#writing magic

[ominous-faechild]

ik how dumb this sounds but

one thing i like about having worked on all these outlines before the actual writing? i've found different/new ways of phrasing these really weird (often abstract) magical-fantasy things over time! and, since it's an outline rather than the actual novel? i don't have to stress about "fixing" the old descriptions of it!

(the one time where "fixing it in post" ACTUALLY makes sense to do lol)

like, as much as i initially disliked the idea of phrasing it this way, as i've written? i've come to realize that referring to one's "cloud of essence" (their magical energy) as their "aura" just... makes sense, yknow???

alternatively, i've also figured out how to describe, well... THIS!

THIS KINDA THING (tho it's kinda different obviously lol)

through my outlining, i've come up with a few variations, depending on what's actually happening! - "distorts, then reforms ___" - "distorts, collapsing in on themself and re-emerging(...)" - "distorts, the image dragging, before reforming ___"

etc!

what do you guys think? :D

(remind me to add alt text later pls)

[theeccentricraven]

"Writing is a skill, and the more we do it, the better we get at it. I expect to be learning to write till I die. There's always more to learn, and that may be the best thing about being a writer." Gail Carson Levine

[writercoracain]

i want more magic systems that rely on food. give me witches that taste citrus when they channel spirits. wizards that smell plums or apples when they start to cast. i want broth brewed with a calming spell that tastes like your favorite memory and healing wards shaped like coils from a peeled orange, scenting the user like hot summer days. i want a burst of earthy olive at the utterance of a ward. love spells baked into pastries. lettuce for salads grown in soil spelled to rid the eater of cavities. food !! magic !!

[honorlessrogue]

i'm trying to figure out my magic system. i have an idea for how people can access the magic but the problem is that i have no idea what the magic can actually do lol. gonna have to work on the story more first and then see what makes sense/what's necessary to push the plot

[ajwardens]

Death of the Dragonflies, Story Snippet

Fallon crouched low, her muscles coiled like springs, ready to bolt. Nestled in the tangled arms of the lilac bush, where bright, downy leaves fluttered in a dance, she eyed the makeshift starting line she had carved into the grass. The breeze whispered secrets, warm and thick, carrying hints of crushed grass and sunbaked earth. Clouds waltzed across the sky’s endless blue, as if drawn by an unseen hand. On her signal, the race of their lives would start.

A group of children gathered around Fallon. Their breaths held tight, and bodies coiled with a shared anticipation that hummed in the roots beneath them. Adults on the sidewalk murmured to themselves. Their disapproving tones clear indicators of their loss of joy and mischief.

The hill sloped before them, green and wild, sweeping down toward the group home’s backyard—a slope both untamed and inviting, daring them to test its heights and race its steep descent. For Fallon, the hill was a path woven with possibility, alive with the thrill of the chase that lay waiting just beyond the brush.

“Do you see Hank?” Fallon asked over her shoulder.

Half-hidden by the bush, Henry leaned forward, his tall, wiry frame catching the slant of afternoon light. He stood still, but there was a quiet readiness in the line of his shoulders, the kind of focus that made him appear a part of the landscape—he was alert, waiting for something just beyond the edge of sight.

His thumbs were tucked into his pockets, hands steady, relaxed—a contrast to the hungry look in his face, where sharp cheekbones cut the soft breeze. A tousled mop of dark hair fell over his brow, hiding the blue eyes that tracked every shift on the hill, sharp as flint.

Henry’s lips curved, a faint, crooked smile that flickered like a shadow in sunlight.

“I don’t see him,” he said, words rolling out low and quiet, no more than a breath. The smile lingered in his eyes for a heartbeat, then vanished like the flick of a barn mouse’s tail disappearing into the hay.

Fallon turned to the sea of bright eyes and restless limbs; a dozen little sparks held in place by thin string. “Alright, you know the rules,” Fallon said. “Fast and quick. Don’t let Hank catch you. First one down the hill, dry as a bone, wins.”

A thrill rippled through the group, spreading like lightning in a summer storm. Tiny hands gripped fists of grass, feet shuffled, and muffled giggles escaped like bubbles rising from a hidden spring.

The hillside hummed in answer, buzzing with their anticipation, each child a live wire, breath held, ready to release the energy coiled in their small, eager frames.

“On your mark,” Fallon whispered, knees hovering just above the earth. Her weight shifted to the edge of her toes, coiled and ready. Her fingers splayed, pressing deep into the cool dampness of soil, nails scraping the dirt, seeking a grip on something steady.

“Get set.”

Henry crouched low, muscles taut, tension coiled like a spring about to release. He pulled his hands from his pockets, expanding his fingers on the concrete sidewalk. His eyes locked forward, unwavering, tracing the path down the hill with a focus sharpened by silence.

