Writing Wednesdays: Building Magic...

So here is the first in my world building posts. I'm going to start with magic. Not for any reason in particular, it's just a place to start.

Magic in my world is not unique by any means of the imagination. But it is different, simply because how I view magic. My opinions on magic in fantasy differ, I'm sure, from other fantasy writers out there.

There is a lot of debate in the fantasy world that I'm sure most of you are unaware of, if fantasy is not your genre. The debate? Should magic have rules? Lots of fantasy buffs think it should. Where is the fun in fantasy if you've got a magic user that can just conjure up whatever he or she wants with the snap of their fingers?

And what of the magical 'cost'? By cost, I mean what does it cost the magic user to conjure? Does it take away from his energy? His life in either seconds, hours or years? Maybe it takes from his soul.

I'm currently reading a book where magic affects the users mind. Every time they use magic, they go a little more insane. ("The Way of the Black Beast" by Stuart Jaffe) (Note: Guest post on Thursday August 9th by Stuart, drop by!)

But what about those pesky rules? I'm of the mind that magic should not have rules, per se, but limitations are an absolute must! Again with the whole snapping of fingers and poof! you have stuff. Magic should cost the user something, right?

In Melanie Rawn's series of books, The Dragon Prince trilogy and The Dragon Star trilogy, she has magic users called Sunrunners. The basis of these Sunrunners is this: They can use sunlight to communicate with other Sunrunners over long distances. Can they conjure up items or anything? Nope. They just speak to each other. So what are the consequences of something like this? They can't use starlight. It is forbidden, but if the Sunrunner is powerful enough, they can accomplish it. They also don't travel well on water. You put a Sunrunner on a raft over a river and they're incapacitated for hours. Imagine what sailing would do to them? The other drawback to being a Sunrunner? There is a drug that they can use to increase their power to reach longer distances. It is super addictive and they're easily controlled when addicted. Sometimes, though, a Sunrunner will get lost in the light and can't find their way back to their body. If this happens, they basically end up an empty shell and die.

In David Eddings' series of The Belgariad and The Mallorean, Belgarath the sorcerer and his daughter, Polgara the sorceress, are a couple of pretty powerful magic users. They use the 'Will and the Word' method. You picture what you want in your mind then you will it into being with a spoken word. One of the drawbacks is that when you use magic, it makes a sound other magic users can hear. Sends out a beacon, and if you are hiding, that's not good! There are very few magic users in Eddings' world. A handful, in fact and they are not easily swayed. They try to stay out of things unless Prophecy dictates otherwise. So they can use magic all they want and their lifespan is limitless. They can be killed, but you better be able to get close, first.

My magic users have limits as well. I call them Mahjii. They're born into magic. They know by the age of fourteen if they have magical energies within. They have one year to seek out training and if they ignore it, they pay the price. My Mahjii must seek out training or their magical energies will consume them. They literally burn with fever and end up in ashes. Sometimes, they're only powerful enough to maintain that energy within. It prolongs their death and they're pretty sick their entire life, but they're alive. That's their only restriction, really. And rules? Well, they're meant to be broken, aren't they? They try to stay out of political issues. They have chosen to withdraw from the world after their city is destroyed, so people in my world think they're dead and gone. Myths and legends. But they still exist!

Mahjii in my world use the energy that surrounds them. They draw off the energy of the earth at their feet, the air, water, anything. They don't exactly conjure up just anything. They have specific things they create and lots of tools to enhance their abilities. My Elves that use magic are the same way, but their magical energies won't kill them if they can't control it. My water Elves live near running water to power their magic. Lakes don't do it, rivers are workable but oceans are optimal. They can use the energies to shape-shift and conjure to a point. The way my magic users see it is if they need it and can't find it anywhere or make it, they create it using their power.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Tune in next time when I discuss kingdoms. Tomorrow I will have a guest post by Stuart Jaffe, author of 'The Way of the Black Beast' regarding magic in his world. So drop on by and say hello to Stuart!

Little Known Facts...

About me, of course.

All through high school, I failed English. Oh, I grasped the concept of it all, got things right in class and passed most of the tests. But I never really pushed myself in school.

I started working at the age of 15. I got a job to help pay family bills, not to have my own savings account. So school sort of took a back burner in my mind and so I ended up on the 6 year plan rather than the normal 4 years.

My English teachers loved me, though. All but one, but she was psycho to begin with and she is a whole other story.

One of my favorite teachers was my English Lit teacher. It helped she was Scottish, we had common ground. Each day or sometimes just once a week, she would write journal entry prompts up on the board and we had so much time to write. We would have to pass our journals up to the front and she'd browse through them while we were testing or whatever.

One day she wrote "Describe a forest fire" on the board and I immediately began to scribble out my story, from the viewpoint of the animals. When the time came to pass them to the front, mine caught her eye. She even read it out loud to the class and in her usual manner said, "That was a great piece! I won't mention who wrote it, but her initials are Melissa McWilliams."

Embarrassed the hell out of me. Looking back on it though, she was just one of the teachers that encouraged me to write. Only it took some time.

I didn't really catch the writing bug until I was 19 and started playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. I came up with a really cool Elf Ranger... named Kayta. She's evolved quite a bit and she is my very first character ever. To have her in my current books has helped me a lot because she's an old friend, very familiar and she's easy to write about. She is like me, after all.

I think that if it hadn't been for my English teachers, I never would have even thought about writing. Another one of my teachers actually told me I would make a great writer, but passing English was sort of a big deal. That teacher had challenged the whole class with writing our own fable. She gave us the moral and we had to come up with the story. Matter of fact, I still have mine.

Maybe I'll dig it out for you one of these days.