Fiction Debate: Does Explaining Magic Kill It?

[Calemyr]

My little brother and I had a rather spirited debate this weekend about some ideas I have about my own little writing projects. The focus of the debate was this: I intended to have the setting of a story to include magic as a factor, but this magic would be reasonably well defined and explained. Two concepts in particular started this debate:

1) The concept of magic as a "proto-energy", a sort of energy that could be converted into other forms of energy by a strong will, such as kinetic energy or thermal energy or gravity or... well, 'vital' energy (encouraging accelerated growth and healing). All spells thus boil down to creative applications of various types of energy: a 'fireball' is thus air energized to point of plasma and pulled into a ball via gravity and then projected in a direction. If you're going D&D on it, include a seed of outward force in the center of the plasma that triggers upon impact to disperse the plasma in sphere of destruction.

2) The concept of magic as being the scientific equivalent of the number zero - an absurdly simple (in hindsight) concept that redefines everything once it's realized. Understanding magic alters the fundamental underpinnings of the science and understanding the sciences is critical to making effective use of magic.

The point of the debate is this: does trying to explain magic, even when not bringing it into a contemporary setting, ruin it on some fundamental level? Does trying to explain magic so that it functions in a generally predictable framework make it easier to accept or does it simply ruin the, for lack of a better word, magic of the experience? I'm not looking to win the argument, but I would like to broaden my perspective on the matter. So I'm curious what you fine folks in the Playground think about this.

[Lord Raziere]

No it doesn't. Thats my opinion and I'm sticking with it like glue. The "magic" of the experience and the magic as a force of supernatural are completely different definitions of the same word and conflating the two as the same is just silly at best.

explanations don't kill anything. people still go to see movies and like them even if they know that what they're see is actually special effects made by engineering something together. magic is no different, that and the users of the magic have to understand the magic, and if they understand it, they therefore have to remain interested enough to keep using it, therefore if the users of the magic don't think it boring just because they know how it works, why should I?

[Shyftir]

Check out L.E. Modesitt's Magic of Recluse series. Its magic is especially well-defined, and it makes the series.

[Lethologica]

Promoting the mysteriousness of magic to a fundamental virtue (or flaw) is an error. Magic serves the story, not the other way around, and there is no universal story preference that magic be mysterious (or not). Sanderson's magic would not fit Gandalf; Tolkien's magic would not fit Vin.

[Frozen_Feet]

When explaining a trick kills it, it's either because the trick relies on magical thinking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking) to work and your explanation doesn't, or because the person was having fun trying to solve the mystery by themselves and your explanation of it is just duller than what they imagined.

My RPG settings include heavily-detailed, rule-bound magic with lot of elements ripped off from actual science. That's because as a game master, the magician who is performing to the audience, I need to know how everything works. When holding an actual game or writing a story of such a setting, I do away with almost all of the explanation. Trying to fill in the gaps in cause and effect exercises the audience's imagination much more than lecture on mock-physics does.

This said, if the explanation is a well-thought-out one, you can use it to explore some non-mystical facet of existence. But for the love of God, accept that you're making science or speculative fiction then, not fantasy or magic. Your audience is going to shift away from people who take joy in watching a trick and wondering how its done, to people who want to know how the trick is done so they can do it themselves.

[KerfuffleMach2]

If you are going to explain how it works, then you need to explain it well. Giving a half-hearted attempt will ruin it. But, giving clear rules that make sense, and then sticking to those rules, should be just fine.

[Cheesegear]

I'm not a fan of Brandon Sanderson.
I am a big fan of Ben Aaronovitch.

Basically, it depends on how the magic is explained, determines whether or not the explanation is any good. David Eddings doesn't explain anything about his magic system(s), and he really doesn't need to, because it's magic. What's there to explain? The problem with explaining magic is that once you start explaining it, you have to follow through. Too simple or too complex? Doesn't really matter which end you fall on because both outcomes are decidedly worse than not trying to explain magic in the first place.

[Berserk Mecha]

Short answer: No, explaining how magic works does not ruin it.

Long answer: This depends on how you wish magic to be seen. What purpose does it serve in your story? Is it supposed to be mysterious? Is it supposed to be utilitarian?

There are works of fiction like a Song of Ice and Fire where magic is largely unexplained and is kept in the background and rarely steps forward. There are undoubtedly some mechanics behind the magic, but the practitioners are not particularly forthcoming on information. In this case, when magic does show up, you know that something big is going to go down.

There are other works of fiction like Discworld where magic is very thoroughly explained and elaborated upon. In this case, there is a clear science behind magic. In Discworld, this science is called thaumaturgy. And if it is explained then it is a science. Keep in mind that these rules will have to be adhered to. You do not want the rules of your setting to be inconsistent. Otherwise, the established parameters will be meaningless.

[warty goblin]

The problem with explaining magic in my view is that I spend several pages reading yimmer-yammer about the polarity of dragon-particles or somesuch. This does nothing to 'explain' anything, since it's just making up more stuff, and is frequently very boring. I don't need a fake community ecology lesson about the the giant rainbow serpents of Fellmoor swamp, I want to get back to the hero stabbing a giant rainbow serpent right in the eyeball.

[Calemyr]

When explaining a trick kills it, it's either because the trick relies on magical thinking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking) to work and your explanation doesn't, or because the person was having fun trying to solve the mystery by themselves and your explanation of it is just duller than what they imagined.

My RPG settings include heavily-detailed, rule-bound magic with lot of elements ripped off from actual science. That's because as a game master, the magician who is performing to the audience, I need to know how everything works. When holding an actual game or writing a story of such a setting, I do away with almost all of the explanation. Trying to fill in the gaps in cause and effect exercises the audience's imagination much more than lecture on mock-physics does.

This said, if the explanation is a well-thought-out one, you can use it to explore some non-mystical facet of existence. But for the love of God, accept that you're making science or speculative fiction then, not fantasy or magic. Your audience is going to shift away from people who take joy in watching a trick and wondering how its done, to people who want to know how the trick is done so they can do it themselves.

The story I'm telling is a fantasy story, I've got no illusions of that. Swords and monsters and so on. There are even zombies, after a fashion. Magic is not the focus of the story, but it's essential to the setting and certain characters use their understanding of the nature of magic to dissect magic used against them and figure out strategies to combat them. At one point early on a main character fights an illusion using monster by fending it off long enough to work out just how the magic is achieving the illusion and identify an exploitable weakness. This is what happens. The rules are already there, in the background, in order to keep it consistent. The question, however, is whether the rules (and the psuedo-scientific justification for them) should be shared with the audience and, if they are, to what extent they're explained. Is it better to know why he saw through the illusion or to simply know he did and not get into the details? Do you need to know the mechanics of how a corpse gets reanimated into a zombie or is it enough to know that they exist and their lack of vital areas makes them hellishly difficult to neutralize? Does the explanation add to the experience or is better to just say "it's magic" and get on with it?

[CarpeGuitarrem]

When explaining a trick kills it, it's either because the trick relies on magical thinking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking) to work and your explanation doesn't, or because the person was having fun trying to solve the mystery by themselves and your explanation of it is just duller than what they imagined.

Precisely so. If you present a world as working with magical thinking, and instead magic is a new set of physical rules, I'm gonna be a bit bummed unless you do a really cool job with those rules. Magical thinking is still a set of rules, and it has quite a lot of order, but it functions under a different sort of causality than the physics we know.

