your protagonist (soft magic)?
Who will use magic: the protagonist (hard magic), or the antagonist / side characters (soft magic)?
Do you prefer planning things out logically (hard magic), or going with your gut (soft magic)?
Once you’ve figured out what kind of system you need, it’s time to start building!
Building Your Own Hard Magic System
If you want to create a hard magic system, you need to create a specific logic that serves as the foundation for the entire system.
To build this logic, start by thinking about three things: the effects, sources, and costs of magic. All three should work together to create the magic system.
What Are the Effects of Magic?
The term “magical effects” refers to the ways in which magic influences and alters the world around it.
Here are some examples of magical effects:
In The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.J. Jemisin, orogenes can manipulate the earth. Specific effects include causing earthquakes, preventing earthquakes, and turning people to stone.
In the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix, necromancers can control the dead using bells and music. Specific effects include waking the dead, sending dead spirits back into the afterlife, and binding the dead to follow their commands.
In The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb, practitioners of the Skill can communicate to each other telepathically. Specific effects include communicating with others, working together as a group, and riding inside the minds of others.
Grab a sheet of paper and brainstorm a list of magical effects that fascinate you: ones you’ve already seen before, or ones you come up with from scratch.
Remember that specific effects are better than broad effects. For example, if your characters can telekinetically control objects, your story will be more interesting if each character can only control a specific type of object, rather than being able to control anything they want.
Ask yourself what effects will help your protagonists solve the problems presented in your plot, and what effects will be fun to write about.
Magical effects will make a bigger impact on your readers if you use all five senses. You can use our ProWritingAid Sensory Report to make sure you’re including sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell in your magic system.
What Are the Sources of Magic?
A magical source is where the magic comes from. Usually, magic comes from magic users, the gods, magical creatures, or a specific substance.
Here are some examples of magical sources:
In Percy Jackson & The Olympians by Rick Riordan, magic comes from the gods. Demigods have partial powers, which they inherit from their Olympian parents.
In The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, magic comes from magical spirits like djinn. Magicians have no power of their own except through the spirits they command.
In Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, magic comes from specific metals, like copper, tin, or aluminum. Mistings have to ingest and “burn” these metals in order to use their powers.
Once again, grab a sheet of paper—this time to brainstorm magical sources.
In some cases, the answer might already be obvious given the world your story is set in. If there are important mines in your world, for example, it might make sense for magic to come from metals. If there are powerful gods, it might make more sense for magic to come from the divine power of the pantheon.
Ask yourself what sources will work well for the magical effects you want to use, and what sources will work well within the world you have created.
What Are the Costs of Magic?
A common mistake when building magic systems is to forget to include costs.
If there are no downsides to using magic, your protagonists might soon become overpowered, able to solve any problem with the wave of a wand. That cheapens the story and makes it less exciting to read.
By making sure magic has costs, you can force your protagonists to be clever and resourceful when they solve problems.
Here are some examples of magical costs:
In The Locked Tomb trilogy by Tamsyn Muir, using magic exhausts necromancers, and causes some of them to bleed. Overusing their magic can cause them physical harm.
In Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson, magicians owe a demon years of their life in exchange for magic. Each spell shortens their lifespan by an unknown number of years.
In the Shadow and Bone series by Leigh Bardugo, all Grisha have to serve the King. Even though there are no physical costs to using magic, being Grisha means losing their freedom to pursue the life they wanted.
When you’re brainstorming magical costs, try to be creative. The costs of magic can be physical, societal, or even financial.
Ask yourself how you can prevent the magic-wielders in your story from becoming too powerful, and what costs would post interesting challenges for your characters.
How Do the Effects, Sources, and Costs of Magic Fit Together?
Now that you’ve brainstormed the effects, sources, and causes of magic, you can put all three together! It’s time to create a system of rules that will feel cohesive and logical.
Look at your three lists and try to find patterns and connections. Try to group together similar effects, sources, and costs.
Ask yourself:
What are the interconnections between the ideas I’ve come up with?
Are there any overarching themes?
Building Your Own Soft Magic System
If you want to create a soft magic system, I have some good news: you don’t need to come up with a set of systematic rules, or even an underlying logic.
However, you still need to put in the work to create a unique and compelling system that will serve the needs of your story. These are some questions you should ask when you brainstorm.
How Will the Magic System Create a Sense of Mystery and Awe?
The primary purpose of a soft magic system is to contribute to the atmosphere of your story. Many horror movies use soft magic systems to create a sense of fear and dread, while children’s books might use soft magic systems to create a sense of excitement and adventure.
Ask yourself:
What atmosphere will my story have? Is it dark and scary? Is it light and full of wonder?
What kinds of magical concepts and images would contribute to that atmosphere?
Who Will Use Magic in Your Story?
Because soft magic is often used by characters other than the protagonist, you should think about who the wielders will be. Many soft magic systems include magical creatures: centaurs, mermaids, nine-tailed foxes—the possibilities here are endless.
Ask yourself if your antagonist will be a magic-wielder, and if there will be magical creatures in your story.
How Will Magic Cause Problems for Your Protagonists?
The key thing to remember when creating a soft magic system is that it should create problems for your protagonists, rather than solving problems for them. If you follow this rule, readers will appreciate the awe and mystery of the magic without feeling like it cheapens the story.
Ask yourself what kind of problems magic will cause your protagonists, and whether your antagonist will use magic to achieve their goals.
Now you have all the tools you need to create your own magic system. The more unique you make it, the more memorable your book will be for readers.
https://fantasy-hive.co.uk/2019/12/a-guide-to-writing-magic-systems/
A GUIDE TO WRITING MAGIC SYSTEMS
If you were to grab a stranger off the street and ask them what magic was, well… first they’d probably mention someone like Penn and Teller, but once you clarified and said you meant magic in fiction, you’d very likely hear at least a few of these words: spell, wizard, fireball, enchantment, wand, curse, potion, witch, fairy, monster, illusion, spirit, warlock, charm, amulet, sorcerer…
You get the point. For Western audiences, the general idea of magic descends from a mixture of European myth, medieval literature, and high fantasy, as popularized in the 20th century by writers like Tolkien. This version of magic was further cemented in people’s minds due to the unbelievable success of the gaming industry over the last 50 years. From Dungeons & Dragons to videogaming to collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering, audiences have been exposed to more magic than ever before, frequently with a well-defined, regimented system attached to it to facilitate the need gaming has for rules and progression mechanics.
This popularization and systematization of magic has had two major influences on audiences:
- They increasingly expect to hold, that “an author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic”. The deus ex machina doesn’t get much mileage when it comes to magic nowadays.
- The classic, Euro-myth/Medieval-Lit version of magic has become trope-ified and stale, requiring creators to put larger and larger twists on it to avoid being redundant.
And what this means to a fantasy writer thinking of using magic in their next story is that you need to be mindful about how well-defined and how different your magic system is.
Throughout the rest of this article, I’m going to walk you through a few frameworks that can help you clarify key attributes of the magic in your fantasy world and inspire you to craft magic that is unique and refreshing. We’re going to start with an exercise about the world you’re building and the story you seek to tell in it, and then identify magic’s role in this world. After that, we’ll talk about the who and how of magic users, as well as the role of limitation in magic. Then we’ll get into the magic-making itself and I’ll provide ideas and examples to aid your creation process.
Ready to get started?
Your Story Seed
While you could go through the frameworks below without a world or story in mind, you’ll get a much greater return if you’ve at least considered the following questions:
- Where does your story take place? A fictional world? Our world? Somewhere in between?
- When does your story take place? The past? Modern day (or some analog)? The future?
- What does society and civilization look like in this world? Is there an abundance of government? None at all? Is society in decay or only just beginning to crystalize?
- Who is your protagonist? What values do they have? What do they want? What conflicts are they likely to encounter?
If you haven’t already, take a moment to jot down your answers to these four questions. Don’t give into the temptation to go down a worldbuilding rabbit hole though, we’re just trying to get the broad strokes of your story for now.
Abundance
With your story seed in mind, the first thing we need to figure out is how abundant magic is in your world. Is your land one rife with magic, where magic’s use is as common as any other trade or skill? Or is magic exceedingly rare, where even mentioning that it might be real is met with snickers and taunts? Are there pockets of your world where magic reigns, perhaps ancient cities that run on it or natural wonders that inspire the same breathtaking awe of a site like Mount Everest or Turkmenistan’s infamous Door to Hell?
Making magic rare will require that you meter and justify its appearance accordingly, or readers will have trouble connecting with the supposed rarity. After all, if magic hasn’t been seen in a thousand years and every single character we meet has some magical ability, it will be very hard to feel the impact of magic’s absence. If, however, our magically-abled characters have only just discovered their powers or have all come together from far flung corners of the world for a special purpose, then that’s more understandable–though we’ll probably expect this to factor into the conflict somehow.
On the flip side, a world flush with magic needs to treat it as being appropriately commonplace, all without making the reader feel it’s mundane or boring. This can be very hard to achieve without some framing mechanism, such as a portal fantasy that introduces non-magical people to a magical world so the reader can experience the magic through their fresh eyes. One tactic is to lean on escalation, where a more secret, powerful magic is discovered that dwarfs the everyday variety, but escalation can easily get out of control, rendering earlier conflicts in a story uninteresting and low-stakes.
How abundant is magic in your world?
Definition
After abundance comes the question of definition: How well understood is the magic in your world? Based on my mention of Sanderson’s First law above, it may seem like a non-question. Shouldn’t all magic be well-defined so that it can be used to resolve conflict?
Not necessarily. While well-defined magic provides the writer a deep toolbox to use in conflict resolution (among other areas), magic need not be so defined to produce conflict. We don’t need to understand how an ancient, magic artifact that summons a monstrous demon bird to besieges a city works, we only need to know what we can reasonably expect this demon bird to do and how our heroes might triumph over it. Granted if our heroes use this artifact themselves or invoke another unexplained magical power to claim victory, we’re in trouble without some definition, but if they were to melt the artifact in a volcano then all is well (minus the similarities to Mount Doom, of course).
Undefined magic can be wonderful fun. It can create dramatic odds and make otherwise legendary heroes seem small in comparison. But it must be used judiciously. Even in our demon bird example above, there can still be something unsatisfying about undefined magic driving all of the conflict, and it’s not unreasonable that a reader would have questions: Where did this artifact come from? Who made it? Why a bird?
