M Is For Magic...

I have been on the fence for days trying to decide what my M post would be. A couple other blog posts over the last week have made my decision for me. I wasn't going to talk about magic originally, but seems the cosmos has other ideas about it.

So, magic. Yep. Okay. What kind of magic are we talking about here? Are we talking about wand-waving-cool-latin-incantation type magic or just-think-about-it-release-the-energy-poof!-it's-there kind of magic?

Well, whether or not you're writing a story akin to Harry Potter or The Belgariad, magic has to have rules.

Magic without rules... not so much fun. If your magic has no rules, then why bother with anything else? All the wizards have to do is wave a wand and poof! things are done. Where is the fun in that? Oh, broke a nail. Poof! Fixed. Oh, half my guts are spilling out. Poof! It's fixed. Now where did I put my car keys? Poof! There they are.

Totally. Lame.

Now, break your wand and try to fix it with Spell-o-tape and cast a spell only to have it bounce back the caster. Epic.

Magic has to have rules. I can't stress it enough. Magic users in my world are born into it and at a certain age, they have to go to the wizard city for training. If they don't get it under control, it literally burns them up from the inside out. The energies in their bodies has to be contained and controlled.

Don't make it easy for anyone. Seriously. Have repercussions to using magic.

Okay, okay, here is something from a future book of mine in my current trilogy. It's winter, it's the beginning of a war and the troops are cold. The Mahjii offer to help out and make the troops warm all the time without fires, but something goes wrong and all the troops are now glowing. Oops. Warm, yes, but glowing. Talk about easy targets at night. Ha!

So make magic rules! This is important! Did I use enough exclamation points!? Okay! Good.