Worldbuilding 201: Magic Systems
Greetings and salutations! This day is very special! Well, this week, my dear friend Anne Winchell has released one of her great books! And to celebrate it, we are bringing you a guide to create your own magic systems while getting to know her own world! Go for it, my dear sister! It is all yours. Vivian out!
Can magic be defined?
Thanks, Vivian! When you’re writing fantasy, magic should be one of your first considerations, as it’s the defining feature of the genre. However, not all magic is created equal, and there are all sorts of variables that go into designing a magic system to fit your story and your world. Whether you’re writing young adult urban fantasy with vampires lurking in high schools for some reason or a high fantasy adventure as a young woman fights endless orc hordes to defeat the evil goddess of chaos, you’ll want to figure out how exactly magic works so that you know how to use it and when you’re breaking the rules of your world and breaking your audience’s willful suspension of disbelief.
Matching your world and goals
While genre considerations are important, you can really have any type of magic system in any genre if you do it well. What matters more is the feel that you want your world to have. How involved will magic be in people’s day-to-day lives? Will this magic be inspirational and hopeful, or lead to terror and despair? A lot of this is determined by what exactly you, the author, want to achieve in this world or story.
In my stories, I tend to have a more pessimistic dystopian portrayal of the world (as Vivian will attest), but I always offer hope. And in all but a few short stories that I’ve written, that hope is what wins out in the end, though sometimes at a very high cost. In the Empire of the Seven Continents, where my Imperial Saga takes place, most of the continents have their own form of “magic,” though only Tamarud, the main setting, calls it that. The way that these magics or abilities are handled on each continent reveals a lot about that continent. For example, on Shem, some people are born with the ability to weave curses and undergo years of training to perfect their craft. These people, known as Weavers, are revered by the local population, who seek out their services not only to cast curses on others but to protect themselves from harm. To the Empire that is still struggling to maintain control of the newly acquired territory, the Weavers are deadly and as a result have been regulated and controlled. Anyone born with the ability to weave curses is registered and tracked their entire life to prevent them from causing harm to the Empire. This represents how the Empire treats the continent as a whole, regulating what they can’t control and inflicting their own laws and customs upon the people rather than accepting them as equals. But then again, the Empire isn’t exactly known for being friendly, as the Emperor has a tendency to just massacre anyone who opposes him. But more about him later!
Once you’ve figured out loosely how you want magic to relate to your goals, then it’s time to really think about the magic itself, and the first thing to consider is how large of a role magic should play at all.
Hard vs soft magic systems
This is a pretty significant distinction, and one you’ll want to make early on, and it’s basically how directly magic will influence the world and especially the story. Brian Sanderson, a well-known fantasy author, has three rules of magic, and the first is that an author’s ability to solve conflict with magic should be directly proportional to how well the reader understands this magic. In other words, the more it’s used as part of the plot and as a problem-solving technique, the more the reader needs to know about how it works. In Vivian’s 15 Rules of Worldbuilding, zhi adds zhir own spin to this essential element of speculative fiction in “Rule #4: The more central the cog is, the more it must be fleshed out.” Basically, if you’re going to use magic as one of the cogs of your world (read here for what I mean by cog), then the more it matters to your story and world and the more defined and explained it needs to be.
In a world where magic isn’t used to solve problems, magic can be a looming, mysterious force, unknown and unknowable. Totally fine. But if, in the final battle, you, the author, use magic to kill the antagonist (for example), then the reader will feel cheated. That’s a deus ex machina, which I’m sure Vivian or I will discuss at some point. Because magic in this case is weird and mysterious, it seems totally arbitrary and suspicious that the magic just happens to help the protagonist at this precise moment in this precise way. Soft magic systems where magic is mysterious and off in the distance, so to speak, should avoid having things like this happen.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have hard magic systems. In these, we learn everything there is to know about what magic is and how it works. We learn the source, the spells, the recipes, we see the characters practice and perfect their magic, we learn everything about it that there is to know. Now let’s say it comes down to the final battle, and magic isn’t involved. Well, the reader is likely going to feel just as cheated as if magic is used in a soft magic system. After all, why did the reader waste all of that time learning about the magic system if it wasn’t even going to be used?