Defined magic on the other hand aims to provide answers to questions like these and requires an underlying system to do so. Perhaps our artifact above is the vessel of a vengeful god, and makes a nightmarish copy of whatever is placed inside that then attacks anyone who has disrespected this vengeful god–in this case an entire city. Now we have rules–parameters–that give our heroes options to deal with the demonic threat. Maybe they can convince the city to pay homage to the god, or maybe they can pry open the vessel and retrieve the original bird placed inside.
Both options can make for an enjoyable story. You need to decide which best fits your story seed and which you–and your audience–would most enjoy reading.
How well-defined is magic in your world?
Eligibility
By now, you should have some idea of how common magic is in your world and how well understood it is, whether that means your world is full of raw, mysterious magic or has just one lone mage with a recipe book of spell ingredients and their effects.
It’s time to ask yourself: Who is using magic? And why them?
Let’s consider the possibilities: Either everyone is using magic, no one is using it, or some people are.
Right away you should be able to see how eligibility is related to the question of abundance, and how the rarity of magic in your world informs how many people are using it. Obviously if you have a world where magic is exceedingly rare it will be nonsensical to have everyone using it.
What about the reverse? Could you have a magic-heavy world and no users of it? I’d argue you can, with magic playing a role akin to nature. Maybe the closest your magic-heavy world gets to the classical idea of a wizard is someone who has spent their life studying magic meteorologist-style. While that’s a very different story from one in which characters can wield magic, it can be an engaging setup nonetheless.
If you’re thinking about having everyone use magic (in a world with abundant magic), you’ll want to have some organizing principle about who uses what type of magic, whether that’s a “magic-type-as-field-of-study” approach, innate affinities, or something entirely else in order to give the reader some points of differentiation across characters and factions.
It’s very likely you’ll fall somewhere in the middle with only some characters being able to use magic. The way you choose these characters will say a lot about how your story views and presents magic:
- The Chosen Few: If magic is a gift that provides characters tangible advantages in the world, then those with the ability to use it could be considered part of the chosen few. They might enjoy special privileges, especially if they play their partnerships right, or they might find themselves under the thumb of a brutal, exploitative empire. Going with this option invokes themes of class and privilege.
- Freak of Nature: In a world that sees magic as evil or unnatural, having magical abilities will often turn a character into a (powerful) outcast. In these settings there are typically few magic users or they have banded together to stand against their enemies. Probably the most iconic version of this is the X-Men, which while not strict magic per se does focus on people with powers that wouldn’t be all that unfamiliar in a fantasy-type setting.
- Meritocracy: If magic is a learned ability, using it may be a matter of merit, i.e. who can work and study the hardest. There may be natural inclinations here (and when there are, they are often stacked against the protagonist for conflict’s sake), but generally the story in part focuses on the learning, which means your world should have some kind of magic education system to facilitate this learning.
The major delineation here is between the extrinsic and the intrinsic; is the ability to wield magic something that happens to a character or do they realize it through their actions? Furthermore, is magic use a good thing or a bad thing?
Consider your story seed and the world you’ve creating. What are the answers to these questions that best harmonize with and heighten your story’s unique stakes and conflicts?
Methods & Means
Hand-in-hand with determining magic eligibility is figuring out how those eligible to use magic actually use it. By this I don’t mean what the magic is–we’ll get to that later–but what methods magic users employ to (ahem) make the magic happen.
And really what’s sitting behind this question is the idea of limitations. One only need look at gaming to see how unlimited magic can be (literally) gamebreaking, and how while moments of extreme power can be satisfying, having them all the time is boring. Take the star/super star in Super Mario Bros. Getting one of these and running around a level with invincibility is lots of fun, but an entire level with that star power borders is downright bland.
You want to bake in some sense of limitation to your magic users’ abilities, and the way they use magic is a great way to do that. Limited resources is a popular method, where a magic user requires either spell ingredients or an artifact or some substance to use their powers. No ingredient, item, or substance = no magic. Easy as that. Another way is to require the magic user to prepare and channel their magic, perhaps allowing them to store enough energy or stamina for so many uses or to be within range of specific locations. Fatigue, being spent, or out of range = no magic. Again, easy peasy.
You want your resources, rituals, spells, or locations to flow naturally from your story, so look to your setting and your meta-level decisions about magic for what the best fit is. If your story takes place in a modern day New York that’s home to a handful of magic users, you might make it so they can only use their magic there, turning your setting into a prison of sorts (and setting up some conflict in the process).
But what if there is no limitation on magic use? What if magic users are free to use their abilities as much as they want, whenever they want? Is that even possible?
Well, yes. Comics about superheroes do this all the time, as do stories featuring magical beings, angels/demons, or demigods. And it’s often very, very fun. The trick here becomes giving them limitations and challenges in some other way so that the reader doesn’t get bored of watching an overpowered individual breeze their way through the story.
For superheroes, that’s frequently the burden of a secret identity and an equally powerful supervillain, highlighting themes of work/life balance and what the dark version of ourselves looks like. For angels and demons, there tend to be rules from Heaven or Hell governing their actions, creating law-based obstacles to contend with. For demigods, they often get their godhood stripped right out of them from time to time, which allows for discussion on what it means to be human vs. being more than human.
It all comes back to giving our characters something to struggle against and (most likely) overcome. If you keep this idea of struggle in mind and look for interesting limitations–the seer who can only tell the future while high on dangerous drugs, the firecaster who uses their own body heat for their magic, the enchanter whose magic artifacts have a random chance to backfire–your story will have plenty of opportunities for drama, conflict, and excitement.
Try this: Go back to the last work of fantasy you came across and pick out all the characters who in one way or another handle magic. Task yourself with figuring out what their limitations are, and whether or not those were interesting limitations. Imagine two or three different limitations for each of these characters, along with the possible challenges those limitations would provide.
Range, Change, & Mediums
Let’s pause to recap for a moment. If you’ve been following along, then at this point you know:
- How abundant magic is in your world.
- How well-understood it is by the characters and the reader.
- Who is eligible to practice this magic.
- How these eligible people actually do the practicing.
But what about the magic itself? In this top-down system building exercise, I’ve largely avoided talking about specific magic to keep you from getting anchored to an idea that might not fit your story world. But now it’s time to dig into those specifics.
Every act of magic can be viewed as a function of three things:
- The range of effect, or who is targeted and affected by the magic.
- The “medium” it uses, or how the magic takes effect, i.e. physically, mentally, or other.
- The change it results in, or what’s different after it’s used.
Let’s use a well-known, tropish example: the fireball. The range of a fireball is something other than the caster (ideally!), the medium it uses is a physical medium, and the change it results in is burning things to a crisp.
Range and medium are easy, as there aren’t all that many choices. Range is either the magic user themselves, someone else, or several other people, with the extreme end of the scale being all of reality. Medium will most likely be the physical vs. the mental, with room for other options depending on the writer’s preference (some like to employ a “spiritual” type medium).
Change is where things get weedy. Common go-tos for change include elemental changes (i.e. fire, water, air, earth abilities), changes that generally harm or heal (attacks, regeneration), changes that buff or debuff natural traits (super strength, reduced mobility), changes that reveal or conceal (mind reading, invisibility), changes to location (teleportation, time travel), and many more. You could spend days listing out all the different types of change writers have used in their worlds and it’s clear that some naturally lend themselves to different range and medium modalities.
So how do you pick which kinds of change to feature in your world?
A good rule of thumb is to look for fun pairwise combinations that mesh well with your story seed. To revisit an earlier setting, if your story takes place in modern day New York, which is dense with buildings, locked doors, and unseen spaces, you might pick the pairwise combination of locking and unlocking. Consider one character or group of characters who can secure, lock away, and hide things with ease, and use a dense urban area to facilitate their abilities. It’s easy then to imagine they might come into conflict with characters who can unlock, reveal, and discover that which was meant to stay hidden.
“Locking and unlocking” is definitely a weird combination, which is somewhat the point. We’ve all read stories pitting fire vs. ice and know what to expect from that match-up, and in some settings–such as a classical fantasy world–it makes sense. But you should seek pairwise combinations that bring out what is unique about your world and that have a better chance of being fresh and new to readers.
If you’re feeling particularly system-minded, you could take this pairwise concept and blow it out to three, four, or eight (or however many directions you want) to create a robust magic system of checks and balances. Those who have spent some time gaming will have an easy time thinking in these terms and will feel at home designating a “Strong Against / Weak Against” matrix to describe which kinds of magical abilities are likely to win in a given match-up.
But such gamification is not necessary. As I’ve been saying throughout this article, the main things you want to strive for are balance, conflict, and satisfying conflict resolution, all done in a way that is reflective of the world you’ve created. You could do that by creating some wholly original magic, by applying an established framework to your world, by developing a robust system as described above, or by eschewing system altogether. The choice is yours, provided that choice amplifies the themes of your story.
If you’re having trouble brainstorming, try this exercise:
Get a couple of sheets of paper and at the top of one write down your story setting. Then list out the numbers 1 through 25. Turn off your phone, close your laptop, and do whatever you need to do to not be disturbed. Your goal is to fill in each number with a different combination of range, medium, and change that fits your setting. It doesn’t have to be good or plausible or executable, but it needs to work in the world you’ve built.
Then, once you’re done, take a blank sheet of paper and start grouping these different combinations together by number based on their commonalities. Did you craft a set of magic uses that are all performed mentally and all affect the user? Lump them together. Noticing a theme around those who deal with the dead? That’s a group. Are there many instances involve jumping through spacetime? That’s another group.
You can make multiple, separate groupings if you’d like–the idea is that you’re learning to categorize your ideas, and thinking about how these categories might lend themselves to contrast and conflict.
If listing 25 different magic uses isn’t enough for you, double or triple it. The most interesting ideas you have to offer often only emerge after you’ve pushed yourself past your limit, and that can require you to keep going even when you think you’re all out of material.
Being Different
We started this article with your story seed, where you identified the where, when, what, and who of your fantasy world. But we’ve yet to talk about standing out and offering readers something different.
There are a couple of ways to stand out. One is to represent ideas, cultures, and communities that don’t get a lot of high profile attention. This is great if you’re a member of or have significant involvement with said cultures or communities and have thought deeply about what aspects of them are underrepresented. It’s absolutely not great to co-opt or appropriate anything for yourself in order to gain acclaim or goodwill.
Another way is to revisit a standard fantasy setup from an unexpected POV. By presenting a story from the perspective of the so-called villain or a ho-hum merchant, you can bring a stale tale into fresh relief by exploring the untold stories inherent in the original. The catch here is that you’re working against expectation, which can be an uphill battle, particularly if the standard fantasy setup you’re using isn’t all that well known. If readers don’t recognize so-and-so as an iconic villain archetype, they may not appreciate the reversal by viewing the story through the villain’s eyes.
