McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Uh, oh . . . it's magic
Aminar:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on September 24, 2012, 07:59:12 PM ---Why ?
Relativity isn't intuitive. Quantum physics isn't intuitive. Economics clearly isn't intuitive, or people would not disagree on it so.
The real world doesn't fit entirely into neat little boxes. A setting that does is failing at realism.
--- End quote ---
Because not many people want to have to spend the mental time to understand relativity just to understand the magic system of your book. We aren't creating real worlds, we are creating entertaining worlds, and while I enjoy a good debate on non-intuitive things, I have yet to find a writer capable of making a non-intuitive magic system make sense within the structure of a narrative.(So Human limitations.)
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Aminar on September 24, 2012, 08:23:49 PM ---Because not many people want to have to spend the mental time to understand relativity just to understand the magic system of your book.
--- End quote ---
Oh, I agree entirely. I'm just not seeing why you think understanding it in every detail makes it entertaining.
--- Quote ---while I enjoy a good debate on non-intuitive things, I have yet to find a writer capable of making a non-intuitive magic system make sense within the structure of a narrative.(So Human limitations.)
--- End quote ---
Intuitively clear varies far too widely between different people for me to back off on something interesting because it strikes me as non-intuitive.
o_O:
It strikes me that intuitive magic systems will also be existing magic systems (meaning some culture somewhen has devised it as a belief) unless the basic physics is also different.
(and I must say I'm coming away from this thread with a craving for magic in highly accelerated systems, a craving strong enough to impress pregnant women)
OZ:
How precisely I want my magic defined depends on why I have the magic in the story. If magic is mostly just for setting, I may define it a little but I'm not going to define it in detail any more than I am going try to explain astonomy because a character is looking at the stars. If understanding how the magic works is important to the central conflict in the story then I am going to want it more well defined so that the conflict resolution won't feel cheap. I do like complex magical systems. In Chalker's Dancing Gods series it is explained that magic is too complex and requires too much work for most people to ever use it. It wasn't a matter of being born with a "gift" or having a magical gemstone it was just a matter of aptitude combined with a lifetime of study. This was not the most fun magical system that I have ever read about but in many respects it was probably the most logical.
In some books the lack of knowledge about how the magic works is what makes the book ...well...magical. Sometimes, for some fantasy settings, it works much better if the characters knowledge about magic is similar to earlier civilizations understanding of science. Some things they may understand while other things they may know work but have no idea why they work. There may be some things that they think work a certain way but actually something completely different is going on and some things are just a mystery. There is no unifying field. In the right stories this can work very well. Of course the author has to keep a hand on it to preven Deus Ex Machina type endings (unless that is what he/she wants). Much of the horror genre would not be nearly as affective (or effective either for that matter) if the magic in the stories was well understood.
o_O:
--- Quote from: OZ on September 24, 2012, 09:21:45 PM ---How precisely I want my magic defined depends on why I have the magic in the story. If magic is mostly just for setting, I may define it a little but I'm not going to define it in detail any more than I am going try to explain astonomy because a character is looking at the stars. If understanding how the magic works is important to the central conflict in the story then I am going to want it more well defined so that the conflict resolution won't feel cheap.
--- End quote ---
Fully agreed, I have expressed similar sentiment above.
--- Quote ---I do like complex magical systems. In Chalker's Dancing Gods series it is explained that magic is too complex and requires too much work for most people to ever use it.
--- End quote ---
He did have a bit of fetish for body changing and its impact on self-definition though.
--- Quote ---In some books the lack of knowledge about how the magic works is what makes the book ...well...magical. Sometimes, for some fantasy settings, it works much better if the characters knowledge about magic is similar to earlier civilizations understanding of science. Some things they may understand while other things they may know work but have no idea why they work. There may be some things that they think work a certain way but actually something completely different is going on and some things are just a mystery. There is no unifying field. In the right stories this can work very well.
--- End quote ---
Like Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar or maybe Lustbader's Silent Warrior cycle? Sure, that can be fun.
On the other hand I absolutely adore novels with systematic magical reasoning (Zahn's Triplet comes to mind here) and books with counterintuitive consequences to apparently intuitive systems (Cherryh's Rusalka and its sequels).
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