Now, it’s possible to have both of these climactic uses or non uses of magic work, and that’s because most stories fall somewhere in the middle. You might have a soft magic system, but maybe there’s an old saying that lightning will strike anyone who draws a weapon in the Sacred Grove, and when your protagonist flees there, the antagonist follows and makes a deadly mistake. Or you have a story where you learn about how magic can be blocked or negated, leading the protagonists to learn other skills just in case, so when the antagonist lures the protagonist into a neutralizing shield and they proceed to win through martial arts, it’s a natural extension of the story. In other words, you can do whatever you want as long as you make it fit the world and the story, and often that means combining the two.
Softer magic is good when you want to tell a fantasy story that isn’t about magic directly. Maybe you want to tell a story about people overcoming challenges on their own, or a world that the gods and goddesses forgot. The Lord of the Rings is a great example of a soft magic system. Magic is there–after all, one of the fellowship is a wizard!–but magic isn’t actually used to solve any problems. Magic doesn’t destroy the ring, greed does.
Harder magic is good when you actually want to explore magic and how it impacts the world. This is what I do in my stories. Tahirah, the main protagonist, is able to use magic as the daughter of Tamarud’s royal family. Because the rest of her family was all executed by the Emperor (I said we’d get back to him!), she doesn’t have anyone to teach her and acts instinctively, which generally works out for her… until it doesn’t. I like harder magic because I enjoy showing how her control over her magic relates to her control over other areas of her life. Only one other of the four main characters can use magic, and Ari can’t use it to nearly the same extent, but I use a similar mirror for him. In my world, magic is a concrete thing that characters learn to control within the story itself as a metaphor for what else is going on in their lives. This is a great way to use hard magic, as is simply wanting to do something fun with spells and potions. That’s an absolutely legitimate reason to want to include hard magic: because it’s cool and you want to explore it.
One thing you’ll notice that I haven’t touched on yet is magical creatures, but I will. They fit in both soft and hard magic systems, and I promise I’ll get to them. (Vivian: Anyone wanna give a try guessing which magic system I generally prefer?)
Limitations over powers
Whether soft or hard, magic needs limitations. This is actually when we start moving more into hard magic, because the harder it is, the more it needs those limitations. If you have soft magic where the goddess gave life to the planet and there are unicorns who hide from humans and maybe a dragon or two in some far off country, then it doesn’t really matter what limitations there are. But if the magic is going to impact your characters or story in any way, you need limitations. And honestly, if you want to develop a fleshed out world, you’ll come up with some limitations for those unicorns and dragons anyway just to be safe.
Why does magic need limitations? Because power is boring. Look at Superman. Incredibly boring character. He’s always good and always wins. There’s no tension whatsoever, and thus no real story. But start adding some limitations, and we start getting actual conflict with stakes that matter. If a random dude starts fighting Superman, we know the end result. But what if they have kryptonite? Now it gets interesting. Superman’s weakness, not his strength, is what defines him. (Vivian: He is also not the smartest so outwitting him and using his unwillingness to kill as a weapon against him makes for a great story too, turning a strength to a weakness.)
Vivian addresses this directly in zhir 15 Rules of Worldbuilding in “Rule #3: Constraint rules are better than permission rules.” Zhi advises that for each “permission rule,” or in this case, a power that magic possesses, you have 3-5 “constraint rules,” or limitations to this power. This is a great rule of thumb!
