Magic as a mysterious element: Ideas on how to create this

[Chessie]

Hello! I would love some feedback/ideas on this world I am creating (pretty please).

The world: Set in the boreal forests of a northern land (more specifically, a salt water marsh area), my protagonist is an alchemist. Think Swiss village with Northern Lights.

The magic: I would like this world to be a place where magic isn't labeled as magic. I want this to be a wondrous, mysterious world whose inhabitants are all able to tap into the source of magic, but its just recognized as "something that goes on here". I'm still marinating on how to do that, so I'm here hoping someone will have good insights as to how this can be portrayed/written into the story. For example, the protagonist's tonics have potent healing (and killing) properties but no one calls her a magician. This is a craft anyone can learn, btw. Flames and frost will appear in the story but I want magic to seem elusive.

Rather, I want the whole world to seem magical. Ideas, anyone? They would be much appreciated, thank you in advance!

 

[advait98]

Well, off the top of my head, if you want the world to seem nonchalantly magical, then you have to write nonchalantly. Show it as a part of everyday life. Show the miracles as they happen, and no-one giving a fig about it.

Write it as you would write a normal medieval day. Going to the healer who can cure cancer and leprosy? Sure, we have bigger problems than that. Going to the butcher for a pound of dragon meat? Sure, that's everyday business around here. So, basically, what you want is the reader to see the world as magical, and the characters to not. There has to be a genuine etherealness and splendour around the world, otherwise the attempt would look cheap, not to mention annoying.

So, once again, write it as you would a normal world, letting the reader close in on these wonders, while just ploughing on ahead with the story. IMO, you should maintain some amount of mystique or mystery around the world, so it's not overly aloof.

I hope it helped, and what I said is not a rehash of your words and your thoughts. And take everything here and below with a grain of salt.

 

[Feo Takahari]

You seem to want two directly opposed things. Magic as elusive should be rare and hard to grasp, and magic as accepted should be a part of daily life. Unless you're Insane Clown Posse, it's hard to find mystery and wonder in the everyday.

Edit: Profanity filters really shouldn't apply to URLs.

 

[Chessie]

^^ You're right, Feo, thanks for pointing that out. I need to be more clear/specific on that. I want a world where magic is mysterious and elusive but where anyone can train to do it...I'm still marinating on all those things. Advait98, thanks for the suggestions, they were very helpful. The magic in my world isn't going to be solving huge problems. Its something that is known to exist yet there is little known about it. There just aren't many resources on the internet, etc that don't have you come up with this elaborate system for magic. I don't want that in my story.

 

[Alexandra]

I want a world where magic is mysterious and elusive but where anyone can train to do it...

Mysterious and elusive magic that anyone can train in... that's a contradiction.

 

[Chessie]

Hmm...true. Maybe I should give an example: the protagonist is an alchemist/ herbalist that also knows a bit of magic. She learned this from her father in a now near extinct lineage of Shamans. Wizards are known to exist but they are a rarity. She comes into contact with one of these wizards via the healing powers her tonics have.

So pretty much magic does exist in this world but its a dying craft in a way. I want it to be part of the story but not be cheesy and overused. Thanks for the thoughts.

 

[skip.knox]

Well, the magic isn't going to be labeled as magic unless you say so. You've got the label gun.

You can use words like wisdom, craft, knowledge, sight to describe something, but if it's a potion that kills, that's just poison, right? Ingesting it, smelling it, those are all ordinary sensory things. Now, if it's a potion that kills when the MC pours it over a clay figure in the shape of her enemy, that's clearly magical. But you can get away with simply describing the action. If you need to refer to it multiple times, you could even make up a name.

Here's an idea from the take-it-or-leave-it bin: ordinary folk don't realize there's such a thing as magic. When they do magical things, they make up their own vocabulary for it, thinking that what they do is unique to them. Maybe each village has only one sort of person like this, or even rarer. It's only those old shamans/wizards who understand that there are general principles involved and know some of these things can be taught.

That would let your MC develop some truly quirky quirks, some powerful and some silly and maybe even some that don't even work but everyone believes they do.

