Overthinking: Magic in Fiction

As a self-described cultural magpie, I shamelessly grab any interesting ideas. My current project 'The Gingerbread Incident' has a European dragon (four legs, wings, horns, breathes fire) eating gumbo along side a centaur and retired fairy-godmother.

However, the other half of my brain demands order. Good thing too. If I want to avoid writing myself into a corner or creeping power thresholds (think about Dragonball and DBZ), I have to sort my horde of ideas and pick how to weave them into a whole.

Writing fantasy is both simple and complex. As a writer you can do anything but the audience may not buy it. Fantasy is an agreement for the reader to suspend disbelief on 'x' 'y' or 'z' in exchange for entertainment.

When you world build a fantasy, ask yourself two questions. What is the plot purpose of magic/science/etc? Is the system understandable to my audience?

In the old European folktales, heroes only get magic as gifts or punishments from 'wise old people;' instant and dramatic karma. Meanwhile the alchemy of Fullmetal Alchemist is both McGuffin and a morality play added plus a lovely helping of visual whoa. The users' power is only limited by their investments and wisdom. In Star Wars, the Force is a mystic energy that amplifies and refines the wielder's emotion; it takes the story's heroes and villains to galaxy changing levels.

All of these are nice systems, however Mundus includes...

...fairy-godmothers, werewolves, genies, treenuts-stuffed-with-dresses, fey music, lucky numbers, umbrellas that become sentient after a hundred years, colleges of mages, hermit sages, fire-breathing dragons and repairmen wizards.

My options were to drop ideas or tailor Mundus so everyone could fit. I'm not going to just wave my hand and say 'it's make-believe' - I hated stories like that as child. However, even my overthinking brain baulked at developing an origin/creation back-story. (Mundus is a whimsical world and Tolkien did it better.)

I've always known how I wanted the magic to work, but it's been a long while before I could put the idea in sensible(ish) words.

In Mundus magic is like math. It's a tool, it's effects everything people do and not always obviously. It goes from simple addition and subtraction to complex theoretical equations. Anyone can learn it – most people give up after the basics and some are just weirdly good at it.

Now, how math works makes a very poor story; thankfully, Mundus is about people. The people of Mundus react to magic the same way a group of college students react to statistics: “Better you than me,” “Thank goodness, my career doesn't require that,” “I just have to know enough to pass,” “It's worth the time it takes to master,” and, of course, “Why is everyone fussing, can't you see the patterns?”

Leon (the co-protagonist) falls into the 'studied hard' category – most wizards, witches, and human magic users do. Naiads who control streams or a hunter who can smell curses use 'knack' magic – they have with an unteachable instinct that they refine over time.

This system isn't perfect, or particularly original. However, my organized brain is happy enough to let the creative side go wild. Now if only the characters' dialogue was half as cooperative -_-;