On Writing and Worldbuilding: Volume I by Timothy Hickson

Author:Timothy Hickson [Hickson, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf, mobi
Tags: writing, worldbuilding, Fantasy
Publisher: HFM
Published: 2019-05-30T05:00:00+00:00

Not controlling magic directly

One way is to write from the perspective of a character who has magic, but they do not control it directly. This trope can be seen all over the place in any King Arthur story where Arthur has the ‘royal magic’ that allows him to pull the sword out of the stone, or with Rincewind in Terry Pratchett’s The Light Fantastic, who has a spell trapped inside his mind that he cannot wield. In G.R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, Daenerys is born with Valyrian magic, which we know has a lot to do with fire and blood but not much more than that. It is Valyrian magic that allows only Daenerys to bond with dragons and survive standing in a burning funeral pyre at the end of the first book19F20, but she has no direct control over these powers she is blessed with. These are passive abilities, and these are moments of soft magic. These magical events in her story give us little information as to the limits, weaknesses, or costs of Valyrian magic.

While Dany is magical, this magic is not an ability she controls. Martin does not break Sanderson’s First Law because it is primarily used to make her story more interesting rather than resolve any conflicts in her story. It allows dragons to be logically brought into the story, but it does not magically resolve her problem of Drogon preying on children in Essos.20F21

Giving characters little control over their passive magic allows you to keep tension in the narrative because they still have to rely on their intelligence, ingenuity, and skill to solve problems, especially if said magic is unpredictable. In other words, it is not the hero’s magical ability to wield the sword of destiny no one else can that allows them to defeat your totally-not-generic dark lord. It is that the hero worked to learn the dark lord’s weakness and how to wield the sword. Soft magic can facilitate the resolution of your conflict, but not resolve it—that would comes across as A WIZARD DID IT.

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