 

[Chessie]

Hmm...so basically the "magic users" in the story have the advantage of knowing how these forces work vs practicing magic but not really knowing that's what is being used? I love that idea! Would you mind elaborating on it a bit more? I was also thinking of just describing the magic rather than labeling it as such, thank you for solidifying that!

 

[Yellow]

Building on skip.knox's idea, perhaps you could have regular people have one or two magic skills which depend on the region they are in. These skills are seen as natural, and although people don't really know how they work anymore, the practical aspects of the skills are passed down from one generation to another from a time when mages and shamans were more common, and so was this kind of knowledge. It might even be that people from village/region X believe it's impossible for them to use the skill used in village/region Y, and that these skills are used as cultural identifiers as well. That way they would all be using magic, but when a knowledgeable mage comes about who can use skills from both X and Y, you can still have characters gawk in amazement.

 

[ThinkerX]

I read a novel a long time ago. Part of it was set in a large city whose more respectable inhabitants regarded magic as absurd, and denounced those who sought out magicians as superstitious dolts. Yet, everyday at noon, all the water in the cities public fountains would turn to blood for a few minutes. The cities respectable inhabitants had somehow convinced themselves this was 'normal'.

Really weird things are all around us, but because they are all around us, we blind ourselves as to just how weird they really are.

 

[Firekeeper]

Magic can both common yet elusive. Look at music, it's a part of our everyday life and just about anyone can be trained to play a couple of chords on a piano. But true mastery takes a lifetime of dedication. Your magic could be the same type of thing: something everyone sees and has a tiny bit of knowledge in, yet it can also be taken to the next level by truly skilled people. The truly skilled can cast amazingly powerful spell that seem mysterious to regular people. Something like:

"He cast a healing spell like such I've never seen."

"You mean like the one you cast last year?"

"No, this was something more, the wound knit itself right before my eyes"

"A very powerful caster, huh?"

"Yes, this was unlike any I've ever seen. I know the theory behind it, but it was truly amazing to behold. It was more than just the spell too, the caster has obviously delved deeper into magic than most people"

 

[Chessie]

Ahh...everytime I check back there are more good ideas! Thank you! See, the plants in my story are enchanted and that's partly where the magic for my alchemist/herbalist protagonist comes in. Her tonics are that much stronger because she knows the right combinations of herbs to mix.

I'm going to soak in these ideas, they are so helpful!

 

[Firekeeper]

Ahh...everytime I check back there are more good ideas! Thank you! See, the plants in my story are enchanted and that's partly where the magic for my alchemist/herbalist protagonist comes in. Her tonics are that much stronger because she knows the right combinations of herbs to mix.

I'm going to soak in these ideas, they are so helpful!

I know the feeling. Already I've gained a lot of insight into my own writing and how I need to improve. Joining this site has helped me so much already, I don't know why I didn't join a fantasy writers' forum years ago!

Anyway, it could also be cool if she already has a good instinct for mixing herbs and stuff in the beginning, but you also have her develop the skill over time. She could start off as sort of a prodigy to begin with, but a bit untried. Let the reader watch her hone her natural abilities as her knowledge grows.

 

[Chessie]

I'm thinking of starting the novel with her already being pretty skilled. All the details of the plot/story/etc are still being fleshed out, but the readers will still have a chance to see her herbalist skills being used in a way that challenges her. Thanks again for the suggestions!

 

[Snowpoint]

Magic is more mysterious when it is occult, meaning few people have it. Part of magic is wonder and discovery. A setting where magic is common and reliable is just science. (one of the hard parts of writing Urban Fantasy for me is how magical modern technology really is. Science does everything wizards are supposed to do.)

The less the reader understands about the magic, the more mysterious it feels. Jonathan Strange is a great example because even with two magicians as protagonists the magic is never explained and continues be be mysterious. Even the two Magicians, the only two, are confused as to why it works. They are as much in the dark as anyone else.

Being mysterious is all about the execution. The way magic events happen, how they are described, the anticipation and build up to such events. History is also a strong element here. Think about the One Ring. We rarely see it do anything out of the ordinary, and when we do it just makes you invisible. However, knowing the history and origin of the Ring combined with the way the character react to the ring, We recognize the One Ring as an item of tremendous power that can wreck the world.