Speaker 1: Magic. It is one of the most exciting and distinctive elements of many fantasy novels. But the fantasy genre has been around for a long time now and we fantasy fans have been treated to a long-running buffet of amazing and memorable fantasy magic systems. So how do you develop a unique and original and exciting magic system for your stories without trying so hard to create something distinctive that it kind of stops working as a functional magic system in the first place? Well that is exactly what we are going to dig into in this video because we're taking a look at five critical building blocks that you can use to design a magic system from scratch that is effective and compelling and serves your story well essentially as many times as you want. And in order to better illustrate each of these five building blocks we are going to create a brand new magic system together in this video from scratch to prove that it can be done and to give a little bit of better grounding of how each of these five elements can be thought about and applied coherently to create a complete magic system as you work through this process. And also just because it's a lot of fun. I'm Justin Fike. I have been studying the craft of storytelling for over 20 years now both through completing a master's in creative writing program at Oxford University as well as through writing and publishing seven of my own fantasy novels in my indie publishing career. Now before we dive into the specifics of the five tips we're going to cover in this video there is one decision that is important and you need to think about and make in light of what kind of magic system you're working to create and that is whether you are designing a hard or soft magic system. Those terms have been used for a while and were probably most popularized by Brandon Sanderson and a lot of his talk and discussion of the principles of creating a magic system because they really represent sort of two extreme ends of a spectrum where your magic system is going to fall and where other popular systems have fallen in the past. A hard magic system operates more like a science than anything else. You could almost express hard magic as a formula where the reader throughout the course of the story comes to understand what all goes in and when you put x and y in you definitely are always going to get a and b out again because there's a clearly understood set of rules and inputs to your magic system. On the other side of the spectrum we have a soft magic system which functions in a more abstract and less specifically defined sort of way. A soft magic system maintains a lot of the mystery and wonder of magic by avoiding getting too specific about exactly how the magic works or maybe where it even comes from. It's still present it's just not particularly carefully or thoroughly defined. Probably the most popular example of this is the way that Gandalf's magic in the Lord of the Rings series works where we see specific examples of him using or accessing it but it's never particularly thoroughly or carefully defined exactly how it works and exactly what it can do so then when we encounter new situations where he uses his magic it feels broadly consistent but also sometimes surprising and there's a lot of potential excitement that can be built out of that. So here at the beginning it's important for you to make a decision about how your magic system is going to be presented to your readers. Now I argue that regardless of whether you're creating a hard or a soft magic system you as the author still need to fully understand your magic system so especially if you know if you're wanting to make a soft magic system it's not that you can just go oh who cares it's a soft magic system I don't need to know how it works you still need to know how it works. The difference is that you don't expose all of its working parts to your readers as thoroughly as you do in a hard magic system. So now let's dive into building block number one which is our inputs. So inputs refers to the things that activate or fuel your magic. One way to think about magic in your story is that it is a set of ways that your characters can break the rules. Absent magic in a scene we all kind of have a set understanding of what is physically possible or not possible. Magic is the trump card that says except here this is now possible because magic gets involved which then means that magic kind of has a an on and off switch it's either on as in it's active in the moment of the scene or it's off and it's not active in the moment of the scene and the inputs of your system are the unique set of ways that your characters activate or access magic. Some common ways of doing this are through utilizing magic items like wands or amulets or previously enchanted objects that now have certain kinds of powers or abilities. Another pretty common one that comes up a lot is the basic idea of willpower or or magical power or aptitude that certain people wizards or sorcerers or whomever kind of just have the ability to work magic when they want to. But right from the beginning thinking about your inputs in a creative way opens up a lot of possibilities to have your magic system feel really unique and distinctive by requiring your characters to do interesting or unexpected things. In Brandon Sanderson's famous Mistborn series the Allomancy magic system requires its practitioners to ingest certain kinds of metals and then depending on their affinity and which type of metal they've ingested and how much of it they have physically in their bodies they're able to interact with the world in different magical ways. So spend some time thinking creatively about what the inputs of your magic system might look like. Maybe your characters need to interact with or ingest certain kinds of plants. Maybe your magic system inputs are tied to your character's emotions and they're only able to access certain types of magic when they are feeling certain kinds of emotions. Maybe the magic is tied to locations or times of day or times of year. There are any number of possible creative ways that the inputs of your magic system can operate and right from the beginning help you to set your system apart from things that readers have seen before. For our own example in this video I wanted to start with something a little more familiar to illustrate how small changes or creative approaches to each of these different building blocks can lead to generating something really interesting or different. So I thought we would work with the idea of an elemental magic system. It's certainly something common enough. The four elements of fire earth air and water have been utilized in many many different ways throughout many many different stories. So let's see if we can put our own unique spin on it. Whenever you begin building your magic system it's helpful to do some research or think about any potential analogs or points of comparison that your readers might already be familiar with. So of course the first thing that comes to my mind and probably many of yours as well when I think about an elemental magic system would be from Avatar The Last Airbender. So