For example, Tahirah has the ability to understand and speak all languages. Pretty cool, right? Well, there are some limitations, naturally! First, and this becomes relevant in the plot, she can’t read or write anything beyond the two languages she grew up speaking. And her handwriting is… well, let’s just say you might not call that writing even in the languages she knows! (Don’t worry, she can take a joke). Two, as her professor warns her at one point, even if she doesn’t see it now, there’s very likely a hidden cost to what she’s doing. We haven’t seen it yet in the series, but it’s lurking under the surface. And third, and this is entirely story-driven, if anyone finds out that she speaks anything other than the two languages she’s known to speak, she’ll most likely be killed. I gave this as an example to show how plot can work to add limitations in addition to the actual magic itself. If your character has a power but will be killed for using it, that’s a pretty great limitation right there. So for her ability to understand and speak languages, there are three limitations. Sometimes you want more, but you rarely want less.
Whatever form your magic takes, it needs limitations to make it interesting and worth including. You don’t want overpowered characters roaming around winning everything they set their mind to. There has to be something limiting them, even if it’s just the presence of an antagonist who’s just as OP as they are. While it’s common to have powerful enemies, you also don’t want them to be too overpowered. Godzilla trashing Tokyo is great, but eventually the humans need to win. Everything needs limitations, and as I walk through the different sources of magic, I’ll talk about potential limitations for each.
Where does magic come from?
Once you’ve started to figure out how you want magic to interact with your world and your story, it’s time to get into the real meat of the matter. First, you need to figure out the source of your magic. It’s possible to mix and blend, but it’s best if you can clearly pinpoint one original source even if you then have other sources after it.
Energy
This is a great place for magic to originate, and it offers wonderful limitations. After all, energy is a finite source! Energy can be interpreted in different ways, the individual’s energy and the planet’s energy being the two most common ones. There are all sorts of terms for energy, like mana, that all boil down to having the life essence and energy spawn magic. And as I said, while it’s possible to have lots of energy and have it be self-sustaining, it’s a finite resource, and the smallest blip can cause it to flicker. (Vivian: Please read up on the word's meaning and try to be sensible to it.)
Higher beings
As a child who grew up fascinated by the ancient Greek pantheon and continued to be obsessed well into undergrad, this is always a favorite of mine (okay I’m still totally into ancient Greek god/desses and devoured the video game Hades). If you’re of a more religious bent, the higher power is likely to be the one(s) that you worship, or a direct parallel of them. This doesn’t have to be an individual, either, although it’s usually personified to some extent. You can have forces of nature, emotions, all sorts of things that have a personification and are a higher power than the average person, and these higher beings can be a source of magic. Sometimes it’s direct, sometimes indirect. Sometimes the higher beings are directly involved in your story (and their powers should be clearly defined), and sometimes they’re a vague force that can remain mysterious because they don’t solve problems in your story.
On Tamarud, the people worship the goddess Lahara, and I have all sorts of stories to explain how the world got to be how it is today. I leave it vague on whether or not the stories of how Lahara brought life to the continent and created the various animals, giving them gifts that they still have to this day, are true. One fun thing is that Lahara got bored and wandered off some time ago; she still looks after her people, but not in any direct way.
Limitations on higher beings vary, especially depending on exactly how high up you want them to be. Keep in mind why we have limitations, though! An all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful higher being is, frankly, boring if they have any interactions with the story. (Vivian: An all-powerful, aka omnipotent, is also logically impossible. Create a rock that cannot be moved by said being? That is why I say “almost all-powerful” is better; how close is it? Dunno!) In the background, sure a character that powerful can work. But the instant they get involved, it becomes a question as to why they don’t just solve everything. The Harry Potter series has this issue with Dumbledore for most of the first books: why doesn’t he stop everything before it begins? When you have characters with the power to prevent conflict and they don’t, there needs to be a good reason (and if a limitation is stopping them, show it early on!). Limitations drive tension and conflict, and that’s what makes a good story. (Vivian: The deities being assholes playing people for their sadistic fun is a way to solve it.)
Physical objects
A lot of people like this because here’s where we get into fun things like potions and pendants! Scale of newt and blood of a virgin, you know the stuff! Oftentimes physical things in the world give magic, typically when combined in different ways (but we’ll get into that in a second). Now, pendants or other charms can sometimes give magic after being themselves given magic from a different source. If you, the individual, can draw magic from a sword that was blessed by a goddess, then the original source of magic is a higher being. If your pendant holds your condensed energy, you’ve got energy as the primary source. The sword and pendant are just methods of channeling the magic. And so on. But sometimes it’s the object itself; perhaps the sword is made from a magical metal unique to your world, and the pendant is made of polished unicorn horn!