You could also imagine wholly new fantasy concepts for your world. This offers the writer the most freedom, but at a high stakes cost; if your original concepts aren’t compelling or cohesive, they could come off as sloppy or boring. For this approach you’ll want to have a clear idea of what you’re trying to say in your story and why you’ve chosen the fantasy concepts you have. Don’t be afraid to bring peers in to critique your ideas or to put them in front of beta readers to see if they pass a basic sniff test–it’s much less painful to discover you have an issue your bold new magic system before you start writing than after you’ve put together the first 150k word draft.
For When You’re Totally Stuck
My goal has been to provide value and useful structure to fantasy writers seeking to create magic systems for their next story, but it’s completely plausible that after reading all of this you feel more lost than ever. If that’s you, then you’re probably asking:
What the hell do I do now?
The answer’s easy. You read. Read big names, read small names, read well reviewed books, read ones with mixed reviews–your goal is to think about the above frameworks and apply them to fantasy works you haven’t read before. How does the author answer the questions of abundance and definition? Who is eligible to use magic in their worlds? How do they use it? What conflicts arise as a result? What specific magic do they use–what’s its range, medium, and change it affects–and how is that different from the tropey world of Euro-myth/Medieval-lit fantasy fiction?
The more you read, the more ideas, stories, and worlds you’ll have to reference–and the better your writing will be. If you’re looking for specific suggestions, there are plenty of groups on Goodreads and subreddits on Reddit that would be more than happy to suggest something to read. All you need to do is ask.
In Closing
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| https://www.howardlyon.com/illustration/prints/one-less-threat |
https://www.tor.com/2015/06/17/learn-about-the-many-magic-systems-of-brandon-sanderson/
Learn About the Many Magic Systems of Brandon Sanderson
Martin CahillLast time we spoke, dear friends, it was to introduce you to the many worlds of Brandon Sanderson, epic fantasy writer extraordinaire, whose works have garnered him praise for being both deeply engaging and fun; delving into complex philosophical questions without sacrificing the thrills and excitement of action-packed adventure. And while this balance has always been a staple of Sanderson’s writing, his true calling card is his inventiveness, love of, and creative implementation of intricate magic systems across different worlds.
Sanderson’s magic systems all follow a similar structure of net gain, net loss, and equilibrium, according to their own natural laws (which are generally similar to environmental, scientific, and physical laws of our world). Sanderson has said before that he has a working theory of magical law in his writing, and it can be seen in the systems below, which all (for the most part) follow a loose collection of principles involving distinct power sources and the processes by which power is gained, power is lost, and/or balance can be reached between the two.
Below we’ll cover just a few of the many different magical systems and terms that Sanderson has employed in his writing—the list isn’t meant to be exhaustive by any means, but the following concepts will give readers a great sense of what sort of trouble Sanderson can get up to when handling a complex system of magic.
Investiture
The first magical term of note and possibly the most important, Investiture is the guiding principle behind all of the magic systems within the Cosmere, the shared universe in which many of Sanderson’s epic fantasy novels and series take place. Over the course of his Cosmere books, the term Investiture has begun to crop up, often mentioned by powerful, ancient characters who generally seem to know a lot more about the workings of the Cosmere than our protagonists do.
“Investiture,” in a general sense, appears to indicate a broad measure of magical power. When a person is Invested, they’re actively tapping into their planet or realm’s specific form of magic and channeling it. Sometimes, depending on the environment, the world itself can contain Invested objects: the flowers from Warbreaker, and the highstorms from The Way of Kings are two examples of these naturally occurring Invested environments, containing, in some form or another, the magical essence of the planet (or rather, what is hiding on the planet…but we’ll get into that with the next article). Hopefully, more will be learned of Investiture as the Cosmere begins to coalesce.
Mistborn Series
Allomancy
The main magic system of Sanderson’s Mistborn series, Allomancy is accomplished through swallowing different metals and metabolizing (“burning”) them to achieve various effects. Mistings are those who can only metabolize one metal and therefore access a single power of Allomancy, whereas a Mistborn is one who can metabolize all sixteen metals and their alloys to gain access to the full range of allomantic abilities. Allomancy is a net-gain magic system, where a person introduces magic into their system and gains extra power from it. The abilities associated with Allomancy range from emotional control and manipulation to physical augmentation to gravitational control (using metals to pull and push oneself around the world). There are rare metals that Mistborn can metabolize that can make them even stronger Allomantic users, and some that can even show them the future itself. The most recent Mistborn novel The Alloy of Law and its forthcoming sequels, Shadows of Self and Bands of Mourning, introduce Mistings that can alter the flow of time, adding an intriguing and robust temporal component to the Allomantic powers.
Feruchemy
A second branch of the Metallic Arts of the Mistborn series, Feruchemy is a net-neutral ability; the rare few who can practice Feruchemy wear metallic bracers on their body known as metalminds, and depending on the make of the metalmind, a feruchemist can actually store different aspects of themselves to tap into at a later time. For instance, a feruchemist can store their strength in a metalmind, feeding it for days at a time; while they’ll be weak for a few days, they can then tap into that strength later, making them superhumanly powerful for a period of time. In addition to transferring physical attributes (strength, speed, weight, breath, sight, etc.), they can also store aspects of the mind, such as memory, luck, determination, and more. A feruchemist doesn’t gain or lose power, they simply store it for later use.
Hemalurgy
The third branch of the Metallic Arts and potentially the most dangerous, Hemalurgy is all about net loss of power. A hemalurgist, using special metal spikes, can pierce a person with allomantic or feruchemical abilities and—depending on where they pin the spike—can steal the allomantic or feruchemical abilities of that person for themself. In the transfer of abilities, however, some power bleeds away—where Allomancy is associated with the force of preservation and Feruchemy is associated with balance, Hemalurgy is destructive and has terrifying implications.
Twinborn
A term first introduced in the Alloy of Law, Twinborn manifest the rare mixture of allomantic and feruchemical abilities. Varying in specific abilities (all of them powerful), a twinborn can be deadly if given the proper combination. Waxillium of Alloy of Law is a Twinborn who can reduce his mass into a metalmind, as well as push on the metal around him, making him a spectacular marksman and a human bullet to boot, as he propels his reduced-mass body through a city brimming with metallic structures. The full extent of these combinations have yet to be seen, but should prove incredibly interesting to follow as further details emerge.
Warbreaker
Breath or BioChroma
Found in the world of Warbreaker, Breath is the power of life, essentially, and the more Breaths you have, the more power over that life you have. A person is born with a single Breath, but through many means, that person can add Breaths to their being. The more Breaths you have, the more abilities you gain from them. At fifty breaths, you can recognize how many Breaths another person has; at two hundred, you gain perfect pitch, and so on. These levels of power are measured in tiers called Heightenings.
Awakening
Those who have Invested themselves with Breaths can actually re-invest those Breaths into inanimate objects, then set them tasks to perform. There are very few objects that cannot be Awakened and even then, stubborn materials such as steel or stone can still be coerced and Awakened should one reach the Ninth or Tenth Heightening, though it takes a tremendous amount of power. Awakening an object takes a specific command, and a willful release of your own Breaths, which flow into the object and bring it to life. During the process, energy is taken from your Breaths, while color is bled from the surrounding area, in order to supplement your creation. Breaths can, thankfully, be retrieved post-command, and taken back into the Awakener.
Elantris/The Emperor’s Soul
Aon Dor
The Dor is a massive realm of power hidden from the world which can only be accessed through various linguistic devices and forms, and/or specific movement or shapes. Elantrians—those who have been chosen by the Shaod (or “the Transformation”), a divine process wherein a regular person is Invested with a connection to the Dor—are capable of accessing that power by drawing spells in the air using their native linguistic alphabet: the Aons. An Aon can signify a place, an emotion, an action, a name and so on; the Elantrians can pierce the skin of reality by drawing an Aon in the air and tapping into the Dor. Depending on the shape of the Aon, the Dor rushes to fill that space and carry out the inherent meaning of the Aon.
Aons—drawn alone, together, or with modifiers—all tap into the Dor, and produce different results. For example, the Aon for fire will create an explosion of heat, but with a modifier or another Aon, it can be directed or set to a specific degree of heat, whereas the Aon for distance will rocket you across the world, but with the right numerical modifier, you can designate exactly where you want to go.
It seems as though each culture has their own means by which to access the Dor, although the Shaod is the only way to become an Elantrian. One group of people practice specific martial arts, whose forms satisfy something in the Dor, granting them power, whereas a group of monks in the mountains actually grow their bones into specific shapes, tapping into the Dor through the twisted symbols within their own bodies.
Forgery
A different means to access the Dor, Forgery is all about rewriting the history of an object, and then using linguistic shapes in the form of Soulstamps to activate those rewrites. And while this can be useful with inanimate objects and illusions, specialized stamps called Essence Marks can actually be used to forge the spiritual aspect of a person, a form of magic known as “Soulforging.” Essence Marks allow the forger to change their own history, rewriting it to give themselves specific abilities, skills, information, and so on, and can make a scholar of a soldier, for example, and vice versa.
The Stormlight Archive
Surgebinding
Last on our list is the massive and varied system of magic from The Stormlight Archive, the ten-part epic fantasy series that Sanderson is currently working on; while he has stated that there are many, many different magic systems operating within its confines, the one that we currently know the most about is Surgebinding.
On Roshar, the planet of the Stormlight Archive, there are ten fundamental forces of the universe, and these are known as surges. A Surgebinder can access two of these surges each through the bond they develop with a spren, a sentient force of life or emotion. The spren helps them tap into the Investiture of the planet, a substance known as Stormlight. These surges range from Adhesion to Gravitation to Decay to Friction to Illumination to Growth and so on; the surgebinder inhales and holds onto the Stormlight, and uses it as fuel to for their abilities.
Two of the ranks of surgebinders we’ve met so far are Windrunners and Lightweavers (the names of each drawn from the ancient Orders of the Knights Radiant). Windrunners are able to access Adhesion and Gravitation in tandem, changing their gravitational orientation, as well as the use of pressure and vacuum around them. Lightweavers can utilize the surges of Illumination to create full auditory and visual illusions, as well as other perception-based changes; they can also utilize Transformation, using Stormlight to shift an object from one substance to another.
As I’ve mentioned, there are many more systems of magic and types of magical accoutrement on Roshar, but we’ll get into those with the upcoming Cosmere article, don’t you worry!
