I’ve written about this before, notably in these two articles…
…and Professor Beej’s article last time reinforced some of my thoughts on rules and their function. I think rules are important to creativity. You can’t think outside the box until you know where the box is. If nothing else, thinking about how things work leads to story hooks, like trying to figure out what happens when death breaks, as I did in my Death Unhinged article. I’m firmly in the camp of “magic should have rules”.
Still, I wanted to add a couple more links to articles that I’ve seen lately on magic and the rules behind its use in fiction.
First, there’s this ranty gem from N. K. Jemison, titled “But, but, but — WHY does magic have to make sense?“. I boil it down to “magic isn’t science, so why play by science’s logic and rules?” This is one school of thought, appealing to some, but not really all that interesting to me. I consider it to have a fatal flaw: it’s way too easy for authors to metamagic themselves out of writing errors by just handwaving away their solutions by saying “but, but, but, it’s MAGIC“. In this style of magic fiction, magic is a tool the author uses to write the story.
In the sort of fiction I prefer, magic is a tool that the characters use to solve their problems within the story. Brandon Sanderson has a great article up thisaway on this, ultimately boiling things down to his “first law” thusly:
Sanderson’s First Law of Magics: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.
This is a critical difference, I think, albeit perhaps a subtle one. Magic can and should let weird things happen in stories. That’s sort of the point of fiction, exploring “what if” questions that come with powers that we as readers don’t naturally have or situations we’d not normally encounter. Magic fuels a lot of those crazy circumstances. Still, for me, magic should feel like it’s part of the world it inhabits, even if it’s a weird part. The effects that magic has on a world need to flow from how magic works, or else the world risks being completely arbitrary, with no sense of consequence for actions. When cause and effect are decoupled, there is little learning that characters can do, and little that they can do to enact their agency and make choices.
If magic doesn’t lend itself to comprehension, it serves little purpose in the story but to impose the capricious will of a mad deity, whether that’s the author or something in-universe. There’s certainly a place for that in the body of fiction on the whole, but I find it makes for unsatisfying storytelling, since it’s often all too easy to see the author’s hand in events, the chicanery behind the curtain, as it were. That, or the story is so random that it doesn’t satisfy my desire to see characters grow instead of just live through a story, marking time by hitting the plot points.
One of the examples I often point to is, of all things, a comic book. I imagine myself as an author on Marvel’s X-Men comics, specifically, looking for things for Iceman or Magneto to do. Iceman is apparently an “Omega level” mutant, with incredible, nearly god-like powers. Magneto isn’t quite at that point, but his power to magnetically manipulate metals can have a lot of curious uses. I’ve seen authors have him slow the flow of blood to a character’s brain by controlling the metal in red blood cells, thereby making that character pass out. It’s a remarkably subtle use of magnetism, and a reminder that as ubiquitous as metals are, Magneto can and should be able to do a great many different things, all from one simple, core power. Iceman, on the other hand, far from his humble beginnings as a goofy guy who wore a self-made suit of snow and threw snowballs, has wide ranging powers that let him affect material at the subatomic level, which has an even wider range of applications. Authors exploring what he can do keep coming up with new tricks for his mutant powers, like being able to use a body of water as an extension of himself to travel far distances nearly instantaneously, or his “organic ice” form that can be broken and reformed at will, effectively making him immortal since his consciousness and control aren’t linked to any particular given assembly of material.
These characters function according to known scientific rules, yet wind up doing things that are more or less “magical” simply by being something that most mortals can’t do. The storytelling potential is still huge, but because of the built in limits, the characters are grounded in plausibility. That goes a long way to selling the “what if” in my mind, simply because I can actually place myself in the character’s position and try to see how they might solve problems. That empathy is a big part of why I like fictional characters, and is important for keeping me engaged in the story.