A good fantasy author understands the difference between the two and can use it to enrich either method. I don't make a value judgement about whether a magic system is inherently one type or the other; it should just be a consistent reality that adds to the world. It's the execution of the magic that matters the most.


The story I'm telling is a fantasy story, I've got no illusions of that. Swords and monsters and so on. There are even zombies, after a fashion. Magic is not the focus of the story, but it's essential to the setting and certain characters use their understanding of the nature of magic to dissect magic used against them and figure out strategies to combat them. At one point early on a main character fights an illusion using monster by fending it off long enough to work out just how the magic is achieving the illusion and identify an exploitable weakness. This is what happens. The rules are already there, in the background, in order to keep it consistent. The question, however, is whether the rules (and the psuedo-scientific justification for them) should be shared with the audience and, if they are, to what extent they're explained. Is it better to know why he saw through the illusion or to simply know he did and not get into the details? Do you need to know the mechanics of how a corpse gets reanimated into a zombie or is it enough to know that they exist and their lack of vital areas makes them hellishly difficult to neutralize? Does the explanation add to the experience or is better to just say "it's magic" and get on with it?
Here's my rule of thumb: problems in the story demand answers that are explained. Each problem should have an answer that gets its own explanation, unless it's a problem that was already faced in the story. Since "it's magic" doesn't sufficiently explain how something like an illusion is beaten, you need a better explanation. You don't need to go "PhD in Magicology", but you do need to explain roughly how it works. And like I mentioned above: the explanation can be either type of magic.

"I fended it off long enough to realize that it was stealing the fears from my soul to use as illusions" is just as valid of an explanation as "I fended it off long enough to realize that it was projecting illusions by sending energy through the crystals in the cave", and both of them offer opportunities for exploitation.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Explaining magic does not kill it. That said, make sure your explanations serve the story instead of distract from it. Worldbuilding is great, but worldbuilding without any larger context to place it within a story can quickly become dull.

For this reason, it might be best to have parts of the magic system explained while other parts are not. Leave the explanations for the parts that have major story relevance.

Consider how technology is treated in soft sci-fi. Most technology doesn't need an explanation in soft sci-fi because what it does is just immediately apparent. But if you're using the features of some plot-critical technology to circumvent its operation and defeat it, some background explanation serves to improve the awesomeness of that engineering-based victory.

[Flickerdart]

Your laptop is just a creative application of electricity. Does knowing this make it any less remarkable?

[danzibr]

I'll chime in.

From the stories I've read, some are very vague with their explanations of magic, some very detailed. Of those, some are good, some are not good (not respectively). So... go to town :P

[Avilan the Grey]

Depends on how you define "explained".
Also, depends on the setting.

The Dresdenverse has just enough explanation, I think.

[Kitten Champion]

It's less a matter of giving an explanation and more whether or not the general sense of wonder is achieved through the text. Talking about magic without the suitable tone or mood can render it ordinary and flavourless. This is particularly true for when your magic doesn't really signify anything beyond being a system of rules under which the characters can kill things, or as a set-up for an inevitable climax in which the characters use it in a way you probably saw about 500 pages earlier.

If the magic itself isn't creative or expressed creatively than it ruins the effect - and regardless - fantastical technobabble is not my idea of a good time.

Of course, whether magic is interesting or not could very well be of secondary concern to the text, magic is a common aspect of fantasy but not necessarily a vital element to it.

[Sapphire Guard]

It varies. Some magic works with little explanation other times it needs more. An obvious inconsistency will cause problems, unless you provide a reason magic works differently in this situation. But if the explanation provided doesn't make sense, (within the rules provided, not because it doesn't work in the real world), you have a problem.

[Tengu_temp]

The point of the debate is this: does trying to explain magic, even when not bringing it into a contemporary setting, ruin it on some fundamental level? Does trying to explain magic so that it functions in a generally predictable framework make it easier to accept or does it simply ruin the, for lack of a better word, magic of the experience? I'm not looking to win the argument, but I would like to broaden my perspective on the matter. So I'm curious what you fine folks in the Playground think about this.

That depends on what function magic serves in the story.
Is it a high magic setting where wizards are pretty common, and magic is treated like science, and you want the characters to discover new uses for magic or use what's already known in refreshing and interesting ways? In that case, magic should be explained and work off set rules.
Is magic supposed to be this mysterious, mystical force, working in strange but wonderful ways and unreachable by most but the select few? Are the characters supposed to be unfamiliar with it, either not using magic at all or using it as a strange tool they can't comprehend fully? In that case, magic should not be explained.

[GolemsVoice]

There is also the difference between YOU knowing how it works, and the characters and the general population of the world knowing how it works. Even if magic is highly mysterious and shrouded in ritual and secrecy, you, as the writer, should know why any given spell or process works, or why it doesn't.

Aside from that, I'm more of a fan of mysterious and unknowable magic. If magic is just another thing that happens, it takes away some of the fantasy, for me. Also, and maybe this is a prejudice of mine, but, like another poster, I really don't need to hear most of what some guy cooked up to explain stuff that is, well, supernatural. I don't need to be treated to Magick 101 to appreciate why there are fireballs. That being said, if you DO explain it, explain it well, and be original. Otherwise, by explaining stuff poorly, you're only drawing attention to the underwhelming explanation.

[Aotrs Commander]

Short answer: No.



You should absoutely avoid "magic did it, I don't have to explain it" as the default response to any questions that arise without even trying, because that's using it as an excuse. It doesn't have to be detailed, but you do at least have to make an effort to think about it (even if you keep the mechanics "under the hood" of the narrative), and even if it's only to the level of CarpeGuitarrem used as an example.

[SiuiS]

Short answer: No.



You should absoutely avoid "magic did it, I don't have to explain it" as the default response to any questions that arise without even trying, because that's using it as an excuse. It doesn't have to be detailed, but you do at least have to make an effort to think about it (even if you keep the mechanics "under the hood" of the narrative), and even if it's only to the level of CarpeGuitarrem used as an example.

Yup. The correct usage is "magic did it", "how did magic do it?" "How do you find out?".

If you're trying to preserve the mystery there needs to be a mystery to preserve, not just pretentiousness.

[Thanqol]

Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science, and vice versa.

This is an opportunity.

Have a look at superstitions back in the day, like, really look at them. Early modern armies genuinely believed that their generals were actual wizards. They covered themselves with lucky charms for deflecting bullets. The artillery guys were a weird, exclusionary guild that was almost a cult and they could destroy entire castles with their terrifying enchanted weapons. Astrological horoscopes for rulers were considered state secrets and the subject of concerted espionage operations to steal. Scientists weren't called scientists in those days, they were called Natural Philosophers.

They were all using scientific principles, the same ones we know today. However, since literally no one had any idea what the f*ck was going on, there was this MASSIVE overlap between what was science and what was magic and ritual.

[Lethologica]

That depends on what function magic serves in the story.
Is it a high magic setting where wizards are pretty common, and magic is treated like science, and you want the characters to discover new uses for magic or use what's already known in refreshing and interesting ways? In that case, magic should be explained and work off set rules.
Is magic supposed to be this mysterious, mystical force, working in strange but wonderful ways and unreachable by most but the select few? Are the characters supposed to be unfamiliar with it, either not using magic at all or using it as a strange tool they can't comprehend fully? In that case, magic should not be explained.
This is what I was trying to say, but 10x better.


Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science, and vice versa.

