Chosing the right amount and detail of magic for a story

[Yora]

While revising the setting for a story I have in mind, I ended up drastically cutting down the magic. Both in the amount to which it is accessible to characters, and in the amount of technical details that define how it works.

A lot of words have been said and written about how to make a magic system work self-consistently and not become an arbitrary plot device that fixes things whenever convenient. But I am also curious about why people make the choices they make when it comes to defining how magic works, what it can do, and how much of it will be present in the story. People have been using everything from practically nothing to fully magical societies, and I suspect that perhaps more often than not, it really just comes down to the creators' personal tastes. But if you do approach it more technically and make a deliberate choice of how much magic is the best match to fit with the themes and also the plot of the work, what are the major factors that go into this decision?

 

[Malik]

My series is, among other things, a theoretical sandbox examining the role of superweapons in conflict escalation--international conflict analysis is what I do, professionally--so I needed to use the characters from Earth and their advantages (technological, educational, etc.) to imbalance things in order to set the ball rolling. (My books turned out to be the perfect place to play with my pet theories on conflict escalation, because intentionally introducing technological advantages into a real-life intractable conflict "just to see what happens" is a good way to end up testifying before Congress.)

However, to pull this off, I had to ensure that the magic in the world didn't already have the ability to destabilize anything. Specifically, it couldn't function as any sort of weapon that would give one side an advantage over the other. To this end, I developed strict limitations on the uses of magic; some of them innate to magic itself, some of them hammered out through the rigors of instruction, and some of them handed down by edict and enforced at swordpoint if necessary.

My sequel, coming out in September, is the beginning of the fantasy world hitting back at the characters by, among other things, bringing up a forbidden type of magic to counter their technological and educational advantages. This is where we see the fundamental vs. ethical limitations on magic coming to odds, and also the idea of technology as a form of magic in and of itself--which is not a new concept, but equivocating them as constructivist stressors is really fun. Meanwhile, the war ramps up and starts to spin out of control as the world struggles to adapt to the presence of the people from Earth, and they start to wonder if limiting magic was such a good idea after all . . .

 

[Yora]

My own reasoning was that I want characters to be dealing with forces and beings that are beyond their true understanding. To make the supernatural really magical and give it a mythic quality. For this effect magic needs to be poorly understood by characters and it also can not be a mundane part of life. It can't be a weapon that someone can just pull out and shot around. It needs to be something with unclear boundaries and effects that are subtle.

Because of this, I decided to not have any spells. Instead magic takes the form of rituals to communicate with spirits who then do their supernatural things out of sight in ways that make sense to them. Even a sorcerer only gets to see the results at some point in the future, but still just as blind to what's actually going on after a spirit accepted the order. Spirits can also see many things that mortals don't see, so consulting them makes it possible to get images of how they interpret what is currently going on and likely to happen in the future in distant places. An oracle can tell a likely future, but the usefulness of the information depends on how it is being used.
I make one notable exception, which is the inclusion of weak telepathic powers. It's the one kind of magical abilities that I find really cool that just doesn't work with the delay of going through a lengthy ritual.

 

[skip.knox]

So, it's like working with the government? <gdr>

I, too, like to have my characters not fully understand the forces with which they are working. For Altearth, there really is a set of rules, or principles (more like guidelines, really), but no one in the stories understand that. One set of people see magic as emanating from god, so it happens by way of a priesthood; other practitioners are hunted down and killed. Another set of people think it's the result of magical forces alive in the world, a kind of spirit magic, that one uses without ever commanding. Still others believe in hero magic--magic users are born, not made, and all the schools and such are nothing but a way for the power elite to control the gifted individuals. There are also those who believe there is magic, but it's not for them, and those who don't believe they are using magic but are only using natural skills. There are other systems in play as well.

I think of it as parallel to the way medieval people understood medicine or physics--incompletely, with surprising insights in places and surprising stupidity in others. This gives me much flexibility as an author.

 

[SergeiMeranov]

I tend to not write and/or create many worlds with a significant magical bent to them, but my general considerations fall into two categories:

1) What are the practical, real-world effects this would have on society? In other words, if there are people that exist that can throw fireballs from their hands then what does that mean for the world? Are they a dominant ruling class? If not, then why? I usually then start delineating rules for the system to comport with whatever role I imagine magic users occupy in my story/world/society.

2) What effect will it have (or do I want it to have) on my reader? Similar to skip.knox's systems, I prefer magic to be more of a mysterious force to both my reader and my characters. Gandalf, in my opinion, was much more interesting both because magic wasn't the solution to every problem and we never really knew what the extent of his powers were. Magic to me is most fun when it's a mystery like magic in the real world, so that's usually the feeling I pursue. But, setting that point aside, I think the other big question or hurdle is to make sure that people aren't left with questions as a result of your magic system. You don't want a reader going "Well, why didn't the wizard just teleport behind the bad guy and kill him? So I always try to address those sorts of "criticism" questions so that whatever my system is answers them.