Writing rules of magic
Aug. 15th, 2009 05:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethRecently read C J Cherryh Rusalka, which had interesting rules for magic. Basically: It all works. Everything a magician does will work. Wish for something, want something enough, and it will happen.
But it will happen in its own time, in its own way, along lines of possibility you cannot track.
So the magician doesn't have absolute power. They can get one element of what they want - say make someone fall in a mud puddle - but the knock on consequences of that they cannot predict - he goes to get cleaned up at a really inconvenient moment.
But without the props, rituals, actions surrounding magic, all they have to do is want something enough. They can control the world, only if they can control their desires.
And without knowing the when of things, they set things in motion and have to live with the consequences. And know they did that.
Massive power, some control, absolute responsibility.
I didn't especially like the story, but the system of magic? Lots of interesting to play with. Highlights the 'be careful what you wish for' without any of the lawyering with words. Just hook up wanting to reality, but with only narrow control of results.
There's a whole section in Orson Scott Card's How to write science fiction and fantasy about the rules of magic. Like the rules of space travel, they shape the world. And there's ways of writing where you just be all handwavey about the whole thing, where you travel at the speed of the plot and pull of magic as and when convenient, but that gets kind of tired. You can call it concentrating on character or whatever, but what it does is make nothing make sense, including character reactions, because there's no predictable connections, no cause and effect. Boring. If instead you remember use of magic is a new technology, a new natural law, or to be precise a new-to-the-reader natural law that has shaped the world of the story since it began... like nuts and bolts SF you can follow through on the consequences of an idea. So say magic is powered by blood, or say you trade lifetime for results, say you can only give of yourself, or only of others... what does that do? Does it skew the world so it's easier or harder to be good people? What kind of choices does it allow? What does it highlight?
And then of course everything plays on a theme level, says something about choices, power, people, what it means to be human. So whatever rules of magic you set up you've got the people who get the good stuff, get story rewards, get the story calling them the good people, and you look back on the choices they made and see what the story seems to approve of. Can get complicated.
There's a line in one of the theory books I been reading that says SF stories are a cost-benefit calculation on science, on rationality and logic and technology and efficiency and industry and all the rest. All stories are a cost-benefit calculation on whatever their central issue is. What does it cost, who does it benefit, and do you really want to be saying that?
... I want to ask that of a lot of writers really. Do they really want to be saying that? And do they really want to live in the world that statement would shape?
And that's magic. Words to world, direct. And making you think about it.
But it will happen in its own time, in its own way, along lines of possibility you cannot track.
So the magician doesn't have absolute power. They can get one element of what they want - say make someone fall in a mud puddle - but the knock on consequences of that they cannot predict - he goes to get cleaned up at a really inconvenient moment.
But without the props, rituals, actions surrounding magic, all they have to do is want something enough. They can control the world, only if they can control their desires.
And without knowing the when of things, they set things in motion and have to live with the consequences. And know they did that.
Massive power, some control, absolute responsibility.
I didn't especially like the story, but the system of magic? Lots of interesting to play with. Highlights the 'be careful what you wish for' without any of the lawyering with words. Just hook up wanting to reality, but with only narrow control of results.
There's a whole section in Orson Scott Card's How to write science fiction and fantasy about the rules of magic. Like the rules of space travel, they shape the world. And there's ways of writing where you just be all handwavey about the whole thing, where you travel at the speed of the plot and pull of magic as and when convenient, but that gets kind of tired. You can call it concentrating on character or whatever, but what it does is make nothing make sense, including character reactions, because there's no predictable connections, no cause and effect. Boring. If instead you remember use of magic is a new technology, a new natural law, or to be precise a new-to-the-reader natural law that has shaped the world of the story since it began... like nuts and bolts SF you can follow through on the consequences of an idea. So say magic is powered by blood, or say you trade lifetime for results, say you can only give of yourself, or only of others... what does that do? Does it skew the world so it's easier or harder to be good people? What kind of choices does it allow? What does it highlight?
And then of course everything plays on a theme level, says something about choices, power, people, what it means to be human. So whatever rules of magic you set up you've got the people who get the good stuff, get story rewards, get the story calling them the good people, and you look back on the choices they made and see what the story seems to approve of. Can get complicated.
There's a line in one of the theory books I been reading that says SF stories are a cost-benefit calculation on science, on rationality and logic and technology and efficiency and industry and all the rest. All stories are a cost-benefit calculation on whatever their central issue is. What does it cost, who does it benefit, and do you really want to be saying that?
... I want to ask that of a lot of writers really. Do they really want to be saying that? And do they really want to live in the world that statement would shape?
And that's magic. Words to world, direct. And making you think about it.