Making Magic Real, Part I: Consistency

So you’re writing a fantasy novel. That means anything goes, doesn’t it? Your wizards can teleport, zap the evil guys with lightning, and predict the future, right?

Or maybe not so much.

Because you want your magic to be believable.

Believable? This is magic! By nature it isn’t believable! The genre is fantasy after all, which by its nature is the converse of reality. Magic is magic, so rules don’t matter.

To begin with, it’s your world. You can put anything in you want to. But your plot is going to suffer if “anything goes”, because there will be no reason for someone not to take over the world, or stop the villain, or do anything right at the beginning of the book. Needless to say, this makes for no suspense and very little plot. Practically speaking, if there are rules to magic, there are things people can’t do with it. Those things enable the plot.

However, there’s an even stronger reason to give your magic rules. Suspension of disbelief – the willingness of the reader to believe provisionally in the world you’ve created – can hinge on how well you handle your magic. We, as humans, understand that natural laws have patterns, and depend on those patterns in order to understand the world around us. Just because magic is now a natural part of the world you’re creating doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have rules. In fact, those rules are actually more important now. Whatever story you’re creating needs to fit into some niche in the human psyche that says, “This may not be real, but it feels real.”

There are many ways you can go when you’re explaining the magic of your world. You may choose to create codified laws of magic that are spelled out in your work; you may want to emphasize that the good guys can do x, while the bad guys are limited to y; you may wish to specify that your protagonist has only the ability to do one kind of magic, or even that there is only one kind of magic in your world. You may start out by not explaining the magic, and having the protagonist learn about it. You may have the protagonist or other characters learn about it by direct experience. There are many, many ways of making sure your readers know that your magic works in a particular way.

The important thing is that you know how your magic works, and that you make sure that the reader knows as well. It matters less how your magic works than that there is a reason. This creates a bond of trust with your readers, and lets them know that they can relax into the story, confident that you won’t throw in something that violates their sense of how the world works. It should also be compatible with the world you’ve created; it’s another violation of your readers’ trust when you toss in a completely something that doesn’t fit. The One Ring needs to be unmade in the Cracks of Doom, not hammered out of shape in Rivendell. For time spent in Narnia, very little time passes in our world, rather than orderly and regular. The worlds thus established work together with the magic to make a more fully realized creation.

There’s also the question of internal consistency of magic with magic. If you have established a rule that only blonde people can cast light spells, you need to not then turn around and have a black-haired person casting light spells – unless there is a special reason. And if there is a special reason, you need to be very clear with the reader about what it is, because the reader is trusting you as the author not to cheat their expectations. We’ve all read it, or seen it in movies/television: some fact is established, and then completely ignored because it is convenient for the plot. And certainly my reaction to overlooking previously established facts is to have an outraged reaction as if I have been tricked. Because in truth, I have.

As an author, I feel like I have a responsibility to my readers to maintain that bond of trust by being as clear and consistent with my world as I can. I want my worlds to feel real. I want them to be places that my readers can imagine inhabiting. I want them to be places my readers don’t want to leave. And how I approach their magics is an integral part of this process.