Limitations on physical objects vary and really depend on how the magic is used. If the magic comes from combinations of otherwise ordinary substances, then mixing them incorrectly could be potentially deadly. Say you had a scarf that protected you from physical harm. That seems a little overpowered, right? If the character always has it on, yes, but what if they’re always losing it, or it blows off at just the wrong time? What if the slightest snag will lessen its protective magic, and it’s of such a delicate material that it’s prone to snagging? There are always ways to limit physical objects, and it’s your job to find and exploit them to increase the tension.
Reality warps
This one is a little weird, but it’s possible that magic comes from shifts or warps in reality. Maybe magic is released when rifts are formed in the fabric of reality, or perhaps deja vu is a way of restoring a person’s magic that isn’t gained in any other way. Personally, I would put portal magic here. That’s when a person enters an alternate reality of some sort, usually a person from our world entering a magical world. Often upon entering that world, the person gains magic, arguably from the change in reality that brought them there, but that’s not always true. Magic in the other world usually comes from other sources, but the magic of the person itself could be said to go here. That part is debatable; what’s not debatable is that there are plenty of stories, portal fantasy or not, where reality warps, and a person gains magic from it. Limitations here are generally that reality probably doesn’t warp on a regular basis.
Innate/Genetics
There are two categories here, but they’re both centered on the same thing: maybe you’re born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline! No, it’s magic. Some people are just born with magic. This sorts into two categories: active and passive magic. That will be explained more below, but basically some people are born with the ability to use magic with intention, and some are just magical creatures. Elves are in and of themselves magical to some extent, as are unicorns and dragons. It’s just part of them. Vampires, werewolves, you name it, even if they have no special active magical powers, they’re magical. But sometimes they can also use their magic deliberately, and sometimes perfectly ordinary people are just born with magic. Whether you consider it innate magic or genetics really just relies on the level of scientific advancement in your world and whether it can get passed down to the next generation.
Limitations vary based on whether you’re using hard or soft magic. As usual, limitations are less important with soft magic because it doesn’t impact any conflicts, so the usual reason for limitations of adding tension isn’t necessarily there. Still, you can easily add them. If dragons are a distant thing, well, they can be slain. Being born with magic is probably pretty rare, and maybe you’re born with it but it never actually develops. Or you’re limited by how you access and use it. Lots of options there!
Belief
I’m adding this one mainly because it’s how magic is bestowed in Tamarud. Sure, Lahara originally created the continent and magic, but that isn’t what gives individuals the ability to use magic in the modern world. Instead, magic can only be accessed by those people who have the faith and trust of others: the leaders, in other words. Smaller scale leaders have smaller scale magic, and only the one family who is considered to be the ruling family has access to the full range of abilities available. What happens when people stop believing they’re the rightful rulers? Well, they don’t lose their magic entirely, but it’s reduced to the amount that small-scale leaders have. This happened just over a century ago in the Imperial Saga, and Tahirah is so powerful because the entire continent is invested in the fact that she is their princess.
You can obviously get this in other stories. Just think of Tinkerbell! There are also plenty of stories of deities who lose their strength as fewer and fewer people believe in them. And that brings up the limitation, which is that belief can fade or shift. As long as people believe, you’re good, but the instant that changes, so does your access to magic or even life itself.
How is magic accessed and directed?
So magic has originated from somewhere, time to get using it! When it’s time for magic to be expressed in the world, there are two types: passive and active. Passive is fairly simple, but there are all sorts of ways to actively channel magic.