Sanderson’s systems are wide-ranging and wild and fun, and have given rise to many, many fascinating theories over the years. Eagle-eyed readers have questioned him about whether or not different magic systems can be used across planets (and series). Some have theorized about how to use Allomancy to space travel. Others have asked what would happen if you pitted an Allomancer against a Windrunner, and so on and so forth. The possibility for hypothesizing and drawing connections is endless, and Sanderson wisely lets people speculate wildly as he continues to work on his novels, and of course, his next great display of magic.
But where does this magic come from? Who is to say who can perform magic, and who can’t? Why are some planets thriving with it, when others aren’t? And just what the heck is a Cosmere?
All this and more, next time!
Martin Cahill is a publicist by day, a bartender by night, and a writer in between. When he’s not slinging words at Tor.com, he’s contributing to Book Riot, Strange Horizons, and blogging at his own website when the mood strikes him. A proud graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop 2014, you can find him on Twitter @McflyCahill90; tweet him about how barrel-aging beers are kick-ass, tips on how to properly mourn Parks and Rec, and if you have any idea on what he should read next, and you’ll be sure to become fast friends.
7 Mistakes To Avoid When Creating A Magic System For Your Fantasy Novel
So you’ve got a killer idea for a fantasy novel. That’s great! It’s a beautiful feeling; that newness of an idea. We get it.
Your idea has ignited your imagination with world-building possibilities. Your characters are whispering sweet nothings into your ear about motive and magic.
But where’s there’s magic, there must be a system. Boring, right?
Nope. It’s quite the opposite.
A well-developed magic system will bring your writing to life, make your fantasy novel one that readers will fall in love with.
But there are certain pitfalls and mistakes that you need to avoid when creating your magic system. To help, we’ve outlined seven such mistakes – and how to avoid them.
Mistake #1: No Framework
For your readers to understand how your magic system works, you need a framework. Without one, you don’t have a system.
The framework of your magic system is kind of like a set of rules or general statements about magic in your world. It determines factors such as the source of magic, how magic is conjured, the type of beings that can use magic and the consequential hierarchies of status and power.
A framework such as this provides you with the structure for your magic system, which allows you – and your readers – to understand the intricacies of that system.
It also gives clues about how the society in your fantasy novel functions, and provides hints to the reader about conflicts that might arise.
Once created, a framework provides you more freedom, as a writer, by giving you boundaries and challenges that your characters must navigate and overcome.
Building a framework for your magic system will also unearth inconsistencies. Finding inconsistencies early on is good. It’s easier to change and fix things in the early stages of planning and writing your fantasy novel.
A framework will also dig up character gold. The opportunity for conflict will twinkle just under the surface, ready to be excavated, polished to a dazzling shine, sprinkled throughout your novel and coveted by your readers.
Mistake #2: No Constraints
Not having a framework means your readers won’t understand the constraints of your magic system. Restrictions add essential tension and conflict to your plot.
Constraints in your magic system will also bring depth to your characters and breadth to your world-building.
In all of life, boundaries and rules exist to govern how society works. Constraints on how we act as individuals keep society functioning.
Everyone knows the rules and the outcomes of breaking those rules. Weaving constraints into your fantasy novel’s magic system will provide your reader with clarity.
Clarity is plausibility. Plausibility is believability.
When a reader believes in your story, they will step into the world you’ve created for them with trust and eagerness, keen to discover and grateful that you haven’t insulted their intelligence.
Mistake #3: No Consequences or Sacrifice
If the magic in your novel doesn’t result in any kind of consequences or costs to the characters who use it, your magic system simply isn’t realistic. (Yes, you may be writing fantasy, but unrealistic storytelling never sits well – with any type of reader.)
In fact, a fantasy novel without consequences or sacrifice goes against the very fundamentals of the genre.
As we mentioned above, a magic system should have rules, boundaries and limitations. Using magic must cost your characters something. There must be sacrifice. Times of self-doubt. Difficult decision-making.
Readers want to know how driven by motivation your protagonist is. How far they will go to achieve their goals. The strength of their convictions. The price they’re willing to pay – what they’ll give up, and what they’re even ready to die for.
Consequences within a magic system that call on your characters to sacrifice strength, time, friendship or innocence, for example, give your fantasy novel the in-depth character development, tension and conflict that all good storytelling needs.
Mistake #4: Overloading readers with world-building
World-building is essential. However, it’s also essential avoid the mistake of overwhelming your readers with too many world-building details all at once.
To avoid the dreaded info-dump, give your readers enough information to understand how one part of your world works before you introduce any more. In terms of your magic system, it’s best to allow the details to unravel naturally and gradually where possible.
Never bombard readers with so much information that the pace of your fantasy novel slows. This mistake causes readers to work too hard, or to become tired of reading paragraph after paragraph of description or exposition.
Mistake #5: Glossing over how magic affects society
The ways your fantasy society functions sets the tone for who your characters are and how they behave within the worlds you’ve created for them.
Avoid the mistake of glossing over how your magic system impacts the society your characters live within.
If, for example, only one type of person can use magic, then how do other people within your society react to this limitation?
Do they protest? Is there a control put on magic-users by which they can only use magic between certain hours of the day, or use it only for certain purposes – or perhaps they’re not supposed to use it at all?
As we’ve mentioned above, having consequences in your magic system provides tension. Extending this tension to society and how magic affects the characters within it will make your world-building much more vivid.
Mistake #6: Relying on Magic to Solve Character Conflict
Your magic system has an important place in the story you’ve created. But avoid the mistake of relying solely on magic as a means to solve all conflicts between your characters.
Leave room in your fantasy novel for the intricacies of characters and their relationships.
Make room for their vulnerabilities and their strengths. Show your readers how your characters handle the world, how they interact with others around them, and how this can both create and solve conflict.
Relying on magic to solve all character conflicts will rob your readers of truly getting to know your characters – something you definitely want to avoid.
Mistake #7: Not Fixing Gaps
The first draft of any fantasy novel will show up gaps within your magic system, as well as your world-building, plot, and character development at large. But don’t worry – this is a good thing.
That’s the point of a draft: to get the skeleton of your story down so you can see any parts of the body of your work that need fixing. And it will need fixing. All writers, even the greats, edit their first draft.
After you’ve spent time editing your novel yourself, it’s helpful to pass it on to people whose opinion you trust, such as a team of beta readers.
Ask them to make notes regarding any gaps or elements of your magic system that don’t make sense, then brainstorm solutions that will fill out the gaps in your magic system and your story.
***
There are, of course, more than just seven mistakes to avoid when writing a magic system for your fantasy novel.
But ensuring you avoid or address the above issues is a great first step towards creating a magic system that readers will enjoy – and writing a fantasy novel you can be proud of
Flavia is a freelance writer based in Tasmania. She's previously worked in corporate marketing, PR and communications. Has a B. A. in Business, Advanced Diploma of Arts: Professional Writing and Editing, and a Certificate of Freelance Journalism. Flavia now dedicates her time to writing full-time and helping others realise their own writing dreams. Flavia is considering resurrecting a long ago shelved first draft manuscript. Flavia is a cat person.
Building a Magic System. Part 3 of the Fantasy Worldbuilding Series
Hey folks! It’s me again and I am finally back with part three of my Fantasy Worldbuilding Series. I know it has been a while so I will encourage anyone who has forgotten where we are to check out my previous two posts in this series.
Our third installment focuses on magic systems, what they are, and how to build one from scratch. This topic is deep and I won’t be able to cover every element of it here but I can give you a primer and an overview of how I put it all together.
At the most basic level there are two kinds of magic systems, soft and hard. Soft systems are found in books like Lord of the Rings. These systems contain no defined limitations. As a result they often come across as Deus Ex Machina and should be avoided by inexperienced writers. Hard systems on the other hand have strict rules governing them. Hard systems are found in series like Fullmetal Alchemist and The Lightbringer Series. These systems are a lot easier to work with in a story and to create. For these reason we will be discussing Hard Systems for the remainder of the article.
When we think about magic we can break it down into two categories, building blocks which are the fundamental components of the system, and schools which are the philosophies and effects of different combinations of building blocks in a system. Keep in mind that this isn’t one hundred percent rigid. The definitions I am about to present to you can vary slightly from world to world. This primer section is meant more as a guiding principle than perfect building blocks, but you can still use it as perfect building blocks. Many of the systems we traditionally think about boil down to these blocks, especially in the traditionally Sword and Sorcery genre.
Building blocks of magic:
1) Willpower - the ability to focus on what you want done, the amount of desire you have for that, and any modifying aspect like how strong you want it, what kind of shape, etc
2) Deific Components - things like religious symbols, powers that come specifically from deities, holy artifacts, blessings, and so much more depending on the religion you are basing it from
3) Arcane Power - energy that is derived from the universe itself, often times associated with math, sometimes derived from natural sources like tectonic or vacuum energy, other times derived from supernatural sources like ether or mana from another plane of existence like Otherworld. Arcane energy can come from varying sources even within a magic system, but is distinctly different from divine sources because deities can not cut off a magic user from Arcane energy without a very direct intervention.
4) Mathematical Elements - these go along with will and arcane sources as a bit of a complementary tool. Mathematical elements are usually used to help a caster focus their energy into a specific pattern that their mind can more easily understand and deploy. This is a key component in the Fullmetal Alchemist system.
5) Visual Components - things such as pictures, drawings, ritual circles with candles, clothing, etc that help the mind focus on the desired effect or direct the energy. In Fullmetal Alchemist this is the alchemical circle element. In the Dresden Files this is more extensively used when using circle magic because objects tend to take less focus to get a fuller understanding of an intended effect. Visual components are great to add a lot of personal flair to your system because these components can have wildly different effects for each character.
6) Verbal Components - words required to cast a spell, sometimes names also have power
7) Somatic Components - these are material components. This may take the form of hand motions, dances, physical object sacrifices. The important thing to remember is that these components are of the human realm.
8) Sources of Magic Power - sources can vary. Some systems may simply rely on mana, some may have divine energy, ki, arcane mana, willpower, life energy, etc. The key thing to remember here is that the energies all come from somewhere and that the energy itself is separate from its source. Certain energies may react and behave differently then others when used the same way. For example soul energy may build and make things more solid and real than arcane, where hellfire energy may be more destructive than arcane. Not only will these energies have different sources and effects but they will also have different costs. Arcane energy tends to be more somatic than others and tax the human body, divine energy may tax the deities or weaken as faith falters or a deity grows ashamed of their follower, soul energy may literally destroy part of the wielder’s soul when used, hellfire may drive you closer to insanity, ether may make you less emotional and more logical. The potential here is endless.
