Thoughts on Magic

Magic is not a topic I have a lot to do with in my regular books. While the “Loki Files” series (the second half of which will be out at the end of February) does have some magic in it (because how can you have a story about Loki without magic?), my other regular series are centred if not in reality, then at least in a universe with no magic. Steven would have my hide, if I introduced magic to any series he’s in, that much is for sure…

Yet, I have written stories with magic in them. I have written fan fiction both for Brother Bones (where the main character is a zombie avenger) and Artemis Fowl (which is based around Artemis and his encounters with the fairies). I have tangled with magic in the past and it was fun - to a certain degree. Magic also always comes with its own problems, though.

If you write high fantasy, you can avoid a lot of trouble, because you can work your world as you want and it can be perfectly suited for a lot of magic users. Funny fantasy follows similar rules. The moment you step into urban fantasy, though, you have the principle of the Masquerade (yup, always with a capital ‘M’).

Masquerade means nothing more or less than ‘magic is hidden from the eyes of the regular human.’ The reason for this is (for the writer) that otherwise a lot of history would have to be rewritten and magic and technology would be somewhere else than they are in our world. If you want to look at a proper alternate reality where magic exists, I can recommend Randall Garret’s “Lord Darcy” stories and the two later novels “A Study in Sorcery” and “Ten Little Wizards” by Michael Kurland (which also use Lord Darcy). However, in a regular urban fantasy, regular humans live their lives without knowing that magic exists, vampires are ruling the world, and the fae make fun of everyone they can get a hold of. The pure level of magic which must be used to keep the Masquerade up is mind-blowing. Harry Potter is an example of this (since the whole ‘wizards must hide from muggles to survive’ thing is unrealistic to the extreme). Why would wizards, who find new ones among muggles (because accidental new bloodlines happen), try to keep completely apart from them? How come that the muggle-born wizards and witches don’t even try to introduce some of their muggle technology or knowledge to the wizarding world? It all falls apart as soon as you think too much about it and apply some form of logic or common sense. And, yes, I know that the Harry Potter novels are for kids. In my book, though, ‘it’s for kids’ is no excuse for bad writing.

A lot of trouble while writing magic doesn’t even come from the setting, though. No matter whether you have high fantasy, funny fantasy, or urban fantasy (or whatever other sub-genre of fantasy you can think of), there’s always one big problem with magic: the Deus Ex Machina problem.

‘Deus Ex Machina,’ apart from being an inspiration for the title of an RPG series, means ‘the god out of the machine’ and stands for a trick some writers pull off when they have written themselves into a corner. They pull a MacGuffin or another trick out of thin air and use it to save their characters or their plot. Goethe does so when he has Gretchen save Faust (undeserved) at the end of Faust II. And that guy spent 60 years overall plotting his Faust…

If magic is unrestricted and available to the main characters, there’s no reason whatsoever to write anything about their troubles, because they can all be solved with magic. MacGuffin missing? Snap your fingers, say a spell, and there it is. No way of travelling through half of the kingdom in time? Snap your fingers, say a spell, and teleport where you need to be. You get the drift, I’m sure.

Therefore, magic needs to be limited in some way and the writer needs an explanation for why this is the case. Perhaps it takes a toll on the wielder. Perhaps there’s only few people overall who can use it (and the main characters are not among them). Perhaps the MacGuffin is wrapped in an anti-magic field. It depends on the setting, of course. In an urban fantasy story, a main character may risk severe punishment for using magic where the uninitiated might see it. Perhaps magic comes from either gods or demons and the use is restricted by the being which gave it to a character. So the disciple of a nature goddess can’t use fireballs or the disciple of a lust demon can’t use healing magic. But if the main character has magic, why do they never use it? So make them people who can’t wield it? Perhaps even in a world where everyone uses it? That can be interesting, but demands a lot of explanation in the other direction.

Limiting magic can be done, but it needs to be introduced early enough. If your main character has used magic throughout the story so far and suddenly says ‘I can’t do this,’ you’d better have a very good explanation at hand. The alternative would be not to have humans use magic at all. If magic is only in the hands of other beings - be they fae or gods or other spirits of the world -, then the main characters need to find one of those beings and barter with it for help to solve their problem, which makes a good plot.

There is clearly a good reason why I don’t use a lot of magic (unless Loki is involved, but he isn’t human). I prefer not having to do that much world-building at one point - I rather like for my world to develop as I write about it. So if you want magic, keep in mind that it won’t really work that well if you don’t put some limits on it.