Passive
When magic gets expressed or channeled passively, it’s without the conscious control of whoever or whatever is doing the magic. This is usually seen in magical creatures or magical abilities that are just innate or genetic, but can be seen with other magic types as well. Vampires are immortal except under fairly specific circumstances, and it’s not something they control. In Tamarud, phoenixes are reborn if killed, unless killed by a specific substance. It just happens. Now, they can actually choose not to be reborn, and they have limited choice over where they’re reborn (or rather, who they’re reborn with), but the ability itself is passive. Another example from my world are the Krendi people, who can breathe underwater without conscious thought. When Tahirah learns to imitate this, however, she does need an active method, showing that something passive for one group might be active for another. Breathing underwater doesn’t bestow immunity to pressure, however, so the Krendi have to stay pretty close to the surface. One thing you’ll note in all of these is the limitations built in. Passive magic needs limits and ways that it falls short. You can have passive resistance to disease thanks to a blessing from a deity, but there has to be something in the story to counteract that and make it less powerful than it otherwise would be. Again, you want conflict and tension, so put limits on things!
Active
Active magic is anything that requires some method of channeling the magic into the world (or into the self). Basically, any magic that needs to be processed in some way to get out of its original state is active magic.
Will/spirit
This one is often associated with magic originating in energy, as it’s often focusing on concentrating that energy. However, it can come in all forms. The key feature is that in order to channel this magic into whatever it is you want to do with it, your willpower or spirit is the driving force. Variations on this include magic derived from a person’s emotions, as that’s directly related to the spirit and will. For example, sometimes people will draw on their courage to channel magic, or on the strength of their pure love. Some antagonists might use their evil intent to channel their magic for malicious purposes.
Limitations for this should be pretty obvious: a person’s will and their spirit can be weakened and dampened, sometimes quite easily. Emotions aren’t always predictable, and sometimes your characters just aren’t in the right state of mind. This can be great in stories, as it directly relates their outer strength–magic–to their inner state.
Thoughts
A similar method of channeling magic is through thoughts. There can be some overlap here with other types of active magic use, as you might think about the power of your love, or think about the elements, or use incantations in your mind, but the key distinguishing feature is that in order for this magic to work, you need to use the old noodle to put it into words and reality.
One common limitation for having your thinking control your magic is distraction. You need to focus to think through what you want, and if you get distracted at all, something terrible might happen. For someone like me with ADHD, this isn’t exactly an ideal choice. My thoughts sometimes drift even when I want to stay focused. Of course, there are also times when I’m hyperfocused and this would be ideal. Are your characters neurodivergent? Because that might be a fun way to show it and reveal how neurodivergence works in their world. But even the most ordinary character can get distracted if the enemy starts physically attacking them or using magic of their own. (Vivian: Shiny red balls are her biggest weakness)
Elements
Elemental power is a very common way to channel magic, and it’s the one I use for Tahirah’s magic. Because this is so common, there are even commonly accepted elements and commonly accepted rankings of elements. You usually start with water, fire, air/wind, and earth, right? Can’t have anything without those! But maybe you also want thunder/lightning or ice? Sure, add ‘em in. Maybe you want to go broader, and get into metal, darkness, light, time, space, life, death. All good. I may be missing some, but you can see how Western audiences have certain expectations for which elements take priority and how the elements should be named and divided. Vivian and I have developed the world of Aermundi in several blogposts, and it relies on thirteen elemental poles. Tahirah doesn’t use nearly that many, focusing instead on fire as her primary element, then wind, earth, life, and soon water and death, and finally she dabbles in ice, which is her opposite (as her core magic is fire). That’s how she channels the magic that she accesses thanks to the people believing that she’s the true leader of the continent.
Limitations of elemental magic are often opposites, as with Tahirah’s core magic of fire with the agony (limitation) associated with her infrequent use of ice. Opposites can also negate each other. You can also overload on an element; channeling too much lightning might fry you! Or at the least blow off your eyebrows. You might be in a place where an element isn’t accessible, and if in your world people can only access one element, they might be trapped. Sometimes elemental magic is channeled through physical objects or other living things, and those things might rebel or go missing, get destroyed or die. Lots of potential here.