we want to work to distinguish our system from that one in whatever ways we can. As I was planning this video I hit on the idea of these four elements aren't just abstract ideas or sort of universal forces but are actually living semi-sentient thing that the world is populated by an innumerable number of elemental spirits that sort of exist in and around humans but are very different from them with everything from little sprites and elementals all the way up to giant monstrosities of elemental power and potentially destruction. So what if the input for our elemental magic system is that a person has to make the choice to consistently behave in accordance with the sort of paradigm or worldview and posture of a specific element for long enough that that element actually begins to be able to see them recognize them and start to treat them as first a friend and then eventually as kin or family and that once that attunement has happened as long as they maintain that posture through their consistent choices they can command and interact with their element in different ways. Now you can probably start to think already of some interesting implications for that kind of input to our magic system which we will keep exploring as we move through each of the following building blocks but for now I think that's a really strong place to start. And so now that we have our input defined we're ready to move on to the second building block of our magic system which is outputs. Once you've defined how your characters access magic it's also really important to be clear about what becomes possible once that magic has been accessed. What can your magic do once your characters are wielding or using it? Keep in mind that when you're defining your outputs the bigger the potential scope of your magic in some ways the more problems you create for yourself because the more your magic can do the harder it becomes to explain why they can't do that thing in this particular scene when you don't want them to for story reasons. This can be mitigated by some of the other building blocks which we'll get to in a moment but it is a helpful thing to keep in mind. So going back to our example once a practitioner has become some kind of elemental kin what are they able to do with that connection? I think one obvious output is that they're able to work with and manipulate their element in interesting ways in the scene and in addition to being able to manipulate or utilize their element in different ways I think it would be cool to also have our elemental wielders be able to manifest aspects or attributes of their element in their physical bodies. So maybe air kin can turn invisible or insubstantial to float and fly around. Maybe earth kin can harden their bodies or perhaps even turn them completely into rock or stone to become more durable or resilient which I think opens up some interesting possible use cases in our scenes. But with our inputs and outputs defined we're ready to get to the third critical building block of our magic system and that is its limitations. Limitations are a really critical aspect of a magic system because they create conflict and compelling character moments by making things more difficult or more costly. Again if magic is essentially a way to break the rules of your scenes you want to provide some guardrails to that to make sure that you have a clear reason why your characters can't just snap their fingers and say poof magic problem solved poof magic problem solved and you primarily do that through interesting and compelling limitations. Limitations might include things that your magic is just physically not capable of doing oh it can't bring people back from the dead or it can't be projected at a far distance or these different things that the magic can't do. But another version of a limitation is a cost associated with your magic. Maybe objects or reagents or items need to be consumed in order to fuel really powerful spells or magical effects. One common version of a cost associated with magic is some idea of like fatigue or a power cost that utilizing magic saps or drains the wielder in ways that eventually wear them out and then they kind of have to rest before they can use that magic again. That can be effective. My main critique though of that if that's your only limitation is that it's kind of cheap. It's really just a limitation of time that the magic is available without a more interesting type of cost associated with it. It can be one part of your magic system but it has been very frequently utilized before so I would encourage you even if you are going to utilize that as a thing which is fine that you also think of some other types of limitations or costs or parameters that you impose on your magic because the more of those that are in place the more the characters have to strive to find creative ways to apply the magic within its limitations in ways that will generally always enhance your story. So in our case we've already defined several I think very effective limitations to our system. One is that because the wielders are interacting with and in some ways convincing or persuading the elemental spirits which are the ones that are actually doing the magic so to speak. One limitation is the availability of those elemental spirits in the scene or situation that they're in which would limit the potential solutions they have available to solve whatever problem they are facing. Earth magic can do a whole lot of things but if the primary problem that the characters are facing in a scene is that they're lost in a desert and they need to find water to survive the earth isn't going to be that useful to you unless perhaps the earth kin practitioner gets creative and uses their affinity with all of the earth spirits swirling around to help them find where water happens to be hidden deep underneath the ground and then uses their magic to move the earth out of the way to help them and the other characters access it. But I think the dominant limitation that we have imposed in our magic system is the requirement to first attune to an element through behavior and then to maintain that attunement through ongoing consistent choices and behaviors. If one of the primary traits of the air element is a certain kind of free spiritedness then an air practitioner might be forced to allow another character to make their own decisions even if they knew for sure that those decisions were harmful to themselves or somebody else. But violating that character's complete freedom would start to violate their own attunement to their element in ways that might be so costly that they would choose to do things that they otherwise wouldn't. And that starts to open up really interesting story spaces because the limitations of our magic system create conflict and tension in the story and require our characters to grapple with hard choices and hard choices generally make for better stories. Which carries us right into the fourth primary building block of our magic system which is its opportunities. Once you've defined what your magic can't do or what it costs to access it, it is highly valuable for you to spend some time