The Aspects Of Magic From HP To Brandon Sanderson

[Abhorsen]

Hello all,

I'm new here so go easy on me! I joined after discovering a fascinating thread of Old Kingdom fans! Thought I was the only one!

Anyway, I wanted to hear what people thoughts were on how magic, or, the difficulty of magic, is presented in popular series. HP for example, are the biggest and most influential writings on magic systems known the whole world over and yet, it is presented as so simplistic and easy to cast that being a Mudblood almost seems a non-problem.

Then of course you get Brandon Sanderson's 'Stormlight Archives' series, with numerous in-depth, almost incalculable magical by-laws and rules, It's almost enough to make your head spin!

So what I was wondering is, those of you with a heavier focus on magic over sword/shield combat, what do you believe makes a fair and detailed magic system? Is it the intake of ingredients into the body to fuel the chaos? Or is it a connection to some wise old stones? What tickles your magical know-how?

Thank you for glossing over this long read Cannot wait to hear your responses!

Thanks,

- Abhorsen

 

[Chasejxyz]

I'm gonna jump in before someone inevitably says it - honestly, do not watch the Brandon Sanderson video series, especially about "hard" and "soft" magic. I've found it does more harm than good because it gets people believing that you HAVE to make your magic system one or the other, that you HAVE to actually draw out all these runes and do the math as to how powerful your spells are and create these complex systems. Unless you're making a video game where numbers matter, like an MMO or a MOBA, literally none of that matters.

Here's the thing about storytelling: you can do ANYTHING, there are no rules. Do not let someone tell you what you can and can't do. But if you do choose to do something, then there has to be a good reason for it. The magic system in HP is "easy" because it is a book for little children. To them, magic is waving a wand and saying some words (bippity boppity boo!). Also, the rules of magic and how it works is not the point of the story. The point of the story is this kid going to magic school, which is very cool, and learning about this world and meeting all these cool characters and creatures. Harry never sits in a lecture that's explaining how gravitons make wingardium leviosa work because, diegetically, that would never happen, and also that would be incredibly boring to read.

A magic system needs to serve your story. Avatar has specific rules and limits and those things have shaped the cultures of the world. The Fire Nation invades the Northern Water Tribe to kill a spirit that would greatly weaken all water benders, as water is strong against fire. That spirit could be any sort of mcguffin, but in this story, it fits into the themes of the mystical themes of the magic system as well as the cultural identities tied to bending.

My magic system has a lot of science behind it, different kinds are tied into different fundamental forces of physics or elementary particles. I have this giant stupid diagram as to how one "color" turns into another as it goes through different cycles passing through animals, plants and stellar bodies. But all you're going to see of this in the text is "okay he hasn't breathed for awhile so his body isn't generating more magic, so he needs to breathe now." Which is in reference to the ATP cycle and anaerobic respiration...but you don't need to know that. Needing to breathe to live is pretty common sense, one would assume if you're alive your body is generating magic. I, in no way, needed to come up with all of the things that I did to write that. And the reader is never going to see 99% of the work I put into it. I probably could have spent my time better doing other things! So in my other 2 speculative projects the magic is "well its not, it's just Ye Olde Alchemy beliefs but it's 100% real" and "lol I dunno, it just is" because my focus is on the characters and plot, not the rules of magic, since I'm writing stories, not supplemental materials for DnD.

So when I see people here coming up with 50 different types of energies and all these possible combinations because they HAVE to make a hard magic system just like Brandon Sanderson BUT it needs to be 100% original or else Brando Sando will personally break into their house and move all their furniture 1 inch to the left as revenge...all I can think of is "why?" What is this accomplishing?" You are a writer, write. As you write you will find out what parts of your magic system you need to figure out, and you can do that then. If you're outlining the story, the same thing will happen, too, or during the brainstorming stage.

 

[Abhorsen]

Well thank you, I never expected such a passionate response to a simple query! And I agree, wholeheartedly, that such systems need not be complicated.

Magic is simply...Magic. A science humans have yet to understand.

Complication in storytelling is certainly a choice dependent on who the writer is and how they tell their stories, regardless of the norm. Although "Brando Sando" (XD) created some of the most recognised forms of magic systems that does not mean in any way that magic, in-and-of-itself, should be complicated.

Writing is freedom, it is art, and it is expression. It allows us to tell the world that we existed and leave a reminder of that fact. So embrace it, speak it with ink and with blood, for it is you. It is your truth, told from the perspective of one of a million world's.

And we want to hear it.

 

[pmmg]

I think the biggest rule of thumb to use with magic is dont break your own rules. If you set up the story such that the use of magic requires something, such as earth elements to use earth magic, then dont have people using earth magic without them. --Unless of course, that is where the plot is going, and the surprise is it can.

Otherwise, use whatever magic fits the story.

In my own current WIP world, I tend to use the consumption of mana, and ley lines as a lose guide.

 

[Mad Swede]

I think I'd be rude and ask you what the focus of your story is: the setting and it's mechanics, or the characters? Put another way, are you writing "hard" fantasy or "soft" fantasy? To me, Brandon Sanderson writes "hard" fantasy in the same way that many SF writers produce "hard" SF. There's a focus on detailed technical rules and mechanisms. And it tends to come with hugely detailed settings, often at the expense of characterisation. "Soft" fantasy writers have more of a focus on characters and their interactions, rather like the Harry Potter books. There's less focus on the details of the setting and how it works.