A spark flared deep in her chest, fanning into a fierce thrill—a drive not just to win, but to give the kids a race that would burst open the quiet spaces of their small-town lives. She wanted them to feel it, that reckless, wild freedom that pulsed in her veins.

In a town like Stone Brook, excitement didn’t come served up but had to be dug out of dusty corners and hidden places. This was the sort of race they’d talk about later, voices breathless, eyes wide, reliving each heartbeat as if it were happening all over again.

The distant green door, chipped and faded, filled her sight—every scratch and flake of paint pulled her closer, the world narrowing until only the door remained—a singular, unwavering goal. Fallon’s muscles tightened, every part of her aligned toward that weathered frame at the end of the hill.

In the space between safety and recklessness, nothing else existed—not the laughter behind, nor the hum of leaves, just the door, steady and inviting, waiting for the burst of movement that would bridge the space between them.

“Go!”

[rightwriter]

This is the best video on magic systems I've ever watched! It makes a strong argument to what some folks call "soft" magic systems. And look at that thumbnail art, so cute!

[a-halo-for-you]

Hard Magic Systems - A Chaotic Understanding

(DISCLAIMER: I do not intend to come across like I know anything but there are some things I’ve learnt and tried to make sense of so here you go… Also, I have read books that helped this abstract understanding of this thing, not sure if I should write them here but if you’re interested feel free to message me, I should reply within 1-3 business days.)

A Hard magic system is a system that follows rules. It has clearer definitions of what is and isn’t allowed and what is or isn’t possible and the consequences when something goes wrong. 

An example I have come up with is from Leigh Bardugo’s ‘Shadow and Bone’ series. In her stories, Grisha are capable of ‘Small Science’ and fear the act of ‘Merzost’ which in Ravkan means magic. For her magic system, their abilities rely on drawing upon the components of an element in order to wield it, abiding by the laws of physics. Any that use Merzost are often villainised for it - it is very very bad and not allowed hence most villains use it. 

Having these rules in place can aid a reader in understanding how the system works, it adds stakes to characters and narratives and can be a creative tool in problem solving without audiences or readers feeling cheated by a cop out display of magic. For example if someone just wishes all their problems away and suddenly the world wasn’t ending - the only time this could be effective would be if the journey the characters went on was crucial enough to feel like it's an accomplishment to get that far. Like in Percy Jackson and The Sea of Monsters, we’re not miffed that Annabeth is rescued by the Golden Fleece because 1# We know her enough to love her and 2# They worked so hard to get to it in the first place. 

When something is resolved without any stakes, rules, limits, journey and growth it feels like a cop out, the way we watch when some writers accidentally put themselves in a corner they can’t get out of so they make the entire journey a dream by the end? Or hey, let’s just fix it with time travel! It feels kinda pointless because there are no stakes and even a soft magic system will have stakes but I’ll get to that in another post. 

When magic is used as a tool it becomes a part of the characters journey from Luffy and the GumGum Fruit to Harry Potter and being a Wizard. It becomes a part of and aids their problem solving like any other skill. 

If we look at Avatar: The Last Airbender, it takes place in a world where the audience understands people can manipulate the elements, it makes sense when Katara has her bloodbending experience because early on in the show it is established that waterbenders can draw from not just oceans and rivers but trees, plants and human sweat. Their abilities are practised, trained and developed on through the show, I mean, even Aang has to progress in order to become the Avatar and when we see him master the elements we feel kinda proud to see him kick ass and when Toph progresses to bending Metal or Zuko with his lightning- I mean excuse me?!! 

We love the magic because it's a part of their journey but it doesn’t just fix things or make them worse - it’s how they use it that matters. 

Predictability is an important part of a Magic System because if you want to keep things in order you’ll want to make sure that your Hard Magic always has a consistency to it that follows the world and story narrative. Like in My Hero Academia, the predictability would be that each character has a quirk that they are learning to control and train in order to become heroes, however they each have limitations from their personalities, physiques, mentalities, ages etc that hinder them along the way. 

‘Limitations are more important than powers’ Brandon Sanderson. 

Babe. This is for real though. I don’t care how powerful a character is, it’s not interesting if they don’t have a weakness, the more powerful they are? The more painful the weakness. You want them to lose that power or feel the consequences of their power, hurt their weakness. For fun. Anyway- 

-Once you’ve sorted the rules of your system you can look at the particular limitations, weaknesses and costs. Oftentimes I’d say strength is different from power cause someone's power could be fire but their strength could be their friends and as we know, their strength can also reflect their weakness. 

You could have a shape-shifting character but the longer they stay in their animal form the more animalistic they become creating disastrous long term effects on the group or like Nico from the Percy Jackson series, he uses shadows to travel so much that it quite literally becomes a danger to him, ‘as the more you do it, the more you lose contact with the physical world’.