This is an opportunity.

Have a look at superstitions back in the day, like, really look at them. Early modern armies genuinely believed that their generals were actual wizards. They covered themselves with lucky charms for deflecting bullets. The artillery guys were a weird, exclusionary guild that was almost a cult and they could destroy entire castles with their terrifying enchanted weapons. Astrological horoscopes for rulers were considered state secrets and the subject of concerted espionage operations to steal. Scientists weren't called scientists in those days, they were called Natural Philosophers.

They were all using scientific principles, the same ones we know today. However, since literally no one had any idea what the f*ck was going on, there was this MASSIVE overlap between what was science and what was magic and ritual.
Fascinating. Where can I read up on this sort of thing?

[Masonicon]

Not exactly, particularly when explained with Quantum Physics and Superstring Theory

[Thanqol]

Fascinating. Where can I read up on this sort of thing?

I know a German historian who studies this period and researches personal journals of soldiers, which is great for being primary sources but dang because it's in German. Basically you want to look at the Thirty Years War in particular, especially from a soldier's perspective. This (http://doctrine.org/the-history-of-protestantism/the-history-of-protestantism-volume-third-book-twenty-first-the-thirty-years-war/#CHAPTER2) is a good start, I'll see if I can dig anything else up later.

E:


There arose a mingled and luxuriant crop of Norse, German, and Roman superstitions in the camp. The soldiers had unbounded faith in charms and incantations, and sought by their use to render their weapons powerful and themselves invulnerable. They had prayers and forms of words by which they hoped to obtain the mastery in the fight, and they wore amulets to protect them from the deadly bullet and the fatal thrust of dagger. The camp was visited by gypsies and soothsayers, who sold secret talismans to the soldiers as infallible protections in the hour of danger. Blessings, conjurations, witchcrafts, in all their various forms abounded in the imperial army as much as did guns and swords and pikes. The soldiers fell all the same in the deadly breach, in the shock of battle, and in the day of pale famine, The morals of the camp were without shame, speaking generally.

[Rodin]

I think the way it's explained is the most important. Take Star Wars. The Force is basically Magic in the first trilogy - it's a guiding principle of the universe, it guides you, you can learn stuff by listening to the Force, etc etc.

Second trilogy: It's Midichlorians. You're able to do magic because of tiny bacteria. How does listening to bacteria help you? Beats me. Anakin was the Chosen One from prophecy...because he was randomly tasty to bacteria.

It takes the mythology that was built up, throws it in a ditch, and then sets it on fire.

I certainly don't have any problems with explaining Magic - as mentioned, there are plenty of examples where it's done really well. But for goodness sake, make sure when you're explaining it that you don't destroy the internal logic of it. Either set your Magic up as a science to begin with, or keep it mysterious. I don't need to know how Gandalf could set pine cones on fire, I just need to know that he did and that it isn't an unusual power for him.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I think the way it's explained is the most important. Take Star Wars. The Force is basically Magic in the first trilogy - it's a guiding principle of the universe, it guides you, you can learn stuff by listening to the Force, etc etc.

Second trilogy: It's Midichlorians. You're able to do magic because of tiny bacteria. How does listening to bacteria help you? Beats me. Anakin was the Chosen One from prophecy...because he was randomly tasty to bacteria.

It takes the mythology that was built up, throws it in a ditch, and then sets it on fire.

I think the biggest problem in this instance is probably that the "scientific" explanation here is incredibly unsatisfying, and thus it makes a terrible replacement for the mystical explanation. It's also pretty left-field when compared to what you see reinforced in the rest of the series.

Could you have a scientific explanation that replaces the mystical explanation? Sure, but it should be significantly more interesting than the mystical explanation...and it'd be nice if it didn't render the mystical explanation a load of hogwash in-universe.

[Dexam]

The question, however, is whether the rules (and the psuedo-scientific justification for them) should be shared with the audience and, if they are, to what extent they're explained.
The question in turn is: does it add in any way to the story, or is it all relevant to the narrative at some later point?
If yes, then explain enough that the audience can understand what is going on and why it is happening.
If no, then explain enough so that it doesn't look too much like hand-waving or deus ex machina.


Is it better to know why he saw through the illusion or to simply know he did and not get into the details?
In this situation, a little explanation as to how he saw through it is better than the character just declaring he knows it is an illusion. Going into too much detail during such a scene will rob it of its urgency and ruin the pacing. Weave the world-building into the plot development, and avoid info-dumping (unless you can make it really interesting info-dumping).


Do you need to know the mechanics of how a corpse gets reanimated into a zombie or is it enough to know that they exist and their lack of vital areas makes them hellishly difficult to neutralize? Does the explanation add to the experience or is better to just say "it's magic" and get on with it?
Once again, it depends on the story.

For example, in Patrick Rothfuss's The Kingkiller Chronicle books, much of the story is about the trials and tribulations of the protagonist, Kvothe, learning different types of magic. The books frequently go into great detail and often plot points hinge on the understanding of how the magic does (or doesn't) work.

A counter-example is Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. We don't particularly care how the Evil Sorcerer is turning himself into a giant snake demon, all we care about is that Conan now has to fight a sodding great reptile.

[Darth Ultron]

I've never seen magic as ''magic'' by the wording of ''strange and unknowable non-science force''. I have always seen magic as ''just a force we don't understand yet''.

Take something like electricity or radiation. Both have existed forever. But humans have only just figured out the how and why of there existence over the past two hundred years or so. Radiation existed in 1000 AD, but no one knew about it. I think of magic as exactly like that.

There is just enough weird in the world that ''magic'', or ''something'' sure might exist. All most everyone has had a taste of something weird or odd they can't explain. Ever somehow know your phone was going to ring a couple seconds before it did? Ever mention someone and then suddenly bump into them? Ever get a bad feeling that turned out to be right? Or a good one? The list is endless....but it all kinda comes down to something unknown. Is it just luck, chance or our imaginations? Or do we sometimes pick up on ''unknown things''.

[Pronounceable]

If magic is supposed to be rare and wondrous and mysterious, then yes, explaining does ruin it.midichlorians
There's this guy called Sanderson, he thought quite a lot about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson#Sanderson.27s_First_Law) and he's %99.9 correct. If magic is the solution, then it must be explained or you're just pulling it out of your bum. If it's just background or setting or even the problem, then no explanation is needed.

[Aotrs Commander]

If magic is supposed to be rare and wondrous and mysterious, then yes, explaining does ruin it.midichlorians
There's this guy called Sanderson, he thought quite a lot about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson#Sanderson.27s_First_Law) and he's %99.9 correct. If magic is the solution, then it must be explained or you're just pulling it out of your bum. If it's just background or setting or even the problem, then no explanation is needed.

That's actually a pretty good rule to run with.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Not exactly, particularly when explained with Quantum Physics and Superstring Theory

Then you're killing Quantum mechanics instead.

Want to explain telepathy/clairsentience/clairvoyance with neurons in your brain being entangled with atoms elsewhere? You've explained nothing because you basically have to say 'magic' to entangle those particles in a impossible way.

Sorry, that's not how the observer effect works, don't even think about it. Even if psychokinesis and the observer effect did interact, that would just be a way to detect PK, not explain it. If your PK works above the quantum level, you don't need to measure it at the quantum level unless its some way to detect Espers who are trying to hide themselves.

Chaos magic/infinite improbability mumbo jumbo? You can make a weird universe that way but its not a great way to explain controlled effects.