If, on the other hand, characters just function like pawns in an author’s storycrafting, going where they need to and doing what the story plot demands, I’m far less satisfied in the story. To be fair, magic isn’t the only way this is a problem. Stories that only function if the characters are complete idiots are also pretty annoying. Still, if magic is the glue that keeps characters working like good little cogs in a story, they come across less as characters, and more like, well… tools. This isn’t always going to be the case when magic is capricious and/or arbitrary, but it’s far easier for an author with rule-free magic to just pull what they need from their bag of tricks, plausible or no. This “Deux ex Machina” solution to narrative problems is generally unsatisfying, denying characters the chance to carry the day because of their choices, determination or other assorted heroic stuff.
Case study: the backlash against the ending of Mass Effect 3, where Stuff Just Happened (that link is a really great video review, by the way) in the narrative at the last minute to make the prebaked Dramatic endings work. Yeah, it’s not just magic that has this problem.
This all underlines the core problem I have with rule-free magic. It’s a useful tool for authors to wiggle out of awkward writing, a cheap solution to a situation that doesn’t make sense. The narrative becomes less about the characters and the world, more about how things work out to where the author wants them to be. That sort of story can work, sure, it’s just not the sort of story that I like all that much. Naturally, this means I have to be careful to keep my fiction writing from slipping into territory where I’m using characters as tools, not letting characters use the tools within their world. This shouldn’t be too hard, as seeing how characters work in a world is fun both when writing and reading… but still, though I’m ultimately in control of my own fictional worlds, I want to let characters exercise their agency as much as possible, and for consequences to flow logically from their choices. I know, anthropomorphising them that way is kind of silly, but, well, that’s what I do when I get creative. I suspect other authors do as well.
Speaking of other authors, though, this fellow thinks that rules are useful, too: Erik Robert Nelson’s Does Magic Need Rules? (spoiler: he answers in the affirmative)
Thusly and thenceforthly, for those characters to have agency, there need to be clear choices to be made and consequences for those choices. This requires rules for comprehension for how the choices and the consequences correlate. Meaningful choices cannot be made in completely capricious settings with no comprehensional cohesion. As we see with language itself, rules facilitate understanding. That doesn’t mean rules can’t be broken, but if there are no rules and Stuff Just Happens, figgledy barglesnipe verbiage into# abnarwt bthppp!
Tish Tosh Tesh 
The way magic is used in fiction comes all down to genre; I grew up with D&D based fantasy books, so I was used to clear rulesets for magic, things like skill levels and limited resources. this is typically present in sword&sorcery or high fantasy and works perfectly for that type of setting – the kind of removed, immersive fantasy experience where we’re presented with a complete, alternative world.
Later I moved on to authors like Gaiman and my world went completely upside down, I was dazzled and in love with the anarchy, the missing rules, the cross-genre writing he does so well that is somewhere between fantasy/scifi/fairytale/mythology/macabre and the typical mystery ghost story. I love how things are left to the imagination, that they simply ‘are’ instead of being explained. it gives you that sense of unpredictability, of not knowing what on earth could happen next. Gaiman has marked a turning point in my fantasy curriculum up to that point and in my personal writing style. the fantasy feels far less removed in this type of writing which makes it feel more real and scary.
Interestingly enough, I’ve lately had a hard look at George Martin’s SoiF again in this context – mostly because the popular critics annoyed the hell out of me by frequently calling the series “the only worthy fantasy fiction beside Tolkien” and all the other, flavor-of-the-month-fantasy-reader rubbish by people who have never read fantasy before and won’t read any after (unless a movie comes out). I cannot begin to say how much I hate pretentious, condescending fantasy-tourists……if “good fantasy” is supposed to be centuries of genealogy and other stuff nobody remembers later (who remembers even half of the Silmarillion’s after one month?), all the heavy clutter Martin wraps his story in, count me out! the good parts of SoiF are where we get close to the characters but those are constantly disrupted.