Incantations
These are the verbal spells we see in so many books and shows about wizards. They’re often in a different language, often Latin, but it’s commonly framed as being an ancient language in the world even if your world doesn’t have Latin. Latin is just easy because most Westerners know that it’s old and now unspoken for the most part, and we also recognize a lot of it and can parse the meaning without too much trouble. These spells sometimes simply recite words or even just sounds, but usually have a message directly tied into whatever magic is being performed. When Gandalf is trying to enter Moria, the clue is to “speak friend and enter,” and he eventually figures out he just needs to say the word “friend.” In Harry Potter, “Wingardium Leviosa” is a levitating spell with some elements in the word that indicate its purpose (wing is associated with flight, levi- is like levitate). You might also get entire sentences or more outlining what the magic should do. Whether that actually works is up to the character’s skill and foresight!
And that’s one limitation: if you mess up any part of it or fail to think your incantation through, you’ll end up with a mess. Maybe it’s just a harmless mishap, maybe it actually works out better in the long run! Or maybe you’ve just unleashed an evil force who will wreak uncontrolled havoc on the world and become your biggest antagonist. Other limitations include interruptions; just like interruptions in thought can be death, so too can interruptions in incantation, and that adds wonderful drama. The wonderful classic film the Mummy (1999 version obviously) wouldn’t have the same impact if Jonathan Carnahan easily said the incantation to control the mummy’s guards instead of his words being punctuated by fighting and a forgotten pronunciation.
Rituals
These can involve incantations, but they’re much more involved and require physical actions, not just recited words. Most demon summonings involve a ritual of some sort, for example. You need to make sure the demon is contained, after all, so maybe some sort of pattern on the ground to keep it in one place, and why not make it out of blood? That seems fitting! Probably a sacrifice too, depending. Many spirits are repelled by salt, so ritualistically surrounding yourself and your loved ones protects quite well. There’s a huge difference in skill level there that’s important. Dumping salt in a circle is a very basic ritual that almost anyone can do (providing you have the ingredients–a nice limitation!). Summoning a demon is likely a highly complex ritual involving multiple steps, maybe multiple people, maybe even a higher power or two in addition to the demon itself. I’m sure you can think of other rituals at these opposed ends of skill level as well as plenty in the middle.
I’ve mentioned one basic limitation, which is having the basics for the ritual. Maybe it’s ingredients, space (both in terms of having enough space and perhaps having a specific space like a church), people, a good source of magic, there are so many factors and missing even one is a problem, especially if you’re halfway through the ritual before you realize it’s missing. Which leads us to another limitation, namely messing up. Even simple things like surrounding yourself with salt can lead to issues if you don’t close the circle (or if an outside source blows the salt away).
Recipes
Finally, we get recipes as a great way to channel magic. This is usually associated with physical objects being the source of magic in the form of ingredients, but not always. This is where some specific combination of things will channel magic into some predetermined result. We often associate this with witchcraft, but there are so many peoples and cultures who have used this for magic it would be impossible to list them all. And of course regular people use this too! Sometimes, when I really nail a recipe while cooking, the joy I derive from the result feels like a type of magic.
Limitations here are similar to rituals, because honestly, following a recipe could potentially be considered a ritual of sorts. If you don’t have the right ingredients, everything can go wrong, and finding out at the wrong moment is something I’m very familiar with and has led to me doing the old-fashioned and classic thing of asking my neighbors for a cup of sugar (yes, I’ve literally done this, and it was neighbors I hadn’t met before). Messing up the recipe can prove disastrous as well, and the result can easily cause a negative reaction instead of the desired positive one, or vice versa. If your poison gives your enemy super strength, you’ve definitely messed up, and that’s some great conflict and tension.
How can we make everything rational?
So now you know the basics of how to get your magic system up and running, but there are a few overarching rules that you want to pay attention to. Now, as with all rules, these can be broken, but you need to first know the rules, then only break them for excellent cause.