thinking about what kinds of story opportunities or creative applications are you going to be able to implement from this magic system. Now this is different from your magic system's outputs because your outputs really just defines like the the broader boundary lines what your magic is capable of what it can do. Opportunity starts to zero that in and allow you to think about the way your magic system is going to be experienced by your readers in the story that you are telling. This is a perfect opportunity to start thinking ahead of time about some interesting scenes or types of situations or moments which would really show off your system to your readers in some fun ways. Plan ahead and think about where and how you're going to incorporate those into the scene by scene moments of your story. So in our example let's decide that we're going to have a secondary character in our cast who is one of these wielders and for the sake of this example let's say that he is going to be an earthkin. Knowing that allows us to think ahead about some situations or challenges that the characters might face where his particular abilities could shine or be interesting. But I think an even more interesting type of opportunity is to think about the limitations that he must maintain his attunement to earth through his behavior by remaining loyal and steadfast by remaining calm and kind of unshakable unflappable not succumbing to extreme spikes of high heightened emotions. Maybe he's kind of a more even keel neutral type of person which means then that we could start throwing him into some situations where that posture is going to be tested and challenged. Maybe he is betrayed or disappointed by one of the other characters and then we get to see is he going to hold to his earth attunement by remaining loyal to them and not reacting or responding or maybe it is so significant that he does react or respond. Maybe he gets really angry and starts to kind of violate his attunement and perhaps that means that for some portion of the story his ability to work with earth has been diminished in some ways that might feel unfair or frustrating because we as the readers have empathy for what led him to the choices that he made which then might create other opportunities later in the story for him to redevelop or perhaps even strengthen his attunement to his earth element in other interesting ways that would bring kind of a cathartic resolution to that character arc. Those are the types of opportunities that we can begin to think of for how we're going to implement our magic system within the ups and downs and twists and turns of the story we're planning to tell which means we are now ready to talk about the fifth and final of our essential building blocks for our magic system but before we get into that I hope you've been finding this helpful and informative maybe a little entertaining and enjoyable and if you have I would love it if you could drop a like on the video to help other people find it and if you haven't already please subscribe to the channel for more deep dives and discussions of story craft like this every week. But yes now that we have the first four building blocks in place we're ready to think about the fifth and final one which as I already alluded to kind of connects all of them together and is the thing that carries your magic system across the finish line by turning it from a set of rules on paper to a more organic and memorable aspect of your overall story as a whole and that is its integrations. Integrations refers to the ways in which your magic system is normal to the people of this world in much the same way that modern technology is normal to us and yet would have seemed like alien incredible magic to someone who lived even just 100 or 200 years ago. Finding creative integrations for your magic systems is one of the best ways to make it feel rich and fully realized for your readers as they get to experiencing it. I think this is one of the primary strengths of the Harry Potter series for example it's not just that Harry and his friends learn about magic but Potterheads loved getting to see all of the interesting ways that magic was a normal part of life which led to scenes like exploring Diagon Alley right in the very first book and other ways where we get to see magic operating in the world and being integrated into it in some interesting or creative or memorable ways. Bringing this home into our example of this magic system that we have been developing together what are some of its integrations? Well one that I think works really well is the idea that all people who live in this setting have the ability to interact with these elemental spirits. I like the idea that accessing this magic is not some kind of accident of birth but is the result of a specific set of choices and kind of a dedication to an extreme way of living that anyone could choose to do but that very few people really do choose to do which by implication would mean that there are probably a lot of people around who can do very small things with the elements and maybe even with several of them maybe they have just enough attunement with one or two elements to do little things but haven't fully made the commitment to live and become a fully attuned earth kin or water kin but that seeing somebody do a little bit with water or a little bit with earth out on the street or in their shop would maybe be fairly common in every day. I could then see some really interesting integrations where certain professions kind of carry with it the expectation that you would embody the ideals of a particular element. Perhaps farmers choose to be more earth attuned because there are many ways that that helps. Another fun integration would be to start thinking about the legal and social ramifications of these different kinds of elemental postures. Maybe large cities are actually divided up into elemental districts because the ways that someone who is attuned to a certain element would choose to behave starts to become contradictory or in conflict with the other ways that other attunements would behave and perhaps the laws that are in even different areas of a city vary because what is acceptable or even required in one area becomes restricted or disallowed in another. And maybe you could think of other integrations that I haven't even considered. If so, I would love to hear about them in the comments because this is one of the main areas where you can really bring your magic system home and turn it into something special and memorable for your readers by making sure it's fully woven into the fabric of your world and the story that you are telling them. But with these five building blocks in place, you could create an almost infinite range of different kinds of magic systems and hopefully this has already started to spark your creativity in some fresh ways. If it has, I would love to hear about it down in the comments. Tell me about your magic system as you're developing it. How does it work? What are its inputs, its outputs, its limitations, its opportunities, and its integrations? I can't wait to hear all about it. And as always, happy writing.