For me as a writer, the setting should only be as detailed as it needs to be for the story, the focus is on the characters. You could say that I write "soft" fantasy. There is magic in my setting, but the mechanics of it are never described. They don't need to be, all I as the author need to do is ensure that I am consistent about how and when magic is used. It isn't an easy way out for when I've written myself into a corner, there has to be a reason for the use of magic and it has to be consistent with the story. It also can't suspend belief too much. The same is true of other things, like the use of weapons or political considerations.

To take an example. Suppose some mage casts a fireball. If we think things through. A person hit by the fireball would get burns on any exposed skin, but wet or thick clothes (especially leather) might protect them as they wouldn't immediately ignite. A fireball would have no effect on stonework, nor on thick green wood - because the ball of fire won't be hot enough for long enough to ignite green wood. Dry wood? Maybe, depends on how dry and thick the wood is. Leaves and paper, spilt lamp oil? That'll work, it should take light almost immediately. And so you then begin to see how a fireball could be used as a weapon or as a tool to light a fire. And you also see the limitations. The mechanics don't need to be any more detailed than that, you just have to be consistent.

 

[Queshire]

Ahaha, well everybody else has more or less summed up my thoughts on hard vs soft magic systems so I'm going to focus more on specific examples.

I'm not sure if the Stands from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure would be considered hard magic bu everybody, but I do think it demonstrates one area where hard magic would shine. Conflict in that series rarely comes down to who can punch the hardest or who is most skilled. Instead it challenges the protagonist's problem solving ability. They are generally limited to the tool provided by their environment, what's on them and the distinct abilities of their own Stand in order to try to identify and effectively solve the distinct abilities of the antagonist's Stand. When the protagonists manage to beat their antagonists to a pulp or get a sudden power up it's generally as a reward for solving the problem of the opponent rather than the thing that allows them to overcome the opponent in its own right.

Hard magic systems where you can know the shape of all the pieces in play benefit such puzzle based conflict resolution. Being able to achieve the same through sheer stubbornness would weaken the impact as would solving it by pulling out a new gadget or spell from seemingly nowhere.

As for soft magic I say that the studio ghibli films are key. Magic there serves to add to the atmosphere or to kick off the plot. Even when its involved in resolving the plot that's generally just a reward for whatever character development the protagonist has gone through as an inversion of the example from Jojo.

Many series fall in between. With things like BLEACH, One Piece, Naruto or even Dragonball it's generally hard enough that the audience knows what the characters can do at any one time. There's often an implication of some system behind the abilities, but it remains soft enough to introduce new power ups, abilities or have things be affected by good ol' heroic willpower.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I actually think Brandon Sanderson's lecture on world building and his essays on his "laws" of magic are great as an introduction. The problem with them is that people only listen to half of what he's saying. He specifically mentions that this is just his way of talking about it and that you don't need to do it his way. He's giving you tools you can use. And they are good tools. They are not the only ones, but that goes for everything in writing. There are always multiple ways of doing something.

Same with his laws on magic. The first one for instance doesn't say anything about hard or soft magic. All it says is that if at the climax of a novel you want to solve a problem using magic then the reader should probably know this is possible with the magic (or be able to deduce that it is possible), at least if the solution is about said magic. Harry Potter actually does this very well (with a pretty soft magic system). In HP you will see the students learn spells A, B and C during the year, then at the climax they use spells A, B and C in an interesting way to win.

I actually disagree that Harry Potter has the biggest and most influential magic system in fantasy. I would say it is anything but that. It's a generic "wave a wand and say some fake-latin" magic systems. There were plenty of those before HP and it hasn't changed anything about magic systems. It's not original or inventive or cohesive. If anything, consistency of the magic system breaks between books. Stuff which would have been very useful in either earlier or later books is simply forgotten about. What it does bring is being very much tied into the world, which is something HP does really well. The whole world is magical. That of course doesn't matter, since (as Chasejxyz mentions) HP isn't about the magic system.

One interesting idea about developing magic systems is that you should look at it from different perspectives. For instance, what can seem like a very fluffy, soft magic system from the point of view of one character can be very hard from the POV of another. Take Sauron in the Lord of the Rings. As reader we have no idea what he can do. We just know that it is bad. However, I'm pretty sure Sauron himself knows his powers.

Same with the difference between a reader and a writer. As a writer you can know all the rules and laws of your magic system, but if the reader doesn't know them then that will feel as a very soft magic system. Which can be totally fine of course, if that is the effect you're trying to achieve.

As for what makes a magic system work: for me it's mainly that it is part of the world and it achieves the goal an author is trying to achieve. For instance, we don't refer to someone creating some chemical as "he's doing science". In the same way in a world where magic is everywhere a character wouldn't talk about "doing magic". They would either just do it like we just walk or breath or he would be doing something specific, like alchemy. If you look at HP, they never talk about simply doing magic. It's always potions or magical creatures or spells or whatever.

And as for the goal of the author. If your goal is to have a magical, fantastical world where everything is possible and you want to inspire wonder in your reader, then don't make a scientific hard magic system.