Creating a magic system is one of the most fun parts of writing fantasy, but it can also be frustratingly difficult.
Let’s go over 5 questions to answer when building your own!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over how to build a magic system.
You can watch the full video here to or scroll down to for notes/highlights.
How to Build a Magic System
- Coming up with a magic system can be a lot of fun
- BUT! Remember, the story is what makes your story good, not the magic system
- Your magic system should serve the story, and all decisions about it should be based on telling the most exciting/cool story that you can
- If you find yourself saying things like, “That’d be fun, but my magic system doesn’t allow it,” then that might be a sign you’re thinking about things wrong. Nothing is set in stone until publication
#1. What role does magic play in your story?
Will magic play a significant role in the plot of your story? Will the main character use magic?
– If yes, then you likely want a HARD magic system.
Is magic more of a mystery/unknown in your story? Will it mostly be used by non-main characters?
– If yes, then you likely want a SOFT magic system.
HARD MAGIC SYSTEM
- Has consistent rules, predictable interactions, feels realistic, “sciency” magic
- Examples:
- Death Note: The rules of the Death Note are established early on, and when Light uses them in tricky ways to solve problems, it doesn’t feel cheap. (RULES)
- Avatar the Last Airbender: The elemental bending magics have logical extensions that make sense, such as bloodbending or firebenders flying, that the reader could’ve predicted (PREDICTABLE)
- Fullmetal Alchemist: The alchemy magic feels like something we could do in our world, makes the reader feel like they are a part of the magic that’s happening (REALISTIC)
SOFT MAGIC SYSTEM
- Is mysterious, unexplained, feels extraordinary, “supernatural” magic
- Examples:
- Star Wars: The less we know about the Force, the cooler it is, the focus is on the characters not the magic (MYSTERIOUS)
- Game of Thrones: Magic causes problems in Game of Thrones, but it is rarely used to solve them, because that would feel cheap since we don’t know how it works (UNEXPLAINED)
- Lord of the Rings: The magic of Gandalf, Saruman, Sauron etc. makes the world feel big and unknown and the main character hobbits very small (EXTRAORDINARY)
HYBRID MAGIC SYSTEM
- Borrows elements from both hard and soft magic, somewhere in the middle
- Examples:
- Name of the Wind: Uses both hard magic (sympathy) and soft magic (naming) together in one universe
- Avatar the Last Airbender: Elemental magic is “hard” and explained thoroughly, but it’s “spirit world” magic is soft and not explained much
- One Piece: Uses hard magic’s predictable interactions (ie: rubber Devil Fruit countering electric Devil Fruit) and soft magic’s unexplained (don’t know where Devil Fruits come from/how they work
- Remember, no system is better than any other, it’s all a matter of personal preference
- And most systems aren’t 100% soft or hard, most lean in one direction but have elements of both
- Harry Potter: Uses hard magic’s rules/realism (school, potions etc.) with soft magic’s mystery/extraordinary (source of magic, Harry’s mom’s sacrifice, etc.)
- Every one of the example stories has been very successful and has many fans, so any of the systems can work if done well
#2. Five questions to build your magic system
1) What does the magic do? How does it relate to your story?
- Try to come up with something you’ve never heard before, or take something you’ve seen before and twist it
- Make sure that your story COULDN’T EXIST without the magic
- Ex: The story of one of the actual people who makes all those prophecies that we hear about in other legends.
2) Who uses the magic? Is it rare or common?
- If the main character uses it, then you likely want HARD magic, since the reader will want to know how it works
- If the main character doesn’t use it, then you likely want SOFT magic, since going into detail about magic rules that the MC doesn’t use will be frustrating for the reader
- Ex: The prophecy magic is practiced by a very small, elite group, of which the main character is a part, want it to be a hard system of prophecy
3) Where does/did the magic come from?
- Is it something that’s been around forever? A recent discovery? Is it given by a certain stone/plant/god?
- This is more important for hard magic than soft magic
- Ex: The prophecy magic is used by unlocking the full potential of the human brain for a brief period of time, so that they can calculate all of the future possibilities and how they interact, seeing the cause and effect as clearly as if they were seeing the cause and effect of throwing a rock in a pond
4) What are the magic’s limitations/weakness/costs/dangers?
- Remember! Restrictions are always more interesting than infinite power
- Does the magic have a fuel/energy source?
- This is more important for hard magic than soft magic
- Ex: Prophecy magic can only be used by inducing traumatic brain damage onto the caster, so they have to do/receive progressively more horrifying things to make it happen, causing many of them to die/go insane before they can create their predictions
5) What are the ramifications of all the above?
- Explore the ripple effects of your magic system on the world, how would people’s lives change? The culture? The government? Jobs? Food? Entertainment?
- Some of the readers’ favorite things about magical worlds are seeing the magic permeate through both everyday people’s lives and the world as a whole
- Ex: Every country has a group of people who practice prophecy magic, and over the centuries they’ve wizened up to the fact that they are the ones who hold the power, since they dictate when/where wars will happen, and they decide to use that power for themselves by making false predictions….
After that, chat voted that we answer the five questions and write a story based on this magical system: The more rare the synonym you can speak, the stronger the spell. Thesauruses are illegal. If you say “flame/fire,” it’s a weak spell; “inferno” is stronger, etc.