Traditional Schools of Magic:
1) Abjuration - protective spells, magical barrier, negate magical or physical abilities, harm trespassers, or even banish the beings to other planes
2) Conjuration - summoning (objects, abilities, energy, etc),calling (basically planar teleportation, it is like summoning but you aren’t doing it to subjugate what you are summoning), healing, teleportation, creation
3) Divination - see the future, find lost objects, foil deceptive spells
4) Enchantment - Sometimes known as Charm, influence or control other intelligent creatures
5) Evocation - tapping into unseen sources of energy to produce a desired end, these effects are usually destructive and elemental in nature but can also be used to create short lived bursts of light or temporary objects out of energy
6) Illusion - deceive senses, deceive the mind, auditory, tactile, visual
7) Necromancy - manipulate death, unlife, and life energy
8) Transmutation - changing the properties of something into something else, like turning lead to gold or changing the hardness of skin
When I take the above aspects and put them together I don’t tend to think of them as a checklist. Instead I refer to them as guidelines and inspiration, and I go through a process to design the core of a system that allows me to expand without having to retcon how abilities work in the future. In this next section I will go over this exceptionally tiny, streamlined as you might say, system and show you how I have used it to create the core of my magic system for my Clockwork Dead story.
Steps:
1) Decide the main forms of casting
2) Define limits for their use
3) Define where the energy comes from
4) Define how the different schools of magic mix
5) Define how the different energies mix
And that’s it. It’s really that simple to carve out a core system. From here you can expand without worrying about either needing to understand how every aspect of the system works, or about needing to shoehorn something that inspires you later in because you innately have room for it.
For my current project this is what my list looks like
Forms of casting -
Circle casting: This is magic that requires circles with arcane formulas written within them that inform the channeled or stored energy how to behave. This can be etched into items such as wands or runes and can be channeled through or contain rechargeable amounts of energy like a battery pack, this must be decided when the circle is created.
Green magic: This is magic inherent in plant life. It is activated by turning plants into powders, potions, salves, etc and slowly becomes impotent over time. Green magic is mostly used for healing, but can be used to create acids, poisons, explosives, and other tools.
Crystal magic: This magic controls mechanical pieces, gives limited amounts of energy to power them (i.e. activating a piston), or can give shape and control how the other two base forms of magic work when combined with them. This works by imprinting the will of the caster upon the crystal and allowing it to “think” in a minor and autonomous way as if it were the caster in that moment. For example a crystal caster could place one of these crystals in a clockwork bird with the instructions to attack an enemy on sight by activating a fireball rune on its chest and the bird would perform those functions on its own in the way the caster intended at the time of the casting.
Define limits for their use:
No magic may simply create from nothing. Either energy must form into a new substance or something in the area must be transformed for accommodate it. For example a fireball rune would convert the air around it into a fireball and create a vacuum in order to propel it
Circle casting may only have immediate effects
Green magic requires fresh plant matter to work at all. The more fresh the more potent. If the plants are tainted then so will the magic it creates.
Crystal magic only has long term effects and can not directly perform the other kinds of magic. It can however create sentient objects by imprinting the caster’s will upon it. It may also be used to change how a spell is cast through the other kinds of magic. For example it can take a fireball rune and make it throw hot wind instead or take a regeneration potion and cause it to create cancer.
Crystal magic inherently can only handle small amounts of energy at a time, but operate via mechanisms that require small amounts of energy
Magic requires an energy source that the caster is directly connected to. This is usually life force and can kill the caster if they over do it. However, divine energy, energy storage, and vacuum energies are all viable options.
All magic requires a deep understanding of it in order to completely control. Different levels of understanding may result in varied results. Willpower, intelligence, and creativity are all essential elements here.
Define where the energy comes from:
Most of the energy comes from the caster’s life force, but there are divine sources, stored energy sources such as plants and relics, vacuum energy, and potentially more available. For the most part the focus will be on life force because it is the most understood.
Define how the different schools of magic mix:
This list in an ongoing creative process
Most of the magic mixes through either the willpower of the caster or through the use of crystal magic as a medium to focus the mixing. These limits are defined by creativity and power amounts.
Example mixes include combining circle and green magic to create a healing or acid mist, or having a crystal command a staff to attack hostile targets using precharged runes on it, or a crystal flask programmed to automatically release a healing mist if you become injured.
Define how the different energies mix:
As of yet undecided. They may not be able to mix, and currently in the world there aren’t people who understand enough of these to be able to attempt it. At least not that is relevant to the story. I may fill this section out later. I may not.
You can probably see that this is very simplified, but it has enough to work from. There are clearly defined limits that give me a framework to work from and base level formulations for me to expand upon. This isn’t a complete system, but it shouldn’t be one. We always needs room to grow and expand upon. That is why building a framework is more important than building a complete system where every spell combination is accounted for. This gives you the freedom to explore and expand upon what your characters can do while giving them a chance to grow without leaving yourself so much room you accidentally Deus Ex Machina it.
I’d like to see what you come up with using this system. Please share your creations with us using #fantasynovel2018 and join us next time when we discuss creating governments and cultures for your world.
Originally published in
Wednesday, August 4, 2021
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2360 - ON THUD AND PLUNDER - a classic for Writing Wednesday for 2108.04
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2360 - ON THUD AND PLUNDER - a classic for Writing Wednesday for 2108.04
Today for the WRITING WEDNESDAY feature, I am reprinting the hard to find essay by Poul Anderson called "On Thud and Blunder," which has been graciously reprinted by the Science Fiction Writers of America organization (SFWA), and I am also reprinting it here along with bio and career info from Wiki Wand on Poul Anderson, an author whose work I have not read enough, and a TOR article about five of his best works.
"Thud and Blunder" attacks sword and sorcery fantasy and the pulpy conventions resurging in the 1970s, when Anderson wrote the essay. Originally appearing in the third installment of Andrew Offutt’s classic anthology series Swords Against Darkness published in 1978, "On Thud and Blunder" launching forth from its most excellent and sardonic title to criticize the fantasy literature of the time and yet also praise it:
The colorful, old-fashioned storytelling Anderson cites are the pulps of the early Twentieth Century, magazines that he himself published in during the '40s and '50s though the genre waned in those years and petered out to just a few titles by the early 1970s.
Read "On Thud and Blunder" for yourself and see how much of it still applies to the fantasy literature of today.
ENJOY!
SOME OTHER LINKS:
https://www.writingforums.org/threads/poul-anderson-on-thud-and-blunder.156382/
https://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/04/on-thud-and-blunder/
On Thud and Blunder
Written by Poul Anderson
[This essay was published some years ago and is very difficult to find now, which is why I asked Poul to let me publish it on the Web. He points out that a few things have changed since he wrote it — the essay mentions the Soviet Union, for example, but does not mention navigation satellites — and that he has had some arguments from a few readers about one detail or another. But “there isn’t time now to go into all that,” he says, “and anyway, I never claimed infallibility. It seems to me that most of the points made are still valid.”
It seems to me, too, that they are valid, and that some of them at least have a wider application than just to heroic fantasy. Thinking things through is a good plan in any genre, and research hardly ever hurts one’s prose. — mm]
With one stroke of his fifty-pound sword, Gnorts the Barbarian lopped off the head of Nialliv the Wizard. It flew through the air, still sneering, while Gnorts clove two royal guardsmen from vizor through breasplate to steel jockstrap. As he whirled to escape, an arrow glanced off his own chainmail. Then he was gone from the room, into the midnight city. Easily outrunning pursuit, he took a few sentries at the gate by surprise. For a moment, arms and legs hailed around him through showers of blood; then he had opened the gate and was free. A caravan of merchants, waiting to enter at dawn, was camped nearby. Seeing a magnificent stallion tethered, Gnorts released it, twisted the rope into a bridle, and rode it off bareback. After galloping several miles, he encountered a mounted patrol that challenged him. Immediately he plunged into the thick of the cavalrymen, swinging his blade right and left with deadly effect, rearing up his steed to bring its forefeet against one knight who dared to confront him directly. Then it was only to gallop onward. Winter winds lashed his body, attired in nothing more than a bearskin kilt, but he ignored the cold. Sunrise revealed the shore and his waiting longship. He knew the swift-sailing craft could bring him across five hundred leagues of monster-infested ocean in time for him to snatch the maiden princess Elamef away from evil Baron Rehcel while she remained a maiden — not that he intended to leave her in that condition … .
Exaggerated? Of course. But, unfortunately, not much, where some stories are concerned.
Today’s rising popularity of heroic fantasy, or sword-and-sorcery as it is also called, is certainly a Good Thing for those of us who enjoy it. Probably this is part of a larger movement back toward old-fashioned storytelling, with colorful backgrounds, events, and characters, tales wherein people do take arms against a sea of troubles and usually win. Such literature is not inherently superior to the introspective or symbolic kinds, but neither is it inherently inferior; Homer and James Joyce were both great artists.
Yet every kind of writing is prone to special faults. For example, while no one expects heroic fantasy (hf) to be of ultimate psychological profundity, it is often simple to the point of being simplistic. This is not necessary, as such fine practitioners as de Camp, Leiber, and Tolkien have proven.
Worse, because it is still more obvious and still less excusable, is a frequent lack of elementary knowledge or plain common sense on the part of an author. A small minority of hf stories are set in real historical milieus, where the facts provide a degree of control — though howling errors remain all too easy to make. Most members of the genre, however, take place in an imaginary world. It may be a pre-glacial civilization like Howard’s, an altered time-line like Kurtz’s, another planet like Eddison’s, a remote future like Vance’s, a completely invented universe like Dunsany’s, or what have you; the point is, nobody pretends this is aught but a Never-Never Land, wherein the author is free to arrange geography, history, theology, and the laws of nature to suit himself. Given that freedom, far too many writers nowadays have supposed that anything whatsoever goes, that practical day-to-day details are of no importance and hence they, the writers, have no homework to do before they start spinning their yarns.
Beneath the magic, derring-do, and other glamour, an imaginary world has to work right. In particular, a pre-industrial society, which is what virtually all hf uses for a setting, differs from ours today in countless ways. A writer need not be a walking encyclopedia to get most of these straight. A reasonable amount of research, or sometimes merely a reasonable amount of logical thinking, will do it for him. Let’s consider a few points. A proper discussion would require a book, but we can make a start.
First, some remarks on those societies. Most cultures in hf are based on the European, often as a mishmash of Roman Empire, Dark Ages, and high Middle Ages with a bit of Pharaonic Egypt, Asian nomadism, and so forth on the fringes. This is not bad in itself. Howard succeeded with it. And indeed, the western end of the Eurasian continent was a rather similar potpourri during the Volkerwanderung period (if you regard the Byzantine Empire as the civilized core of Christendom). I do think the time is overpast for drawing inspiration from other milieus — Oriental, Near Eastern, North and Black African, Amerindian, Polynesian, an entire world — and am happy to see that several writers have begun doing so. However, in this essay I’ll stick close to home.