Reuse over reinvent
Whenever you have a magic system, you want it to be cohesive, logical, and rational. Everything needs to work together in your world in order to make your world feel real and allow your readers to follow along. A key way to do this is that whenever you find a new use of magic that you want to include, you make it work within your existing structure rather than add an entirely new structure.
This is something that Vivian explains on in zhir 15 Rules of Worldbuilding in “Rule #5: Re-usage is better than adding new cogs.” If you’re constantly tacking on new things to your world, then readers will get lost, and the power of your magic system lessens dramatically.
Now, some writers don’t know in advance what they want their magic to do. I’m in this category. I discover new uses of magic as I go, and for the most part, I just run with it in my first drafts. In revisions, though, I sit down, look at everything I want my magic to do, and create a cohesive magic system that rationally includes everything.
For example, in Rise of the Phoenix, the first book in my series, I start out with basic elemental magic that allows Tahirah to create phoenix eggs. She’s untrained, which gives me some flexibility to add later powers that she might be unaware of at the beginning. Later in the book, I wrote a scene where [minor spoiler] she revives a wolf that she inadvertently killed. It’s important to the plot and her character growth and flowed naturally in the first draft, but it didn’t seem to fit at first glance. I reassessed my magic system and realized that it wasn’t enough to have five basic elements. She creates phoenix eggs, giving them life, so it’s natural that life elemental magic is something already built into the system. Therefore, bringing a wolf back to life represents a jump in her skill level but not a shift in the magic system, and it also allowed for me to introduce death magic in the second book, Knight of the Dragon. I didn’t just make it so that she could revive creatures by some brand new means; instead, I found a way that it was already part of the existing magic system, and as a result, the story and her abilities grow in a rational manner that readers can easily follow. The willful suspension of disbelief continues uninterrupted because the new power doesn’t seem unrelated to everything else.
Bottom line, even if you’re the type of writer who doesn’t plan and instead lets the story happen, it’s vital to figure out how everything works together in a unified whole. Doing so will make your magic system feel realistic and keep your reader engaged in the story and not constantly questioning what the rules of the world are.
Multiple magic systems
Now, with that being said, it is possible to have multiple magic systems if you do it carefully and deliberately. This is another thing that occurs in my books. The Empire of the Seven Continents includes, as you can probably guess, seven continents, and each one of them has their own type of “magic,” though as I said at the beginning, no one else uses that term. I talked about Shem earlier with their ability to weave curses, which isn’t elemental but rather uses incantations to create orbs of energy that curse the person that they touch (or protect against curses). The Krendi, as mentioned, can breathe underwater, an innate, passive magic. And the Alongren people can shapeshift, which relies on energy and their willpower.
All of these have different sources and different methods to channel them, but they all work in this world because I have them so thoroughly divided. The seven continents have been completely isolated until quite recently, so their magic systems developed independently. There’s a hint that each continent is actually a different planet, hence their total isolation from each other, but that’s unspecified and none of the characters consider it for a moment. It’s just a conclusion some readers might draw. Is that true? Perhaps, perhaps not. That’s something where I don’t think I’ll ever share my view. But at the end of the day, the clear division works and having multiple magic systems is a deliberate choice that I made in order to show the variety of people who call the same place home. It’s rational even as it breaks a rule because I’m breaking it in a way that preserves the core lesson of keeping everything cohesive.
Magic to avoid
With all that being said, there are some types of magic that you probably want to avoid unless you’re ready to take some heat from your readers. While these can be done well, you’ll want to do some careful research to avoid offense.
Cultural magic
First, there are some types of magic that are associated with specific cultures, for example Voodoo with Caribbean culture. Can you use this? Sure. But if you want to do it well and be respectful, then you’d better do some research. Even if you just take the basic idea and add your own take, you want to understand the original. One partial exception to this is zombies because while they do come from Voodoo, the current widespread understanding of what a zombie is has mixed with all sorts of other cultural creatures and is now established as its own thing. But if you want to write a zombie story, you definitely want to research that culture and the standards and traditions of modern zombies.