Anywho, this is the end of my Hard Magic System rant - I don’t actually know if this is helpful but it helps me so maybe it will help some stranger on the internet idk. 

Don't blame me coffee made me crazy~

Next time I’ll post about the Soft Magic System and it will likely be as messy and chaotic as this one but hey-ho, 50% knowing what I’m talking about to 50% aimless passion seems acceptable.

[minimightymina]

What a spells class could look like

(DND Player’s handbook, 2014)

[baambastic]

If you’re going to write a story about already-established magicks, you have to bring something interesting to the table. Not necessarily something new—Lords know every idea that can be had has been had—but at the least, it must be something that has not been considered in such a particular way before. You’ve already got the pieces of the puzzle—your job is to fill the linings with gold.

[talefoundryshow]

NEW VIDEO!

Break out the legal pads and ring up your magical attorney, we’re talking about magical contracts! Whether used to ensure a successor to Santa or receive magical powers beyond your wildest dreams (provided you follow the rules), contracts themselves are just as intriguing as the beings that make them.

[retrocauser]

Plotting out a fantasy story and I have an idea for how to integrate both hard and soft magic. It could be like how early Renaissance scientists had a some-what grasp of subjects like physics and biology from experiments and science from the Mediaeval and Classical Greco-Roman eras, but their understanding of those subjects were in their infancy.

In the setting, imagine, magic is something of a new feild of study (despite being known about and used for a millennia in-setting), with mages in-setting conducting magical experiments, writing about them, doing peer-review, and publishing their magical findings in public scientific journals.

[cynicalclassicist]

Something to think about when writing wizards! I don't understand programming myself, but this is a good starting point!

This sounds like the sort of thing that Terry Pratchett would do!

I'm a big fan of wizards-as-programmers, but I think it's so much better when you lean into programming tropes.

A spell the wizard uses to light the group's campfire has an error somewhere in its depths, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. The wizard spends a lot of his time trying to track down the exact conditions that cause the failure.

The wizard is attempting to create a new spell that marries two older spells together, but while they were both written within the context of Zephyrus the Starweaver's foundational work, they each used a slightly different version, and untangling the collisions make a short project take months of work.

The wizard has grown too comfortable reusing old spells, and in particular, his teleportation spell keeps finding its components rearranged and remixed, its parts copied into a dozen different places in the spellbook. This is overall not actually a problem per se, but the party's rogue grows a bit concerned when the wizard's "drying spell" seems to just be a special case of teleportation where you teleport five feet to the left and leave the wetness behind.

A wizard is constantly fiddling with his spells, making minor tweaks and changes, getting them easier to cast, with better effects, adding bells and whistles. The "shelter for the night" spell includes a tea kettle that brings itself to a boil at dawn, which the wizard is inordinately pleased with. He reports on efficiency improvements to the indifference of anyone listening.

A different wizard immediately forgets all details of his spells after he's written them. He could not begin to tell you how any of it works, at least not without sitting down for a few hours or days to figure out how he set things up. The point is that it works, and once it does, the wizard can safely stop thinking about it.

Wizards enjoy each other's company, but you must be circumspect about spellwork. Having another wizard look through your spellbook makes you aware of every minor flaw, and you might not be able to answer questions about why a spell was written in a certain way, if you remember at all.

Wizards all have their own preferences as far as which scripts they write in, the formatting of their spellbook, its dimensions and material quality, and of course which famous wizards they've taken the most foundational knowledge from. The enlightened view is that all approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, but this has never stopped anyone from getting into a protracted argument.

Sometimes a wizard will sit down with an ancient tome attempting to find answers to a complicated problem, and finally find someone from across time who was trying to do the same thing, only for the final note to be "nevermind, fixed it".

[anxiousdragoncollector]

Can we please stop making necromancy forbidden evil magic in media?

like, don't get me wrong, if you fuck it up, you're screwed six ways to hell and back, and it is a messy practice at times, but there are so many better things to be forbidden magic

like, I don't know, erasing someone's memory or maybe love potions?? Like, you're fucking with someone's life, possibly erasing their very being. I'm bringing them back. Albeit, that might not be his femur, and he doesn't really act the same, but it's recycling

[talefoundryshow]

NOW ON NEBULA!

We’ve all heard stories about magical contracts. In fact, we’ve explored why villains like using them so much in the past. But what does a magic system built on contracts look like, both conceptually and in practice?

[haveacupofjohanny]

📖✨ When you write spooky shit and spooky shit happens… I was editing The Ordinary Bruja using Scrivener’s speech feature. The second it read "You let her die."—a pillow that was securely tucked away fell with a loud thump. If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is. 👀💀 #TheOrdinaryBruja #Magic