Teleportation? Again, invoking quantum effects here would only describe the power, not explain it.

If you're using quantum mechanics to explain magic its probably because quantum mechanics has lots of stuff in it that appears magical, but the irony there is that your making physics more like magic rather than making magic more like physics.


I have always seen magic as ''just a force we don't understand yet''.

Take something like electricity or radiation. Both have existed forever. But humans have only just figured out the how and why of there existence over the past two hundred years or so. Radiation existed in 1000 AD, but no one knew about it. I think of magic as exactly like that.

The idea of magic as a force or energy dates from around the same time as the electrical force and radiation were discovered.

You're understanding magic through the analogy available to your culture. 'Magic as unknown energy' doesn't really make sense of 'pacts with angels or demons' or the various forms of divination that have traditionally made up magical beliefs.

Detailed fictional laws of physics tend to become pretty shaky one 'do anything particles' come into play. My ability to keep involved in His Dark Materials never quite survived the jump from 'dark matter divination' to 'angels made of dark matter fighting a war about something'.

[Calemyr]

If you guys are interested, here is the scene I was talking about with the illusion. In the off chance you are not interested, I will be spoilering it.

Context: Seih is a scholar and historian in the Indiana Jones/Lara Croft tradition. He is a talented staff fighter but entirely self taught and as such not that skilled, getting by on talent and instinct. While looking for a missing little girl, he finds her on the edge of the T'Var forest. She is hiding up in a tree as an injured ape-like monster is trying to knock the tree down to get to her. To save the girl, he picks up a nearby rock and throws it at the monster.


He had the monster’s undivided attention, now. It had been attacked, even if it hadn’t hurt all that much, and this one was down where it could reach. It roared and charged at him, knuckling awkwardly with its one arm. Razor-like claws gleamed in the afternoon sun as it tried to finish the struggle in one blow. Seih was ready, however. With a fluid motion he struck the creature’s arm, redirecting the force of the attack so that it charged harmlessly past him. He turned as it passed, sighing slightly as it scrabbled to overcome its own momentum.

“If that’s all you’ve got, this will be easy.”

The beast turned around for another charge and for an instant, so slight that Seih almost doubted his own eyes, its shape blurred. It roared again and began the awkward three limbed dash towards its prey. Seih grinned and readied himself for another pass. When the moment came, however, he found himself instinctively wanting to move to the left when he could clearly see he needed to move right.

It came as a surprise, therefore, when his staff passed effortlessly through the creature’s arm. The surprise was even worse when he felt the claws dig into his left arm. He had just enough presence of mind to turn with the attack, so that the sleeve of his coat took the worst of it and he merely suffered some rather deep cuts. Had he not, that attack would have outright crippled him.

Seih needed to think. He stayed on the defensive, redirecting its attacks and allowing instinct to overrule his eyes. This worked well; while he couldn’t avoid the claws completely, they were unable to dig in to him again. His mind raced as his body struggled to protect itself.

Okay, start with the obvious. Smoke had been coming from its injured arm up until a moment ago. That means it’s a monster, not an animal, as animals bleed. It isn’t where it appears to be, most likely due to some sort of magic because magic is intrinsic to monsters. So what is it doing? Two things: making itself invisible and creating an illusion of itself elsewhere. Ignore the illusion, that’s a parlor trick. It’s the invisibility that’s the tricky one, which means it’s likely easier to exploit.

So how’s it managing the invisibility? It’s all about vision, all about light, so that leaves two obvious avenues: manipulate the light or manipulate the mind. Probably a mixture of the two. Manipulate the light for the basic effect, then dull the senses so that inconsistencies wouldn’t attract attention. Things like sound, smell, or footprints... That should work.

Deflecting another attack, he looked up. This was the edge of the T’Var, where the trees weren’t as dense. But it was harvest time, and they were aflame with the changing of the seasons. He looked over at the tree the girl was watching from, and the bare branches and the blanket of leaves that lay beneath it. Nice, dry, crunchy leaves... Not that tree, however, not with the girl still there. Besides, he’d need a few of them. He scanned his surroundings as soon as he found the opportunity, then ran for the most promising group.


The strategy he uses is to knock down as many leaves as he can with his staff, so that the leaves create enough audio and visual noise to get past the "mental" portion of the invisibility, allowing him to keep track of the monster's actual location and set up a killing blow.

[jseah]

The problem with explaining magic in my view is that I spend several pages reading yimmer-yammer about the polarity of dragon-particles or somesuch. This does nothing to 'explain' anything, since it's just making up more stuff, and is frequently very boring. I don't need a fake community ecology lesson about the the giant rainbow serpents of Fellmoor swamp, I want to get back to the hero stabbing a giant rainbow serpent right in the eyeball.
Point being that sometimes it does take an ecology lesson to learn why the elves are trying to kill the woodcutters here but not over there...

As for how magic works, that's fundamental to using it in any more detail than "do X get Y".

Calemyr: (OT)

Okay, start with the obvious. Smoke had been coming from its injured arm up until a moment ago. That means it’s a monster, not an animal, as animals bleed. It isn’t where it appears to be, most likely due to some sort of magic because magic is intrinsic to monsters. So what is it doing? Two things: making itself invisible and creating an illusion of itself elsewhere. Ignore the illusion, that’s a parlor trick. It’s the invisibility that’s the tricky one, which means it’s likely easier to exploit.
That was quite good to read! Only this part here felt a bit wrong. I think the switch to present tense doesn't quite fit into the scene without a sense of entering the character's thought stream. Or maybe I didn't catch it. *shrug*

If I may be so presumptous, here's how I would write the first few sentences:


Okay, obvious things first. There was smoke from its injured arm, at least until a moment ago. Hm, it's a monster then. Animals bleed, not smoke. I didn't see where it was correctly, due to magic? Yeah, magic is intrinsic to monsters.
You would have to adjust it for how your character's voice sounds to himself of course.

Sorry, it just really jumped out at me and I had to comment on it.

[warty goblin]

If magic is supposed to be rare and wondrous and mysterious, then yes, explaining does ruin it.midichlorians
There's this guy called Sanderson, he thought quite a lot about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Sanderson#Sanderson.27s_First_Law) and he's %99.9 correct. If magic is the solution, then it must be explained or you're just pulling it out of your bum. If it's just background or setting or even the problem, then no explanation is needed.

I can't say I find Sanderson's First Law entirely persuasive. I've read plenty of books where the solution was explicitly magical, yet how it works is never explained. In Sabriel for instance nobody ever explains why or how handbells bind Dead spirits, but the handbell-fueled ending works just fine. The audience knows what the bells do to some extent - assuming they can keep the names straight - which is all that is needed. Which perhaps is the better phrasing; I don't need to know how it works, I need to have some idea (and it can be a very partial idea) of what magic can do.

[Ravian]

In my opinion explaining magic works up to a point. I definitely agree that the more you focus on it in the story, the more explanation is required. Lord of the Rings gets away with extremely vague magic because the story was never about the stuff, meanwhile Dresden Files give a fairly thorough job at least explaining the mechanics of magic.