anyway, I digress – the whole thing made me end up at this interesting article: http://reviewsindepth.com/2011/08/a-song-of-ice-and-fire-by-george-r-r-martin/
see the chapter on “Magic and Fantasy” there where the author makes some very interesting observations on the whole “literary fiction” genre that Martin is obviously aspiring to. I found particularly interesting:
“The more sophisticated brands of fantasy writing will apply a much more complex set of rules over the use of magic.” VS “The interesting thing about Martin’s use of magic in ASIF is that it strkes me as being much closer to the kind of magic you find in literary fiction as opposed to that found in standard fantasy stories” etc.
the important message for me however lies already in the first paragraph: “the value of literary sophistication is debatable anyway.” and what was linked there (small surprise!). I can only echo: “Good writing? Of course. Story? Why else bother writing, or reading?”
Indeed, whether or not there’s a ruleset for magic, it has to serve the story first and foremost, and it usually does that best by serving the characters well.
Chaotic magic can make for some very interesting character moments, but they tend to be reactive, while learnable, rule-based magic lends itself well to proactive, predictive character actions as well as letting the reader learn along with the characters. There’s something to be said for keeping characters and readers on their toes and even unsettled, but for me, the best fiction is welcoming, not offputting.
Also, if I might invoke Tolkien again, it seems to me that his wizards had rules (Gandalf was ‘promoted’ after all, which suggests an order to the Wizardly ways, if not even an Order of the Wizardly Brotherhood or something), they just weren’t laid out in a FAQ. Maybe they were known to Tolkien in his encyclopedic inner knowledge of Middle Earth, maybe not, but he at least gave a sense that Wizards operated according to some sort of order and procedure. Even that faint sheen of procedure goes a long way to suggesting that one, Gandalf was in control, and two, even though we may not understand everything, someone somewhere does, and that alone can be a reassuring thing… at least, if that someone is an ally. (Which, of course, can be a variable.)
I find that while Gaiman’s work is full of pleasant surprises, the worlds are more real because there seems to be an underlying order to the fantasy, even if the “rulebook” is not part of the story.
In the case of LOTR—and I am always vaguely surprised that this doesn’t come up in the discussion—Galdalf and the other wizards (and Sauron, actually) are agents of the demigods identified at the beginning of the Silmarillion. They are more like the angels of the Old Testament than fantastical magic-users. So there is is an underlying order to the “magic” in LOTR, but it is more like the miracles of Moses than the magic of, say, Warcraft.
Hm. Some interesting discussion on here. 🙂
I am of two minds on this. On one hand, I like mysterious, chaotic magic, where things just seems to “happen” like Syl’s example with Gaiman’s stories.
On the other hand doing a good story with that kind of magic is extremely hard and it can easily fall in the traps of “Well, the protagonists got out of this impossible situation because of magic!”. So for the most part I do prefer that magic do follow some limitations. The “why’s” doesn’t even need to be explained in details. Just that they are there. For example, perhaps magic can only be used during the night. Or perhaps they need some specific type of item to cast spells. The important thing is they are there to enhance the story and make it so that the protagonists can’t simply wriggle they fingers to easily get out of any situation. Otherwise the story just seems pointless as there isn’t any reason to care about the characters.
Rowan, I still haven’t read the Silmarillion. I own it, but haven’t read it. I’m such a terrible slacker.
Rakuno, I like chaotic magic if it’s used, well, chaotically, rather than as a license to just move things along according to the Power of Plot. So yeah, I agree; if magic is a Get Out Of Trouble Free card, it undermines the story.
I think I prefer supernatural magic that is not fully explained. I really enjoyed Sanderson’s mist born saga but the whole system of metal powers was too well defined for my tastes. When a system of magic is that well described it becomes more science than magic. This is brought to extreme lengths in video games where magic is fully proceduralised and there is really no difference between casting a lightning bolt and shooting an arrow.