Even the writers I have cited say little about the producing classes in their worlds, with the notable exception of de Camp. Yet the fact is that it takes a lot of peasants, artisans, and such-like humble people to support one noble or, for that matter, one bandit or roving barbarian. We tend to forget this in our mechanized modern Western civilization, where only a small percentage of the work force is occupied with the necessities of life. Right up till the early part of the twentieth century, though, most of our own population was rural, as most of it still is elsewhere on Earth. In town, the typical worker was not one of the kind we know, putting in forty comparatively easy hours a week, owning a house and car and the other customary amenities. No, he was a dirt-poor hod carrier or ditch digger or something like that, laboring almost till he dropped of exhaustion and glad to get the job. While unions doubtless helped improve his lot, they could not have done so without the increased productivity which advancing technology made possible.
Thus our creator of hf can gain verisimilitude and interesting detail by paying some attention to the lower classes, the vast majority of his world’s population. Besides, their situation affects what his hero can do. For example, in many medieval countries the peasants were subject to a military draft; the king could summon them to fight his wars for him. However, the time of year at which he could do so was strictly circumscribed by law. He couldn’t call them up before the crops were in, nor keep them till harvest, lest everybody starve. Harold of England faced this problem in 1066. William of Normandy, commanding mostly mercenaries and adventurers, did not to the same degree.
Incidentally, mercenaries are not always reliable. They tend to make trouble if they don’t get paid — and medieval monarchs were chronically short of money. Early in the fourteenth century, a troop of Catalans practically took the Byzantine Empire apart on that account. Mercenaries are also likely to be more interested in their own survival and prerogatives, especially loot, than in furthering the interests of their employers. The backbone of Rome was the yeoman farmer class, from which the legions were recruited; when this was destroyed by the Punic Wars and their aftermath, and Rome must gradually go more and more to hirelings, her doom was sealed. Surely a number of good hf stories lie in this motif.
Returning to peasants, laborers, merchants, and the rest, these words are too general. How well off are such people, how leisured, how independent? That has varied tremendously throughout history. Free landholders in Scandinavia would originally get together to make their own laws, try their own cases, accept a new king and then depose him later if they didn’t like him. Their descendants became wretched tenants and, in Denmark, outright serfs. In contrast, though by our standards workers in cities put in long, hard hours and were under many restrictions: still, after the Black Death had furnished a convenient labor shortage, they were comparatively well off. In fact, for some centuries they enjoyed more leisure, in the form of frequent holidays, than we do now.
Thus the status of ordinary people has depended on social conditions as much as technological. If taxes and other governmental demands on them were moderate, they had plenty of spare time and energy, in between bouts of toil that would kill many of us today. As those demands grew, so did their misery. Of course, in either case they were subject to famines and pestilences — another detail unmentioned in most hf, yet potent narrative matter.
A medieval city was curiously divided. On the one hand, the respectable part of it was highly structured, with guilds controlling much of the private lives as well as the work of members. On the other hand, the poor sector was chaotic and dangerous, as we may read in the poems of Villon. Between Internal Revenue and welfare, we seem to be re-approaching this dichotomy. We do still have fairly sharp geographical separation of urban classes. In an ancient or medieval town, any districts there were were usually along occupational lines. A rich merchant would live near the appropriate street, but his house would be apt to stand like an island in the middle of poverty, vice, and savagery. This could make our hero’s abrupt exit from it more interesting than he intended.
If he left after dark, he would scarcely run as trippingly as we have shown Gnorts the Barbarian doing. People who have experienced blackouts will tell you that a nighted city without the modern invention of lights is black. With walls shutting off most of the sky — especially along narrow medieval streets — it is far gloomier that any open field. You’d grope your way, unless you had a torch or lantern (and then you’d better have an armed guard). Furthermore, those lanes were open sewers; in many places, stepping stones went down the middle because of that. Despite sanitary measures, metropolitan streets as late as about 1900 were often uncrossable simply because of horse droppings. Graveyards stank too: one reason why incense was used in church services.
Darkness and crime did call forth partial answers. For instance, professional escorts carrying lights were available. The Byzantines in their heyday had a regular police force, while in many Western cities of a later date each able-bodied man must help patrol his own neighborhood. I should think a wandering warrior might quickly get a job as a cop, and thereby come upon strange situations.
Or he might not. Travel could be extremely difficult, not merely because of physical problems and robbers, but because of official wariness. Fire being another hazard very much in the public awareness, you could not get into a Danish town around 1500 without convincing documentation; the fear of foreign arsonists was that great. (Doubtless it was unfounded, but we’ve seen enough popular paranoia in our own age, haven’t we?) Elsewhere, the mayoralty might suppose you were a spy, or the guilds might not want to admit a new worker. (Again, this sounds not unfamiliar.) Contretemps like these could add depth, color, and perhaps humor to the adventures of our hero.
In fact, the whole relationship between a city and the rest of its society can be fascinating. It need not be borrowed from Western history, either — “city air is free air,” the rise of the bourgeoisie, and so on. Ancient Russia, for instance, followed a course almost the reverse of ours: beginning with cities and capitalism, which stimulated agricultural development of the hinterlands.
Politics in general is much neglected in hf. Usually its governments are absolute monarchies, whether of kings or emperors, though the real world has known many different arrangements. If the monarch is tyrannical, our hero may lead a revolt and find himself the next ruler. Little or nothing is said about the infinitely intricate mechanics of organizing a rebellion or, for that matter, about the legal questions involved. Can Gnorts truly seize the throne? He’ll have to have an acquiescent majority, at the very least; else his regime won’t last an hour. Now Odoacer the Scyrrian could push the legitimate Roman Emperor out in 476 — but he hastened to offer homage to Constantinople, and at that, his power was shaky and soon overthrown. No outsider could have won such a title in the Eastern Empire, whose lord had to be a citizen and of the Orthodox faith. The crusaders did impose a Latin reign in 1204, but it was loathed and the Byzantines got rid of it as fast as they were able.
Howard could make Conan’s accession reasonably plausible. The rest of us might do better to make our hero the power behind the throne. In fact, why must he be a barbarian? A civilized man influencing an uncivilized conqueror, as Ye Liu Chutsai did Genghis Khan, may give a far more intriguing story, in either sense of the word.
In any event, the monarchy or oligarchy won’t be the sole mover of society. It never has been, not even in the contemporary Soviet Union and slave China. There are always other interests and groups whose leaders must be conciliated. An obvious example is the late J. Edgar Hoover; theoretically, any President could summarily have dismissed him, but in practice that was a political impossibility. More to the hf point, perhaps, are the consequences to Henry II of England when he had Thomas a Becket assassinated. Indeed, the ever-changing interrelationships of kings, nobles, and Church form a major part of the medieval European tapestry. One can go on to power groups in more distant lands, such as the Janissaries in Turkey or the Shogunate in Japan, to find endless complications which are the stuff of exciting tales.
(One hf novel which handles politics superbly well, and is a fine story in every other respect too, is The Well of the Unicorn by Fletcher Pratt. If you haven’t already read it, do.)
The Church raises the subject of religion in general, which is little used in our field. Oh, yes, we may get a hero swearing by his particular gods and perhaps carrying through a small rite, equivalent to stroking a rabbit’s foot. We certainly got plenty of obscene ceremonies in honor of assorted toad-like beings. Both of these do have their historical counterparts. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see an imaginary society which was pervaded by its faith, as many real ones have been.
One way or another, religion is usually the well-spring of literacy. If Never-Never Land has no printing press or public schools, how many people can read? How did they learn? How common is paper or some equally cheap, convenient material to write upon? Who produces and who sells it, under what conditions? How do letters travel? Questions like these could well be crucial to our hero.
The available transportation positively is. Now we are so accustomed to reasonably reliable and well-sprung automobiles on smooth roads, when we don’t fly, that we have almost forgotten how hard and slow it once was to get from here to there. Most people in the past spent their entire lives in walking distance of wherever they were born. This must deeply have affected their personalities, even as mobility has affected ours.
The Romans, improving on the example of the Persians, knit their empire together with excellent paved highways. These were for armies and imperial messengers. Ordinary people could use them, but that wasn’t the main idea, and doubtless most civilian traffic continued to be over dirt tracks. Anyone who has hiked or marched through mud will appreciate the importance of a proper military road. When Rome had fallen and commerce shrank down to local trading, most of this network was quarried. In the Middle Ages, a landholder could help guarantee his salvation — and collect tolls — by building and maintaining a road or bridge. It was that important to everyone. Not just mud, but wilderness impeded travel. Huge areas of Europe were covered by forest that, because of underbrush, was literally impassable; some coastal communities could be reached only by sea. If given a reasonable surface to roll on, chariots, wagons, and coaches remained exhausting things in which to ride. After a day of such vibration, the passenger would feel as if he’d been through a meat grinder. The brutality of it is epitomized by the fact that, in the nineteenth century, the working life of a coach horse was reckoned at four years.
Thus our hero will usually do better to go pedestrian or equestrian. As for the latter choice, writers who’ve had no personal experience with horses tend to think of them as a kind of sports car. ‘Tain’t so.
You cannot gallop them for hours. They’ll collapse. The best way to make time in the saddle is to alternate paces, and have a remount or two trailing behind, and allow the animals reasonable rest. Don’t let your steed eat or drink indiscriminately; it’s likely to bloat and become helpless. In fact, it’s a rather fragile creature, requiring close attention — for example, rubdowns after hard exertion — if it isn’t to fall sick and perhaps die on you. It’s also lazy, stupid, and sometimes malicious. All of these tendencies the rider must keep under control.
You cannot grab any old horse and go to battle on it. It’ll instantly become unmanageable. Several of us in the Society for Creative Anachronism tried a little harmless jousting, and soon gave up … and this was with beasts whose owners were already practicing the more pacific equestrian arts, such as tilting at a ring. War horses had to be raised to it from colthood. The best cavalrymen were, too. For lack of that tradition, the vikings, for instance, never fought mounted. Upon landing in a victim country, they’d steal themselves four-legged transportation, but having reached a scene of action, they’d get down.
Cavalry was of no particular importance in Europe until about the sixth century, when stirrups were introduced from the East. Before then, combatants were too likely to fall off. Earlier, the chief military use of the horse had been with chariots: until the Greek hoplite and Roman legionary learned how to cope with these. Later, nobody riding bareback stood a chance against an enemy who had a proper saddle.