I think that one has to be careful not to put too much thought into a magic system. This is especially true when you try to rely on anything based in the realm of physical reality. Midichlorians were such a mundane answer that left far more questions open for it, particularly since the story really didn't deal much with the actual mechanics through the rest of the series. Reality has plenty of weird stuff in it, but it's not as easy as slapping "science" on the box. (Note: there are a few exceptions to this, for example Numenera has a "magic" system of incredibly advanced technology like nanites. But because the setting is focused on the idea that no one in the world knows how technology works, it's given little to no concrete explanation. The GM is encouraged to look at real-world possiblities of advanced science for inspiration, but going into any effort explaining the principles involved just removes some of the weirdness the setting goes for.)

Over-explaining magic can also really bog things down. One of the things I really disliked about Eragon (aside from it being a fantasy rip-off of Star Wars with Dragons and Tolkein races.) was that it over-explained its magic. Magic is essentially a high language that commanded authority over reality itself. But it's also drawn from a users life-force. Except some magic users get their powers from spirits instead. And when they say magic is a language, they mean it, since grammatical errors can actually screw over your spell's intent. But there's also some weird diviners that seem to work without any of the previous magic principles discussed. And throughout all of this at least a third of every (extremely long) book is made up of exposition attempting to explain this overly complex and convoluted system.

Remember how I said the series rips off Star Wars? The second book has a yoda training regime. Of course where Star Wars just spent a few scenes on Luke's training while otherwise continuing the action with Han and the others, Eragon spends about half of the book talking about magic and every damn principle behind it.

Essentially, magic systems are finicky. You can get a lot out of them without much concrete explanation but the more time you focus on it, the more readers will want answers on how it works. At the same time, don't feel like you need to explain everything. Even science has things that have scientists shrugging. Keeping a bit of mystery to it leaves you wiggle room and helps you avoid overly tedious exposition.

[Rodin]

I can't say I find Sanderson's First Law entirely persuasive. I've read plenty of books where the solution was explicitly magical, yet how it works is never explained. In Sabriel for instance nobody ever explains why or how handbells bind Dead spirits, but the handbell-fueled ending works just fine. The audience knows what the bells do to some extent - assuming they can keep the names straight - which is all that is needed. Which perhaps is the better phrasing; I don't need to know how it works, I need to have some idea (and it can be a very partial idea) of what magic can do.

The important thing there is that the audience knows ahead of time that the handbells can bind dead spirits. If they aren't mentioned ahead of time and the hero suddenly brings out a handbell and traps the main villain, then that's a bit of a cop-out.

A favorite example of mine is from a YA Fantasy book I read as a kid. The hero, an apprentice wizard, is practicing the Polymorph spell when he loses concentration and accidentally casts a cantrip for dispersing dust instead. The result is that the poor apple he was working on becomes a cloud of dust instead of the teacup he was trying to turn it into. He eventually uses this combination to get rid of the villain. If he had done that in the heat of combat, it's such an un-intuitive combination of spells that the reader would be crying foul. Since it was set up ahead of time as A) working and B) being an accident, it is therefore plausible that the villain wasn't expecting it and the hero knew to attempt it in the first place.

We don't need to know why Polymorph + Dust Dispersal = Disintegrate, we just need to know that it does.

[Frozen_Feet]

Your laptop is just a creative application of electricity. Does knowing this make it any less remarkable?

Yes, it in fact does. People who've grown up using computers consider them everyday, mundane things, and using them is routine. Hence, the presence of computers (or direct analogues, for that matter) in a setting doesn't trigger a sense of wonder or otherness. This applies even when people don't actually have any clue whatsoever as to how computers use electricity to achieve what they do, or even what electricity is. They only need to think they know.

It's not a rational feeling; like magical thinking, it's a pitfall of human psychology. Hence, rationalization will rarely restore a sense of mystery to everyday things.

[warty goblin]

The important thing there is that the audience knows ahead of time that the handbells can bind dead spirits. If they aren't mentioned ahead of time and the hero suddenly brings out a handbell and traps the main villain, then that's a bit of a cop-out.

A favorite example of mine is from a YA Fantasy book I read as a kid. The hero, an apprentice wizard, is practicing the Polymorph spell when he loses concentration and accidentally casts a cantrip for dispersing dust instead. The result is that the poor apple he was working on becomes a cloud of dust instead of the teacup he was trying to turn it into. He eventually uses this combination to get rid of the villain. If he had done that in the heat of combat, it's such an un-intuitive combination of spells that the reader would be crying foul. Since it was set up ahead of time as A) working and B) being an accident, it is therefore plausible that the villain wasn't expecting it and the hero knew to attempt it in the first place.

We don't need to know why Polymorph + Dust Dispersal = Disintegrate, we just need to know that it does.

Which was precisely my point. How magic works is not the quarry to pursue; what magic does is the only target that matters.

[Yora]

Any time people did actual magic throughout human history, they really were trying to do science and mistakenly assumed that their action did actually cause the purely coincidental result.

(Or the changes were in the peoples mind, who already believed that magic is necesessary to allow them to change their behavior before the magic was performed.)


Which was precisely my point. How magic works is not the quarry to pursue; what magic does is the only target that matters.
How magic works is a secret the magician does not share. Everyone else only sees what magic does, and this is what makes magic "magical".

Of course, this only works if the protagonist of the story is not a magician. If the magician is the protagonist, then magic really is just a very difficult and dangerous science.


Yes, it in fact does. People who've grown up using computers consider them everyday, mundane things, and using them is routine. Hence, the presence of computers (or direct analogues, for that matter) in a setting doesn't trigger a sense of wonder or otherness. This applies even when people don't actually have any clue whatsoever as to how computers use electricity to achieve what they do, or even what electricity is.
If I would let my parents watch me write an HTML file by hand and then open it in a browser, it would be quite magical to them. Lots of nonsensical characters arranged in an apparently random order. But once you know their meaning and the way they work, it really is just terribly mundane. :smallamused:


I can't say I find Sanderson's First Law entirely persuasive. I've read plenty of books where the solution was explicitly magical, yet how it works is never explained. In Sabriel for instance nobody ever explains why or how handbells bind Dead spirits, but the handbell-fueled ending works just fine. The audience knows what the bells do to some extent - assuming they can keep the names straight - which is all that is needed. Which perhaps is the better phrasing; I don't need to know how it works, I need to have some idea (and it can be a very partial idea) of what magic can do.
Sanderson's First Law isn't about understanding how magic works. It's about the reader understanding what magic can do and what it can not do. It may not actually phrased that way in the common one-sentence summary, but it really means "don't make up new powers on the fly whenever it is convenient". The reader does not need to know how the magic works, but the magic needs to be consistent.

[Lethologica]

If you guys are interested, here is the scene I was talking about with the illusion. In the off chance you are not interested, I will be spoilering it.

Context: Seih is a scholar and historian in the Indiana Jones/Lara Croft tradition. He is a talented staff fighter but entirely self taught and as such not that skilled, getting by on talent and instinct. While looking for a missing little girl, he finds her on the edge of the T'Var forest. She is hiding up in a tree as an injured ape-like monster is trying to knock the tree down to get to her. To save the girl, he picks up a nearby rock and throws it at the monster.



The strategy he uses is to knock down as many leaves as he can with his staff, so that the leaves create enough audio and visual noise to get past the "mental" portion of the invisibility, allowing him to keep track of the monster's actual location and set up a killing blow.