Here’s what we came up with for chapter one:
Nurse Kay held the queen’s dead baby son in her arms. His small, pale arms and legs dangled off her white coat like flaccid plastic tubes, no air coming in or out of his tiny, open mouth.
Around Kay stood the other nurses and the Royal Healer, each of them in a state of shock. The machines connected to the dead prince whined and cried, until she removed the suctions from his body and they fizzled to silence.
The Royal Healer snatched the baby out of her arms and placed him on metal-framed crib. He raised his palms above the silent child, his suit and tie that were usually immaculate and ironed to perfection, now a sweaty, wrinkled mess hanging off his arms. A white-gold chain, from which hung a medallion in the image of a book, rattled around his neck as he stooped low over the child.
“Resurrection,” he whispered as quietly as possible, so that the other nurses would not overhear his magical word. Perhaps flustered by the stress of the moment, he spoke it just loud enough for Kay to hear it. She had no idea what the word meant or what it would do, but she stored it away in her mind for later use. Once, of course, she saw what it did.
Being a royal healer, Kay expected bright lights and the baby to start screaming and kicking as he should be. Instead, only a few cloudy tendrils hissed out from the healer’s mouth, barely reaching the child before they dissipated away.
Nothing happened. The baby lay there still as before.
The Healer wasn’t done yet. He threw out his arms to the side, seeking deep inside himself for the words that he must have learned in order to achieve his position. Words that were saved for emergencies. Words that were so long and powerful that only the most wise and insane dared to repeat them.
“Reconstitution!” the healer spoke, this time no effort made to hold back. The entire neonatal care unit shook with his thunderous voice, machines that had been shut off suddenly clicking alive and beeping and whirring.
But the child did not move. Still, the healer did not give up. He slammed his palms together and threw back his head.
“Reconstabulation!”
The lights in the room grew to twice their brightness, so blinding they burst and showered sparks over the room, sending the other nurses fleeing outside as they wailed. With the shaking machines and screaming noises and lights flashing so hot they could burst into flames at any moment, Kay wanted to join them, but something compelled her to stay—the safety of her own child.
Kay ran to the other end of the room, where her baby boy was sleeping soundly among the chaos. She’d given birth to him just two days prior, but with no father at home and no money to send him elsewhere, he was going to stay here until she came up with some sort of plan. Right now, her only plan was shielding him from the bursting lights with her own body.
As the room slowly descended into darkness, Kay realized what was happening. The healer’s words weren’t strong enough. Every time one of the sacred spells was spoken by someone, anyone in the world, it lost some of its strength. Kay had dealt with enough drug addicts to know the effects of diminishing diction. They say a word once, get their high, then spend their lives saying it again and again chasing after that first initial hit, never to come anywhere close to it again.
And now that was happening with the healer and the prince. Kay didn’t know any of the advanced spells he was speaking, she was forbidden from anything beyond two-syl, but they were obviously not up to their normal potency. The words that had likely cured hundreds of children before were now only enough to turn on some machines and turn up some lights.
Kay turned to the healer, now kneeling on the floor in the dark in front of the metal crib. All the machines were silent, the only sound his whimpers and a final plea.
“Miracle,” he spoke, his voice cracked and defeated. Even Kay knew that one. But the boy’s body didn’t move.
He slowly looked behind him, back to Kay, his eyes bloodshot and full of terror.
“If the queen finds out about this, we’re dead,” he said, then nodded out the door. “The nurses out there, me, you, even your boy too.”
Kay put an arm defensively on her child. The King’s Royal guards would be here any moment, ready to check on the status of the prince. There were far more words that could kill than could heal, and they knew thousands of them. They wouldn’t fail like the Healer had.
In one swift motion, Kay picked up her boy from the crib, stepped over to the Healer, and held out his wrapped body to him as an offering. His little weight felt so, so heavy in her arms.
“Take him,” she said softly. “Say that you healed him. Say that everything is fine.”
If the Healer was surprised by her actions, he didn’t show it. He merely grabbed the child from her, holding him as gently as if swaddling a newborn prince.
“Take care of the dead body,” he said. “Claim it as your own. Sudden crib death is always sad.”
Kay nodded, letting his words run over what she’d done, a thick layer of lies over the heartbreak. Lies that were now the truth. That would have to hold her together.
Without even a nod of acknowledgement, the Healer left the room, announcing his success to the other nurses. Kay couldn’t see them, only hear the chorus of shrieks of delight that they broke out into. Before they came running in, before they started congratulating her, before she had to pretend to be happy for the rest of her life, she had one thing to do.
She picked up the dead child, dashed over to her son’s empty crib, and laid it down inside, covering it with a blanket. It was incredible, how similar they felt. The size, the weight. When she pressed down against his cover, she could swear he was still there.
Kay didn’t know many magic words beyond her limited nurse’s training. But there was one that she had to use for this occasion. It was old, worn out, and had almost no power left, but she leaned in to the baby’s ear and pretended that her son could hear it too.
“Goodbye.”
Be sure to check out the video to see how we answered the five questions to flesh out the magic system and come up with that story!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: PAKUTASO (1, 2)