In short, our hero is going to face practical problems in getting around on land. The same will apply if he goes by sea. I’ll say nothing about pirates, though in most eras they posed a considerable hazard. I will mention that, even under the Roman Empire, more often than not it paid to travel across the water; terrestrial transportation was that bad. Nevertheless —
Ships in hf normally have sails but act as if they had Diesel engines. They take the lead character where he wants to go, fast, effortlessly, and comfortably. They are never becalmed and they never meet weeks of foul weather. In spite of being square-rigged, they can go as close to the wind as the captain chooses. (Ah, many’s the time I’ve wished I could make a well-designed sloop do that. But it took most of a morning, for instance, to work out of one quite small bay. In the nineteenth century, ships would sometimes lie in Honolulu harbor for months, waiting for the right wind to blow them across the Pacific.) These same vessels have abundant elbow room for everybody; food and water are always palatable; there are no special housekeeping problems. (In actuality the First Law of the Sea, as formulated by Jerry Pournelle and myself, is: “It’s in the bilge!”) Sometimes, in both hf and h’f, we have galley slaves. Again, authors are inclined to treat them as if they were engines; they don’t get tired, they don’t get sick, they don’t stink, you don’t have to keep a guard on them lest they revolt. In real history, rowers were only used on naval vessels, and for the most part were free men, well paid. Galley slaves were not a Roman but a late medieval invention, brought about by the need to bring cannon to bear on short notice.
The average hf sailor has no navigation woes. Yet this problem wasn’t solved till the eighteenth century, with the development of the chronometer — and the story of that R & D effort is a complex one, full of human bitchiness. To this day, the solution is not perfect. Ask a seaman to tell you what it’s like, using a modern sextant, to get a decent sight on a star. Nor has electronics made locating yourself automatic and infallible, short of the most highly advanced inertial systems. So imagine an early Norseman bound from Oslo to Greenland. He has a knowledge of landmarks and the heavens when these are visible; a peg will help him estimate his latitude of a clear day allows it to cast a shadow, and the natural polarizing filter he calls a “sunstone” will help him locate the solar orb in cloudy weather; but these aids give him only the crudest approximations, while longitude is a matter of sheer dead reckoning or guesswork. Seaweed, bird fights, and similar indications are probably more helpful; indeed, he may well carry some birds in a cage, release them one at a time when he thinks he may be near a shore, and watch which way they go. Chances are that he’ll make landfall a goodly distance from his goal and have to work along the coast to find it.
Presumably he’s bound for someplace where he can fight. After he arrives on the battlefield, he will still face a host of complications. Let me merely observe in passing that, right up until World War Two, far more soldiers died of disease than did in action; that the outcome of a siege was frequently determined by whether the attackers took sick faster than the defenders starved; and that germs were sometimes the arbiters of entire wars. Let me suggest that this, too, is a realistic motif which hf writers could occasionally use to advantage. Now let’s get on to actual combat.
First, consider again the sociology of it. Incomparably drilled and disciplined, the Roman legionary almost always made hash of his foes, until the society which had produced him rotted away. In medieval England, every yeoman of military age was required by law to have a longbow and spend a set number of hours per week practicing with it. As a result, the English archers during the Hundred Years’ War were the terror of the French, who tried to raise a similar corps but failed because they hadn’t institutionalized the training. In general, the civil background of an army is the most important element in its long-range success or failure, with its own organization and morale a close second. Half-trained barbarians may win a fluke victory over civilized troops once in a while, but that won’t count for much. They can only prevail over a civilization after it has ruined itself.
Technology counts too, of course, though sometimes in paradoxical ways. The longbow was driven off the field by the crossbow and later the crossbow by the musket, not because these weapons were successively superior — they weren’t — but because it was successively quicker and easier to teach a man their use. The hf writer ought to visualize just what kind of arms his characters employ, and think through the military implications.
However, can’t the author do a little reading in encyclopedias, under headings like “Fencing”? And is it too much trouble to delve further than that? Any reasonably sized public or college library must contain some relevant books. If nothing else, can’t he take half a minute to visualize before he writes?
If he does, he’ll instantly see that nobody in his right mind would grab a sword two-handed, raise it over his head, and chop straight down, exposing his belly all that while. The use of those huge Reformation-period two-handers was a highly developed art whose practitioners were specialists.
Carrying a shield, you’re as apt to work around its edge as over the top. By the way, the purpose of that shield is to stay between you and your enemy’s weapon, not act as a counterweight to a roundhouse swing. There are tricks you can play with it, such as using its edge to lever your opponent’s shield out of your way; but I’ve rarely seen fantasy warriors do anything so skillful.
Artists tend to be still worse offenders than authors — for instance, depicting a man wielding a dagger overhand, and, while they’re at it, dressing the poor guy in nothing but a bearskin kilt in a winter landscape or on a horse. (For a human male, the latter placement is much the worse.)
Nobody can wield a fifty-pound sword; he’d wear his arm out in short order. An ax or mace, large dependent on sheer mass for beating through an enemy’s guard, is nowhere near that heavy either. A replicated ax, Battle of Hastings type, in my possession, weighs a bit under five pounds. Nevertheless, it takes muscle to swing any edged weapon. Therefore I suspect that a woman-at-arms would look less like Dejah Thoris than Rosie the Riveter. In fact, we have no reliable records of female warriors. Joan of Arc commanded, she did not engage in combat.
True, primary sources can’t always be trusted. Thus, in the generally realistic Icelandic sagas, you find a few references to somebody cutting a head or limb off somebody else with a single stroke. Try this on a pork roast, suspended without a chopping block, and see how far you get.
It could be done with the best of the classic Japanese swords, which are marvels of metallurgy. However, one of these must be treated very carefully if it isn’t to be ruined. The mere touch of a finger can induce corrosion.
The cruder blades of Europe demanded still closer attention. Edged weapons are more fragile than one might think, especially if they are bronze or medieval-type steel. Those quickly go blunt and become simple clubs; ofttimes they bend and must be more or less straightened with a foot and an oath; they can break. Not even with a samurai sword do you cut through armor.
At the same time, armor does have its vulnerabilities. These are not so much to the thrust of the cleaving blow. I have witnessed SCA experiments in which chain mail made from coat hanger wire, backed by a hay bale, could not be penetrated by sword, ax, or spear. Obviously only repeated impacts on the same spot could fatigue the metal enough to let a weapon through. Plate armor should be still hardier. Bear in mind that, in both cases, padding was worn beneath. Still, if a man was getting hit hour after hour, eventually it might prove too much for his body to endure, if heat prostration didn’t get him first.
Armor of either kind could be pierced by a hard-driven arrow, from longbow or crossbow. These devices had their own limitations. I have already mentioned how much training was necessary to make the former effective. Though not an archer myself, I am skeptical about hundred-pound draws; it seems to me that, for accuracy and rate of fire, seventy-five might be a more reasonable figure. As for crossbows, though their bolts struck equally hard, they were considerably slower than longbows. As said, their decisive advantage was that they were easier to learn to use.
If armor is not involved, then ordinarily in fiction, a single blow, thrust, or arrow suffices to drop a man or a horse dead on the spot. Actually, so large an animal is quite hard to kill. The .45 caliber pistol was developed specifically as a man-stopper, and still men hit from one have been known to keep on coming. Hf swordsmen generally run their foes right through the heart. Well, not only is the heart a fairly small target whose exact location is hard to identify, but it’s pretty protected by the rib cage. Personally, I’d go for the throat — the larynx is highly vulnerable, not to speak of the jugular vein or carotid arteries — or the abdomen, where I might slash another big artery or have a chance of skewering the liver — or the legs, in hopes of crippling my opponent.
The back of the neck is another weak point, if you can get at it, as with a hefty rabbit punch. The skull is stronger, though it can be smashed with a heavy weapon and a lighter blow may render the victim unconscious. Here hf and mf (mystery fantasy) writers make man out to be more durable than he is. Their heroes get knocked out, awaken after a while as if from a nap, and plunge right back into action. The truth is, a mild concussion is disabling for periods ranging from hours to days, and as for a severe one, the consequences are not pleasant to watch.
If you wish further possibilities for mayhem, I refer you to experts in karate. Techniques of this kind seldom occur in hf, but surely they could enliven some stories.
We have less scope where poisons are concerned, common though they are in fiction. Medieval and Renaissance princes lived in terror of these, but the fact is that prior to modern chemistry, there were virtually no quick-acting toxins you could slip to somebody unbeknownst, or on the point of a weapon. Curare is about all that comes to mind, and that’s South American. Indeed, I’ve seen a couple of Renaissance recipes for poisons to feed dinner guests, and the main question about them is how anybody ever imagined anybody else could ever gag down enough of that awful stuff to suffer serious damage.
Arsenic was about the deadliest substance readily available, with a few competitors like hemlock, toadstools, and ground glass. The problem was usually to disguise the taste. In any event, while a person could occasionally be given a lethal dose, he would hardly drop dead at once. He’d be a considerable and messy time about his demise. I rather imagine that quite a few deaths which were attributed to deliberate poisoning were actually caused by botulism or the like.
Lest the foregoing seem bloodthirsty, let me add that another flaw in most hf is the glossing over of pain, mangling, and the ordinarily grim process of dying. True, we don’t want to get sadistic. And as a rule, we presume an era less sensitive than ours; most have been. And we’re writing and reading for fun, not to preach moral lessons or harrow emotions. Still, a bit more realism in this respect too would lend convincingness.
We can then swing back to cheerful matters, such as harvest festivals, drunken evenings in taverns, and fertility rites where sympathetic magic gets totally sympathetic. We can let our hero have all kinds of adventures, buckle all kinds of swashes. I merely submit that he ought to do so in a world which, however thaumaturgical, makes sense. The more it does, the more the reader will enjoy — and the more he will come back for more.
January 04, 2005
Tags: Anderson, Intermediate, Poul Anderson, writing
https://www.tor.com/2019/11/25/celebrating-five-favourite-works-of-poul-anderson/
Celebrating Five Favourite Works by Poul Anderson
James Davis NicollMon Nov 25, 2019 10:00am
Poul Anderson was born on this day in 1926. Anderson’s career spanned over sixty years, from the 1940s to the early 2000s. He wrote fiction and non-fiction. He published in many genres: fantasy, science fiction, historicals, and mysteries. He wrote dozens of novels and hundreds of shorter pieces, all of a level of quality that was never less than competent—and sometimes better. The often acerbic Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls Anderson “his generation’s most prolific sf writer of any consistent quality[…].” (He was the anti-Lionel Fanthorpe.)