Several related problems present themselves:
Retreating into Seih's headspace kills the suspense of the fight.
The way Seih explicitly lays out concepts he should know intuitively, like "animals bleed" and "magic is intrinsic to monsters", makes it feel like this isn't Seih thinking, but you talking to the reader.
Seih is allowed to assume his way to an understanding of the creature's abilities. This seems like cheating.
Seih doesn't factor his observations into his reasoning. For instance, Seih doesn't wonder where the accuracy of his instinct is coming from. The fact that he knows where the monster is, even though his eyes don't, is terribly important, since it's keeping him alive. Also, if the monster has both illusion and invisibility capabilities, why does the creature only attack at the same time and from approximately the same direction as its illusion? There must be a severe limitation on the monster's illusion ability. For example, it might simply be a displacer beast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacer_beast).
The understanding Seih achieves isn't necessary to his solution--filling the environment with debris to track an invisible creature is a natural response, regardless of the exact nature of the invisibility. See The Incredibles, Strong Female Protagonist (http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-5/page-79/), and a bunch of other examples that aren't in my RAM right now.
The basic advice I would give here is that Seih's thinking should be immediate to the fight itself. The problem he is trying to solve is not "Explain how this monster's magic works," it's "figure out where the monster is so I can hit it and stop getting hit by it."


Yes, it in fact does. People who've grown up using computers consider them everyday, mundane things, and using them is routine. Hence, the presence of computers (or direct analogues, for that matter) in a setting doesn't trigger a sense of wonder or otherness. This applies even when people don't actually have any clue whatsoever as to how computers use electricity to achieve what they do, or even what electricity is. They only need to think they know.

It's not a rational feeling; like magical thinking, it's a pitfall of human psychology. Hence, rationalization will rarely restore a sense of mystery to everyday things.
Er. Computers are thought of as mundane because they are commonplace and familiar and frequently used for mundane purposes. It doesn't have much to do with knowing that they're a creative application of electricity--after all, as you say, this applies even to the ignorant. In fact, computers often seem more marvelous to people who actually know something about what's going on, because they can glimpse the complexity of the system behind the cat picture on the screen.

[Calemyr]

Several related problems present themselves:
Retreating into Seih's headspace kills the suspense of the fight.
The way Seih explicitly lays out concepts he should know intuitively, like "animals bleed" and "magic is intrinsic to monsters", makes it feel like this isn't Seih thinking, but you talking to the reader.
Seih is allowed to assume his way to an understanding of the creature's abilities. This seems like cheating.
Seih doesn't factor his observations into his reasoning. For instance, Seih doesn't wonder where the accuracy of his instinct is coming from. The fact that he knows where the monster is, even though his eyes don't, is terribly important, since it's keeping him alive. Also, if the monster has both illusion and invisibility capabilities, why does the creature only attack at the same time and from approximately the same direction as its illusion? There must be a severe limitation on the monster's illusion ability. For example, it might simply be a displacer beast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displacer_beast).
The understanding Seih achieves isn't necessary to his solution--filling the environment with debris to track an invisible creature is a natural response, regardless of the exact nature of the invisibility. See The Incredibles, Strong Female Protagonist (http://strongfemaleprotagonist.com/issue-5/page-79/), and a bunch of other examples that aren't in my RAM right now.
The basic advice I would give here is that Seih's thinking should be immediate to the fight itself. The problem he is trying to solve is not "Explain how this monster's magic works," it's "figure out where the monster is so I can hit it and stop getting hit by it."

Thank you. That's well thought out and I do appreciate it. Would it alter your perspective any if I made these counterpoints?

1) Retreating into Seih's mindscape is the point of the fight. It's intended to allow a chance to see him dissect a situation and extract a plan. It doesn't happen as a rule, especially given that he isn't always the focal character. I wanted to show him as intelligent here so that when he employs clever solutions later (without as much internal monologue) it is in keeping with the character rather than the dread Deus Ex Machina.
2) I was hoping to convey his thoughts as rapid fire, train of thought observations rather than a carefully completed thought. He's thinking fast, but in the middle of a life-or-death fight. It's also meant to approximate how he thinks, working through facts to reach a conclusion. Had it been from the girl's perspective, it would have involved asking what her grandfather would do, wondering why arrows were useless against it, and trying to decide whether attempting to jump on it with her dagger would be more a better way to die than getting mauled when the tree gave way.
3) He is using his understanding of magical theory to guess how the monster's abilities work. He is not 100% correct, as the monster adjusts its attacks appropriately. It still works out in Seih's favor, but he was making an educated guess, not knowing God's Truth instantly.
4) One of Seih's obstacles is managing intuition vs logic. He tries to be logical when he can, often at the expense of intuition (such as here). Trusting his gut over his eyes is something he's simply not comfortable doing. Heck, trusting anything over his eyes is hard for him, which is why his solution involves fixing it so that his eyes can see the enemy, albeit indirectly. It's also worth mentioning that in the very next scene after the fight he is rather bluntly informed that his strategy was in fact quite stupid - the monster was already injured and not thinking clearly. If it had been healthy, it would have killed him easily. Clever stunt, especially for one thought up on the fly against a threat never encountered before, but never ever do that again.
5) Seih hasn't watched the Incredibles. The point isn't that he used a fairly common strategy (and one that the monster's abilities already account for, Seih's strategy just involved overloading that countermeasure), the point was that he came to it on his own in the heat of the moment.

Part of what this scene was working towards was to establish the fact that his is still immature and doesn't think things through as much as he should, but on its own it doesn't convey that. On it's own, it was just meant to convey that magic is follows enough logic that he could figure out what was going on and that he was smart enough to identify a vulnerability and exploit it quickly - which is the part I thought might tie in to the question at hand. It's later revealed that he didn't think it all the way through, and made assumptions that didn't actually pan out. So he's clever, knowledgeable, and lucky. But hardly the badass he thinks he is.


I'm not arguing, mind you. Your points are absolutely valid in the scope of that particular passage. I'm just curious if a broader perspective justifies them.

[SowZ]

One of the most successful video game franchises of all time is Mass Effect. While it doesn't explain in great detail, there are plenty of codex type things laying around giving you more than just the basics of how manipulating mass effect fields work. (And yeah, Adepts are basically mages.)

[Darth Ultron]

The idea of magic as a force or energy dates from around the same time as the electrical force and radiation were discovered.

You're understanding magic through the analogy available to your culture. 'Magic as unknown energy' doesn't really make sense of 'pacts with angels or demons' or the various forms of divination that have traditionally made up magical beliefs.

Detailed fictional laws of physics tend to become pretty shaky one 'do anything particles' come into play. My ability to keep involved in His Dark Materials never quite survived the jump from 'dark matter divination' to 'angels made of dark matter fighting a war about something'.

The problem is people think of ''magic'' as ''special''. And that is ''magic'' is ''something impossible'', like a miracle. Once upon a time a flight sergeant fell 3.5 miles and landed on the ground unhurt. It was ''magic'', and everyone just goes wow and moves on.

[Porthos]

I'm going to answer this question from a slightly different direction than other are doing.

Do you think explaining magic is helpful or hurtful? And to what degree?

I'm not knocking getting advice on this. I think it's great, as it can help crystalize thoughts and/or let one think about something that they hadn't considered.

But, as this thread is showing, there's a pretty wide gulf of opinion on this. Even where people are mostly agreeing on a mid-point (let's call it Sanderson's First Law for convenience sakes), there's still enough of a difference to be notable, in my mind.

Thing is, there really is only one "rule" one should really follow: Write something you'd want to read.