I accept the need for some bounds on magic. The author cannot just resolve the entire plot with an uber spell in the last chapter. Nevertheless there are ways of achieving this without completely removing the mystique of magic. In Wheel of time for example there is quite a well defined system of magic. It is never fully explained however and most importantly there are no hard limits put on what it can actually achieve. The limits in practise come from the limited ability and knowledge of the humans who try to channel it.
I feel magic in a fantasy story has to have some rules, or rather, some limitations. It’s hard to create drama without there being some sort of challenge for the protagonists, and if they can apparently do anything they like by ‘magic’ then it becomes very hard to challenge them. Once magic has some limitations then there can be a challenge either because magic can’t be used in this instance or because the challenge lies in overcoming the limitation.
On the other hand, I don’t believe an author necessarily has to lay the rules out in black and white either – and especially not in the sort of tiresome info-dump to a new apprentice that a lot of not very good fantasy writers use 🙂 As long as the reader has a definite sense that there are rules, and the author understands them and is sticking by them, you can have the necessary suspension of disbelief. As soon as the reader knows or suspects that the author is changing the rules on the spot to write himself out of a hole, the game is up.
Neil Gaiman’s work is a good example. Magic in his stories tends to be chaotic, mythical, fairytale-ish rather than the sort of alt.physics other authors go into detail on. The limitation is often as nebulous as “magic has a price” – which is an idea I’ve always liked. You can mess with the universe using magic, but the more you mess with it, the more the universe messes with YOU. The three-fold rule of Wicca on steroids 🙂
Tangentially relevant: there are those who will try to figure out your magic rules according to scientific principles anyway. Sometimes it’s good to stay ahead of these folk and think things through before they do.
Science of Allomancy
!!!!
Handwaving and saying it’s MAGICKZ!
…Deus ex magica?
XDDD sowweeee. I had to. Da debbilmagicks made me do eet.
@Syl
I think the difference between D&D type rulesets for magic, and Gaiman style anarchy is simply this.
…Gaiman style magic has *poetry*. Not everyone can do poetry. If you can’t do poetry, then, IMO, you’re better off with rulesets. Or if you like (lol), Gaiman’s style has ._. magic.
Now I’m trying to think of an author who combines both rulesets and poetry, and off the top of my head, I can’t. Wonder if anyone springs to mind for Teshness or fellow readernuggets?
Heh, nice phrase alteration. 🙂
I’m afraid I’m behind the Gaiman curve, though. Haven’t read his stuff yet.
That said, there’s definitely a difference between magic that is meant to be purely literary and magic that is or may be a game component. I’ll admit, the magic systems I’ve spent time thinking and writing about are meant for both, so they have to function within rulesets, even if there’s literary wiggle room.
I haz thought of one!
C.S. Friedman, particularly in her Coldfire trilogy, where there is a ruleset, but also depends on how much of something you’re willing to sacrifice, in terms of how much personal worth that something has for you.
C.J. Cherryh has some interesting hybrids as well, when you go into her ‘wish-fulfillment’ type magic. (All her elves, Rusalka series, Tristen series.) Applications in all 3 are slightly different, but you get an idea of the complex ways things can go wrong when *your* wishes tangle with *other* wishes and it makes a big mess. Come to think of it, it’s a little like how changing one bit of code to fix something can break things you didn’t even know were connected because for whatever reason, your code is spaghetti. XD
“I consider it to have a fatal flaw: it’s way too easy for authors to metamagic themselves out of writing errors by just handwaving away their solutions by saying “but, but, but, it’s MAGIC“. In this style of magic fiction, magic is a tool the author uses to write the story.”
Yes, but just because it’s POSSIBLE for an anything-goes form of magic to be used as a deus ex machina, it doesn’t mean that an author WILL use it in this way. When used correctly, it can add a real sense of unpredictability and danger to a story: of people messing with forces beyond their understanding and control.
This ‘fatal flaw’ has more to do with the author in question than the plot device itself.
Oh, yes, it’s true that such nonsense use of it isn’t inevitable. It’s just easier.