Two aspects of his work drew me to Anderson’s work as a teenager. One was his commitment to verisimilitude, which went beyond the usual hard-SF author’s focus on straightforward physics. Anderson’s interests were broad; as a result we got whimsy like “Uncleftish Beholding,” written in an alternate form of English lacking many common loan words, and essays like “On Thud and Blunder,” an attempt to facilitate greater realism in sword and sorcery.
The other element that guaranteed that teen me would be reading a lot of Anderson was that, as with Andre Norton, there were a lot of Anderson works to read (if Anderson’s books were the sort of thing you like to read). I’ve never seen an exact figure for the number of short works and novels Anderson wrote that I entirely trusted, but I do know two things: That number is not small and I’ve read a large fraction of it.
Here are five of my favourites, selected according to pure whim and also a desire not to recapitulate Anderson-related essays previously published on Tor.com. So, no World Without Stars, The High Crusade, The Broken Sword, or Trader to the Stars, because other essayists have already written about them. No Tau Zero or The Enemy Stars because I wrote about them. Happily, the pool of potential candidates is not small. In fact, it is large enough if I had to do this again in another year, I could come up with an entirely different list of five favourites.
Many SF novels start with One Big Change. Brain Wave‘s OBC is very big indeed: The Earth emerges from an intelligence-suppressing field. Every creature that can think suddenly finds itself five times smarter. All humans of normal intelligence wake to find themselves geniuses. Animals discover that they can now think around the barriers used to control them. Human institutions crumble because humans are too bright to believe in them, while the agricultural systems on which we depend are themselves threatened by animals no longer willing to be stock or prey.
This could very easily have been an apocalyptic tale (superhuman humans shrug and carry on eating creatures that now fully understand what’s going on)—but that’s not the direction in which a comparatively young Anderson took his novel. Instead, the various viewpoint characters do their best to find new, better ways to live.
In After Doomsday, the USS Benjamin Franklin returns from the galactic core to find Earth murdered. The means are clear, technological gifts of the sort employed by the same aliens who traded us for Faster Than Light drives. The culprit, on the other hand, is unknown. It is up to the crew of the Benjamin Franklin to find a new homeworld and save the species! Or at least it would be if the U.S., hesitant to expose women to the dangers of space, had not staffed the Franklin with three hundred men.
There is one note of hope: The U.S. is not the only starfaring nation whose long-range mission survived the disaster. Pan-Europe’s Europa, for example, has women crew members. All that is needed to save the species is for the two ships to find each other in a very large, very alien Milky Way.
Anderson created an interesting setting any other author could have used in a dozen further novels, but discarded it once he was through telling the story he wanted to tell. Creating new and interesting settings was never an issue for him. Two aspects of this novel strike me:
- This is a perfectly acceptable old-school-style mystery; it’s possible to work out the identity of the killer before the humans do.
- While I often castigate Anderson’s unthinking sexism, one cannot help but notice that Benjamin Franklin’s cunning schemes got a lot of the crew killed, whereas the Europa’s plans generally didn’t.
There Will Be Time’s Jack Havig has a very personal interest in history. This is because he has the ability to travel from one moment to any other, at will. As any number of fables inform us, foreknowledge is not comforting: Jack is painfully aware that modern civilization is slated to annihilate itself in the near future, ushering in a dark age that will last centuries.
Caleb Wallis’ organization, the Eyrie, recruits Jack. Other timewalkers such as Krasiki, Mendoza, Coenraad, and Boris, the other members of the Eyrie, value Jack’s abilities. It does not take Jack too long to spot the fly in the ointment, however: Caleb is a product of 19th-century America, and is as racist as they come. Caleb’s plans to shape history to suit himself reflect this.
Yeah, this is the novel with the tedious hippy scenes and yes, Jack’s first love’s main purpose is to fill otherwise wasted refrigerator space. But that’s only a fraction of the narrative. This slender novel is a nice example of how much plot can fit into a single short work, and what can be done within the self-imposed confines of fixed, known history. This was also my introduction to the Byzantine Empire (unless Silverberg’s Up the Line was).
The Day of Their Return is a sidebar to the Dominic Flandry stories. Chafing at the Terran Empire’s martial rule of the planet Aeneas, Ivar Fredriksen launches a plan to free his world that is as bold as it is doomed. Fleeing its aftermath, he eludes Imperial pursuit. At the same time, devout believer Jaan is convinced that the beings who ruled Aeneas six million years prior are returning to Aeneas to free its people. Jaan is half right: The entity he is dealing with may be of the same race that once ruled Aeneas, but Mersian agent Aycharaych cares very little about the freedom of one backwater planet.
Speaking of Anderson characters I don’t like any more, Dominic Flandry does not appear in this book, although the events in it follow closely on the Flandry novel The Rebel Worlds. Providentially, Flandry’s sparring partner, Aycharaych, does appear. I favour Aycharaych over self-justifying Flandry, and this is as close to an Aycharaych novel as I am going to get. Moreover, Anderson manages to convey a lot about Aeneas in the course of a short novel. More of his competent worldbuilding.
The Best of Poul Anderson. Novels are fine but Anderson was known for his vast body of short work. Thus my final selection is The Best of Poul Anderson, a selection of his short pieces published by Pocket Books. The Best of Poul Anderson has nine pieces, from novellas to short stories, written for a wide variety of markets, with introductory pieces for each story by Anderson himself. Of particular note is 1958’s “The Last of the Deliverers,” a whimsical tale about the last capitalist and last communist in a post-scarcity world that has rendered both of them utterly irrelevant.
All of these works should be available in one edition or another, save perhaps for the collection. Happily, the New England Science Fiction Association has your back: Simply purchase all seven volumes of The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson and read the subset that corresponds to The Best of Poul Anderson.
A version of this post was originally published in July 2019.
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is a finalist for the 2019 Best Fan Writer Hugo Award, and is surprisingly flammable.
Footnotes
1: Although his essays on worldbuilding, in which he discussed how to invent entire planets that were scientifically plausible, were darn good hard SF. Assuming science as it was when he wrote.
2: A number of bruised languages recovering consciousness in dark alleys would like to discuss the use of the word “loan.”
3: It also helped that Anderson’s characteristic weaknesses, in particular his treatment of women characters, fell in my teenage blind spots.
4: Well, no van Rijn or Falkayn because I am a joyless buzzkill and on rereading some of these books, I find don’t enjoy those characters any longer. See also the absence of the Hoka stories.
5: “Wait, what does ‘five times as intelligent’ mean, exactly?” I am glad you asked. Unfortunately word count limits preclude an answer at this time...
6: I too am surprised that Anderson didn’t feature in the Ballantine/Del Rey Best Of collections.
7: And an introduction by Barry N. Malzberg, my opinion of which may be deduced from the fact I relegated it to a footnote.
Poul William Anderson (November 25, 1926 – July 31, 2001)[4] was an American science fiction author from the 1940s until the 21st century. Anderson wrote fantasy novels, historical novels, and short stories. His awards include seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.[5]
Poul Anderson | |
|---|---|
Anderson at Polcon in 1985 | |
| Born | Poul William Anderson November 25, 1926 Bristol, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | July 31, 2001 (aged 74) Orinda, California, U.S.[1][2] |
| Pen name | A. A. Craig Michael Karageorge Winston P. Sanders P. A. Kingsley[3] |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | US |
| Period | 1948–2001 |
| Genre | Science fiction, fantasy, time travel, mystery, historical fiction |
| Notable works | |
Biography
Poul Anderson was born on November 25, 1926 in Bristol, Pennsylvania to Scandinavian parents.[6] Shortly after his birth, his father, Anton Anderson moved the family to Texas, where they lived for over ten years. Following Anton Anderson's death, his widow took the children to Denmark. The family returned to the United States after the outbreak of World War II, settling eventually on a Minnesota farm.
While he was an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota, Anderson's first stories were published by John W. Campbell in Astounding Science Fiction: "Tomorrow's Children" by Anderson and F. N. Waldrop in March 1947 and a sequel, "Chain of Logic" by Anderson alone, in July.[a] He earned his B.A. in physics with honors but became a freelance writer after he graduated in 1948. He placed his third story in the December Astounding.[7]
Anderson married Karen Kruse in 1953 and moved with her to the San Francisco Bay area. Their daughter Astrid (now married to science fiction author Greg Bear) was born in 1954. They made their home in Orinda, California. Over the years Poul gave many readings at The Other Change of Hobbit bookstore in Berkeley; his widow later donated his typewriter and desk to the store.
In 1965, Algis Budrys said that Anderson "has for some time been science fiction's best storyteller".[8] He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) in 1966 and of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), also in the mid-1960s. The latter was a loosely-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors led by Lin Carter, originally eight in number, with entry by credentials as a fantasy writer alone. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972.
Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.[9][10] The Science Fiction Writers of America made Anderson its 16th SFWA Grand Master in 1998[11] and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2000, its fifth class of two deceased and two living writers.[12] He died of prostate cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. A few of his novels were first published posthumously.
Awards and honors
- Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy (1978)[5]
- Hugo Award (seven times)[13]
- John W. Campbell Memorial Award (2000)[14]
- Inkpot Award (1986)[15]
- Locus Award (41 nominations; one win, 1972)[16]
- Mythopoeic Fantasy Award (one win (1975))[17]
- Nebula Award (three times)[18]
- Pegasus Award (best adaptation, with Anne Passovoy) (1998)
- Prometheus Award (five times, including Special Prometheus Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2001)
- SFWA Grand Master (1997)[11]
- Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame (2000)[12]
- Asteroid 7758 Poulanderson, discovered by Eleanor Helin at Palomar in 1990, was named in his honor.[19] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center shortly after his death on 2 September 2001 (M.P.C. 43381).[20]
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2108.04 - 10:10
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Thursday, April 29, 2021
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2262 - "Where All Things Perish" by Tanith Lee and INTERVIEW - Weird Fiction Review
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1995 - Top 13 Writing Tips From Neil Gaiman
Thursday, April 2, 2020
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1871 - People of Middle Earth - Fëanor and Melian
Sunday, September 22, 2019
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1678 - Scorpion Swamp
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1673 - From Skulls to Swords - dissecting the cover for Gideon the Ninth
Thursday, January 3, 2019
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1413 - Silmarillion Primer - 20 rings, 7 stones, and a new Dark Lord
Saturday, December 8, 2018
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1387 - Watership Down - Netflix - December 23
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1376 - Fire & Blood - Best Song of Fire and Ice Book?
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2204.10 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2473 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