And even that can be chucked if the money is good enough. :smallwink: I kid, but not by much here. :-p

The thing is, there are plenty of works of art that are popular/entertaining/good* that have well thought out systems of magic and there are plenty of works of art that are popular/entertaining/good* made by authors who fly by the seat of their pants. The inverse is also true, naturally.

*for whatever defintion of "good" one has. :smallwink:

This could be seen as an extention of worldbuilding, but with the worldbuilding the magic system one is using. Some people love worldbuilding in their art. Some find it tedious. And everything in between. Same goes for foreshadowing, which was mentioned (at least obliquely) upthread. Some think it's vital. Others think its overblown.

The simple, perhaps unsatisfactory, answer is: There is no universal answer. Too many people have too many different tastes when it comes right down to it.

Take Harry Potter. Some love it to pieces. Some detest it. Some think it has hugely detailed worldbuilding. Others think it is a thrown together mess that doesn't make a lick of sense when looked at it sideways.

On the other hand, there is a rather well known fanfic/fanfix that seeks to take the Harry Potter universe and apply the sort of, ahem, rationality that some want in a story. It too has its supporters and detractors.

I bring up both Harry Potter and Methods of Rationality not to invite a compare and contrast, nor to say which one I prefer. No, I bring them up to point out a rather simple truth: They both have their fans.

And, I suspect, both works were from people who wrote what they'd like to read. Or at the very least, wrote something that they enjoyed writing about.

So the simple truth of the matter is this: If explaining how magic works in your fiction (at whatever level you want to explain it at) makes it better for you, then by all means do so.

...

Now doing it well and so other people enjoy it is a bit trickier. But no one ever said writing good ficition is easy. :smallwink:

[Closet_Skeleton]

The problem is people think of ''magic'' as ''special''.

That's not a problem if you're a wizard who wants that to be the case. Its called Arcana (from latin arcere, to withhold (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/arcane)) for a reason.

"Never make clear what you cannot do, never show everything you can do."

[Alent]

Put me down with the "Explaining Magic doesn't kill stories, bad writing kills stories" crowd.

You, the author, have the burden of making a believable story. Anything that breaks that believability is bad. If the story demands a certain internal consistency to magic, violating that internal consistency will damage the believability of your story.

Badly handled magic is really no different than using George Lucas style dialog, whether it's completely unexplained magic or Gramarie.

[LibraryOgre]

“This time it had been magic. And it didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

Or... does knowing how science works make it not science anymore?

To me, having a good underpinning for how magic generally works makes it more USEFUL as a writer, and more enjoyable as a reader. Even if I don't explain it in detail to the reader, its uses are relatively consistent and it's seldom a deus ex machina, and avoids the "Well, why didn't you do this thing sixteen pages ago and completely avoid the problem in the first place?"

[Hopeless]

Yes it does and that's why nobody fully explains what's going on unless you're playing Sherlock Holmes or any other detective whether tv, movie or other form of literature including theatre!:smallsmile:

Me I don't mind if they let you figure it out as long as they keep it mysterious and more important not provide some really stupid reason for it (midichlorians I'm looking at you!:smallfurious:).

Now the best way is to allude to some of it and then lie your a$$ off about the rest so you leave the audience wondering whether any of it was the truth in the end do you want it any other way?:smallwink:

[Aotrs Commander]

There was a solar eclipse this morning.

I know exactly how it is caused.

This does not detract from the awe, the fascination - the "magic" of watching it happen.



I find understanding something usually only makes it more amazing.

[Douglas]

One thing that explaining magic makes possible, which Brandon Sanderson has used to good effect a few times: you can explain magic as the characters understand it, and then have something happens that doesn't fit the characters' understanding because their knowledge is incomplete or got some detail wrong. This makes a good setup for a mystery story element, and if the magic system has some in-built logic, that may provide clues for the reader to try to solve the mystery before the reveal.

[themaque]

I'm going to say MAYBE. It depends on how well it's explained and if it keeps with the general theme.

Many of the previous posters have given great examples of doing it well. Explaining the magic system shows a deeper world and brings complexitites and questions you might have not thought of.

Good example of doing it wronge? Star Wars: Phantom Menace. The Force was a mystical magic system based around religious beliefs. It had a spiritualism element. Then came midiclorians. What? Where did this come from? Why? and it's just some throw away line that's never mentioned again? Who thought THAT was a good idea?!?!

So like almost anything, it all depends on how you approach it and if deeper understanding doesn't take away from why it was good to begin with.

[Aotrs Commander]

Midichorians get an unfair amount of abuse, I think, personally. Things do not just "happen" without cause (no, never, not even then), and, since not all organic creatures can use the Force, and it tends to be be hereditary, it was to me fairly obvious there would be some biological reason why that was (in ther EXACT same way that magic - or bending, chakra, psionics, ki power etc etc etc) commonly works in fantasy, in that not eveyone can use it). I assumed that midichorians were either:

a) basically something like mitochondria (similar sort of name), something that was present in the cells of a Force-capable creature that allowed them to access the background Force created by organic life an use it or

b) some sort of harmless bacteria-like entity that conveniently was attacted to whatever actually allowed Force-using creatures to access the Force and were thus a fair standard to judge potential strength, since the number of "bacteria" - which could be counted and occurred as in proportion to said potential strength.

That was what I assumed from the actual film. I understand the later explaination is rather more stupid in needlessly making them intelligent.

[themaque]

That's honestly a fair assessment. But Midichorians

A) Didn't mesh with what had been previously presented
B) Was not adequately explained.

If you are going to have rules to magic, they need to at least make sense in the world itself and mostly stay with a consistent theme. Things can work differently than we originally assumed, but it still has to have some sense of internal logic.

Mercedes Lackey magic horsy adventures had the magic change from how it was first presented. But It was shown why and maintained internal consistency.

SIDE NOT: I did enjoy the Valdemar universe, however Magic Horsy Adventures

Midichlorians where mentioned in a throw away line and never brought up again. The concept could change EVERYTHING about the force and how it was viewed by not only Jedi but everyone. And... it just stopped being a thing after one line. I think that is a good example of explaining magic poorly.

[Aotrs Commander]

Midichlorians where mentioned in a throw away line and never brought up again. The concept could change EVERYTHING about the force and how it was viewed by not only Jedi but everyone. And... it just stopped being a thing after one line. I think that is a good example of explaining magic poorly.

Yes, the explanation and presentation as given were lacking - this was one of those times where a slightly awkward exposition dump actually should have been used. (Much as I hate to say, that was a point they could have used Jarjar: as the viewer-stand-in.) Though, yes, the "midichlorians are sentient" explanation of the EU was a load of ridiculous silly horse-manure, certainly.

But it was the actual, well, let's face it non-explanation that was a bit crap, not the concept of the explanation (or midichorians) itself. (And sadly, unlike many of EU's plastering over of things (e.g. parsecs are distance not time...), the EU dropped the ball on cleaning the mess up.) They should have spared another line of dialogue, really - there certainly was a handful of seconds they could have shaved off the pod-racing without anyone ever noticing...

(It was really just a way of saying "what does the scouter say about his power level Vegeta Obi-Wan?" but that doesn't excuse them half-arsing it.)



What it find personally absolutely "kills" magic is when people say "it doesn't have to make sense, it's magic" or "there is no explanation." That last one in particular kills any sense of me being able to have any sense of immersion stone-dead: fictional worlds, real world or othewise, there is never no explanation, there is only an explanation we don't know yet. When that crops up, it says to me the writer a) has no understanding of the universe b) has no regard for the reader/viewer and/or c) is too lazy to even try to think. And if they don't care, I certainly won't.

