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@sarah-inkdragon That’s some really interesting terminology.

@noodle-mum Like Daeus said, Sanderson’s Three Laws are an essential resource, if only because everyone else will have them in mind when discussing magic.

<h2>Hardness</h2>

We describe magic in a given system as being on a scale from “soft” to “hard.” Generally, the harder the magic, the better an idea the reader has of how the magic works and how it specifically can be used at any given time. Ideally, very hard magic systems are rational and scientific, and at least pretend to obey the rules of thermodynamics. If you throw a fireball, that energy must come from somewhere. Sanderson has a reputation for great hard magic systems. He bases core concepts of his books on the idea that you should know at any given moment what a character is capable of doing with their magic. When people break the rules, it’s often a mystery for the protagonists as well as for the reader, and a large part of the plot revolved around figuring out why they rules were broken–or rather, why they appeared to be broken. Usually, the answer was staring a careful reader right in the face the whole time.

Because of this, Sanderson can use magic as a core part of his stories’ scene-by-scene conflict. Two magical characters can fight each other, and you have about as much an idea of their relative capabilities as though they each were fighting in a more mundane way. It works pretty well for him. If you haven’t already, I strongly recommend you read at least the first three Mistborn books, in which the magic system involves ingesting different kinds of metal and “burning” them to receive temporary, specific, fairly limited abilities in exchange.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia use much softer magic. In LotR, magic is simply a spiritual extension of a given, spiritually existent creature’s ability… Sometimes. Hobbits are good at sneaking, and that’s magic. They don’t consider it magic, because it’s just a part of who they are. Galadriel famously says “For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe: though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy. But this, if you will, is the magic of Galadriel. Did you not say that you wished to see Elf-magic?”

And then there are actual spells and songs that do a practical thing, some of which might just be Gandalf the mad scientist trying to look cool in front of the dwarfs with burning pine cones and whatnot. And then there’s the expenditure and extension of will to protect or dominate or curse another creature, which is largely what Morgoth and Sauron did.

Tolkien’s “weakness” is in not caring much about dramatic internal logic. Without entire books’ worth of rationalization, there is little reason most of the overarching plot couldn’t have been solved with magic as it exists in LotR. Of course, that wouldn’t have been nearly dramatic enough. When @deeprun points out that magic can fall into the trap of being an easy fix and solution to a problem, I fully agree. One of the biggest pitfalls I see in amateur fantasy writers is being all excited in their pet magic system and then failing to create a situation in which that magic aids the drama instead of hindering it. If the protag can shoot fire from her hands, she needs to find herself in very few serious places where shooting fire from her hands is in fact the solution to her problems.

I feel like Lewis uses his magic better from a dramatic standpoint. Narnia is filled with all manner of curses and artifacts and rituals, but their capability almost always works against the protagonists or else is just not something which solves all of the scene by scene dramatic tension. Usually, big magical set pieces like the silver chair or the stone table exist as a fantastical allegory for some real world spiritual point. When the protags have magic, it rarely solves all their problems. Usually, you learn of a magical element very close to the scene in which it’s important, it serves as a source of conflict for that scene, and then we hear little about it afterward.

You can also prevent your characters from overcoming all their conflicts with magic by making them incompetent =P The Force in the original Star Wars trilogy works to an extent because Luke is a terrible Jedi. He has the skill at the peak of his power to barely rescue his friend at the beginning of Return of the Jedi, but he lacked the power to properly dominate his friend’s captor.

If you’re writing hard magic, it’s probably because your audience is interested in rational magic and wants to see fantastical powers used in creative ways throughout your story. Sanderson’s books in general, the Inheritance cycle by Christopher Paolini, and the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss (very, very R-rated) are the best examples of hard magic in modern fantasy. I don’t read much soft magic, but I bet either Daeus or @karthmin could point you in the right direction. I’ve really been enjoying The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany recently, but it’s not exactly an example of how people are doing it today.

<h2>Spirituality</h2>

As you know, the spiritual aspect of magic trips up many Christians. The Bible warns us that God hates sorcery and that it is as deserving of the death penalty as is dishonoring parents. Take that as you will.

Magic in the Bible is strongly tied with the idea of communion with spiritual beings other than God, to foretell the future (which betrays lack of faith in God) or for personal gain.

From the 70s to the 90s, the New Age movement was popular in the US, and many Christian books were written from the perspective of Biblical-style spiritual warfare in the modern age—Frank E. Peretti kind of made a career off it, starting with the (in my opinion) enjoyable This Present Darkness. That book, and others like it, can give an idea of the lingering idea contemporary Christian culture among the older generations still holds against magic in general.

I of the opinion (probably hilariously arrogantly) that people are smart enough to realize they’re reading a fictional book and that I’m not in danger of losing my soul because I wrote a story in which people throw fire from their hands.

If you choose, as I did, to write a story in which the magic can seem questionable from a bird’s eye view (I may have already written a book in which people commune with spirits to gain power), you have to ask what your conscience feels about it. If you personally feel uneasy about magic in fantasy at all (I know people who believe Narnia to be a book about demon worship and the power of dark magic, so nothing is out of the question) then you probably shouldn’t write about it. If, at the opposite end of the scale, your main character offers her soul to Asmodeus in exchange for the ability to dominate the minds of others, and moreover this is treated as very legal and very cool by the context, narrator, and tone of the story, then you might want to ask God to give you a love for what is good and right in the world =P

<h2>What I Use</h2>

I really enjoy “everybody gets one” magic/power/tech/etc. systems, most famously in Hirohiko Araki’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure series, in which everyone has a specifically defined and limited power, and the scene by scene conflict usually involves these powers interacting in very creative ways. Usually. There’s a lot of handwaving that goes on.

One of my spy-fi WiPs uses a similar system, in which irradiated orchids express certain crazy genes which unlock ridiculous human potential when they’re eaten. It’s pretty silly. I’m having a lot of fun writing it.

My published novella, for which I should really put out the second part, takes the magic of the Dungeons and Dragons game and applies a somewhat rational system to it.

My WiP realitypunk ripoff of Chronicles of Amber simply gives characters authority to alter the world in the regions in which they have authority. People can’t use guns when trespassing onto other people’s land because as soon as the slug leaves their possession, the owner of the land has authority to just delete it. It’s weird. I don’t like it as much. It’s a useful thing to try to trap my head around.