Other examples might include if a Westerner tried to incorporate African rituals and deities into their stories. Careful research can avoid offending most people, and you might even get people delighted to learn about other cultures, but you’ll run into the issue of telling stories you are ill-equipped to tell. Why should we read a story about your Western interpretation of African culture instead of an African whose perspective will be accurate almost by default? This will inevitably cause you to take up the limited room publishers create for diverse stories and fill it with most likely inaccurate versions while blocking out people who actually live those cultures and will be able to write with an accuracy that outsiders struggle to depict. This is called “cultural appropriation” in common parlance, which is not entirely accurate, but that is for another time.
Preventing prejudice
Second, some types of magic are associated with negative stereotypes of people that you want to avoid. If you think of the goblins in Harry Potter, it’s hard not to see a negative caricature of the Jewish people, or at least it’s hard if you know what typical stereotypes are. Different types of people and creatures are often associated historically or presently with different real world groups, and unless you’re making a point by including that, you want to avoid it. You’ll also see this in the implicit ranking of races/species. Elves are better than orcs, after all, but those two are also associated with real human groups, resulting in a story that maintains that hierarchy being one that reinforces those stereotypes. (Vivian: It also depends a lot on the setting and the actual portrayal. A lot of these are old folklore creatures, and thus using them within their own context is different than if you do a modern-like context.)
This can be hard to spot a lot of times, and hard to change because it’s so embedded in our storytelling traditions. For example, I recently learned that a lot of traditional traits of vampires are also Jewish stereotypes. The name Lilith, which I tend to associate with vampires and who is according to Wikipedia the mother of vampires, is a Jewish figure held in high regard, and many Jewish people find that use of her offensive. While I knew of her role in the religion, I hadn’t realized it might be offensive in any way. However, I think this is unlikely to change because it’s such a common association, though I’ll be more aware in my own writing.
Education is important but also give yourself grace for making mistakes and just be willing to address any issues and improve in the future. Following traditions is good and all, but sometimes it’s better to break with the stories of old in order to forge a new path.
(Vivian: This is not to say one cannot use anything with these associations and old traditions, but rather one has to think on it to make certain one is not intentionally or unintentionally feeding into real life bigotry. A thought-out choice is always better than one made without thought.)
Summa Summarum
Overall, magic systems can be really fun to design and play with, and there are so many variations and combinations that you can do. As you play, just keep an eye out on the impact on your world. I have phoenixes and dragons who can fly across the continent of Tamarud relatively quickly (compared to cars or trains), but I don’t want overall communication and trade to pick up. To limit this, because you always want limitations, I made it so that only people who are immune to fire can ride the dragons. Immunity to fire, by the way, is a natural result of elemental magic that came up organically but fit into my existing structure perfectly. Having only a few people able to travel like this prevents the pace of the book from picking up too much, which I don’t want.
Always be thinking of how your magic changes things for your people and your world, and be prepared to adjust your ideas of magic based on what you want for your story. In the end, it’s your story to tell and your magic to design, but I hope by laying out the basics of creating a magic structure here, you’ll have better insight and know what to do and what to avoid. As you work on your magic systems, have fun, and if you have anything you consider unique or anything that you want to run by me or Vivian, leave it in the comments! I would love to see different ideas.
(Vivian: And now a message from our sponsor)
If my magic system, characters, or world sounds like something you’d be interested in, the first three books in my five book series are now available! Check out the entire series on Amazon for Kindle and paperback. Curious about how creation stories play into the world? I have a growing number of myths from Tamarudian lore at my website, annewinchell.com, where you can sign up to receive future updates! To see how those impact the world, read the series!
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Copyright ©️ 2023 Anne Winchell. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as definitions and sources of magic and ways to channel it are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific ideas such as the Empire of the Seven Continents, Tamarud, the character Tahirah, the character of the Emperor, the Shem, Krendi, and Tamarudian people and types of magic, and all other details relating to or coming from the Imperial Saga as well as all language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by Anne Winchell. Contact her for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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