[GolemsVoice]

The question that I had while reading this is: why call it magic at all? Why separate it? Think about it: in our world, there are people with incredible skills. But we would not call them wizards, even if we lack their talent ourselves, because we, on a fundamental level, know that what they do adheres to the laws of our world.

So I say: in order for magic to be magic, it must explicitely stand outside of whatever system of physical laws the world has. That's why I'd be careful with over-explaining magic, because for me this basically comes down to eating your cake and having it too. You want something that is a) fully understood but at the same time b) different enough from people who use the other physical laws (like, say, throwing rocks at someone really good), while being a physical law of the world it is set in.

That'd be like saying: "Chemistry is science, but quantum physics is magic. You're a scientist, you're a wizard!"

[Calemyr]

The question that I had while reading this is: why call it magic at all? Why separate it? Think about it: in our world, there are people with incredible skills. But we would not call them wizards, even if we lack their talent ourselves, because we, on a fundamental level, know that what they do adheres to the laws of our world.

So I say: in order for magic to be magic, it must explicitely stand outside of whatever system of physical laws the world has. That's why I'd be careful with over-explaining magic, because for me this basically comes down to eating your cake and having it too. You want something that is a) fully understood but at the same time b) different enough from people who use the other physical laws (like, say, throwing rocks at someone really good), while being a physical law of the world it is set in.

That'd be like saying: "Chemistry is science, but quantum physics is magic. You're a scientist, you're a wizard!"

I've asked myself that question before, and recently I'm always reminded of a conversation in the webcomic El Goonish Shive. In this scene, a high school girl named Susan is explaining to two of her friends an incident with a monster that happened years ago. She calls it an abomination and tries to explain how it worked, before just giving up and saying something along the lines of "Screw it. Just call it a vampire. It wasn't, but no matter what I say, you're going to think 'vampire'."

No matter what you call it, it's still going to be seen as magic at some level. If you're lucky you can think of a name as catchy as "The Force" and people will only think "wacky bipolar space magic" as a secondary thought. That still doesn't change the fact that it's 'magic', it just means you've got a distinctive name for it.

[Frozen_Feet]

Or... does knowing how science works make it not science anymore?

False analogy. Science appeals to an entirely different kind of thinking than magic does. Again, the sensation of something being magical largely stems from magical thinking. If increased understanding of something makes you more in awe of it, it's a different phenomenom entirely. (Possibly related to the Dunning-Kruger-effect.)

[Avilan the Grey]

False analogy. Science appeals to an entirely different kind of thinking than magic does. Again, the sensation of something being magical largely stems from magical thinking. If increased understanding of something makes you more in awe of it, it's a different phenomenom entirely. (Possibly related to the Dunning-Kruger-effect.)

I definitely disagree with this. Admitteldy there might be a language thing going on, but for me the word you are talking about is "Awe" or "Wonder" not "Magic".

[NichG]

There's a principle in writing which is that stories should be like icebergs - the audience sees 10%, but there's a 90% underneath holding it together (I think Hemmingway was the one who explicitly pointed this out, but the principle probably predates him).

So, in that sense, explaining anything too much can kill it, because explanation without context is dry and hard to follow. Thats part of why 'exposition points' in stories are so hard to handle. There are places where a large amount of information needs to be transferred to characters or to the audience for the next thing to make sense, but simply having 10 pages of people talking about the way the world is to each other is really boring and causes the story to lose momentum. So the challenge is often, how do you make as much of that exposition into something which is discovered through the actions and interactions of the character and the world rather than just being a text dump?

In that sense, I think its fine to have magic which has an explanation. But having the story contain a big chunk that goes 'here is how magic works in this world' is probably a mistake if that chunk is larger than a paragraph or three.

Edit:

Also, there's a second problem that crops up, but this is one that I don't know an attribution for. When you have a setting where everyone has seemingly authoritative knowledge about things, it makes it feel flat. Confusion, mis-information, and error are parts of our lives as humans, and especially when it comes to things like 'how the world works'. So having the characters basically have word-of-god on the magical part of the setting can make it feel a bit fake.

If characters give close but wrong explanations for things, where the errors are errors that in retrospect the reader can comprehend, that makes things feel a bit more dynamic and open, like there may still be things to discover in the future. That sense of not knowing whether or not you're done is a good thing to cultivate.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Again, the sensation of something being magical largely stems from magical thinking.

Magic thinking is a psychology topic named after magic, not a summation of magic as a concept throughout human history.

For one thing, magical thinking is behind plenty of out of date beliefs that weren't historically considered to be magic.


The question that I had while reading this is: why call it magic at all? Why separate it? Think about it: in our world, there are people with incredible skills. But we would not call them wizards, even if we lack their talent ourselves, because we, on a fundamental level, know that what they do adheres to the laws of our world.

Why call a dog a jackal, ultimately its just a kind of dog and plenty of languages work fine without separate words for jackals and dogs.

If it looks like magic and functions like magic then magic is the best descriptor for it even if its a science. If my fictional scientist has a fictional scientific process to summon a spirit from another dimension and this science is called demonology in the setting I don't see how that's wrong just because its not how some modern thinkers define magic.

Sometimes we do call those people wizards. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFrDpx7zLtA)

Fantasy words are usually pseudo-medieval, so using medieval appropriate words like magic creates a mood better than not doing so. Renaissance magic was considered a branch of the sciences and divination was just normal scientific practice in most cultures for most of history.

There are a few fun stories that include stuff that's looks and works like magic but is referred to entirely in scientific terms by the characters. This is all well and good but its just what was best for the theme of those particular stories and has no bearing on how the word magic should or shouldn't be used in other stories.


So I say: in order for magic to be magic, it must explicitely stand outside of whatever system of physical laws the world has.

That's a miracle, which is not the same thing as magic in English.

[Reddish Mage]

I think it depends on how magical the explanation is:

I find tortured, deflationary and especially literalization of metaphor sorts of magical explanations really kill the mood for me.

I hated it when Harry Potter explained Voldemort's powers by Horcruxes and his goal all along was to get the Deathly Hallows.

I hated it the explanation they come up with for how Alchemy worked in Fullmetal Alchemist There's a door to another world in some weird pocket dimension alchemists access and alchemy works by requesting a bunch of disembodied hands to exchange substances.

I hate it when The Librarians makes constant vague reference symbols as the source of all magic, with demonstrations proving that any neophyte could create magic by helter-skelter doing stuff like combining a globe, a door, and a pair of spark plugs (Voila! Instant portal to anywhere in the world!).

[Closet_Skeleton]

I hated it when Harry Potter explained Voldemort's powers by Horcruxes and his goal all along was to get the Deathly Hallows.

I haven't seen the film but that isn't true in the books.

Voldemort's goal is to make himself immortal, as powerful as possible and be able to treat people around him as he wants to. Deathly Hallows are just neat things he would grab if he had the opportunity but only ever deliberately seeks out one of them for reasons unrelated to it being part of a group of items.

Horcuxes aren't the source of his powers, they actually weaken him in return for one ability. All his other powers are the same kind of magic everyone else has, just stronger due to talent and experience.


I hated it the explanation they come up with for how Alchemy worked in Fullmetal Alchemist There's a door to another world in some weird pocket dimension alchemists access and alchemy works by requesting a bunch of disembodied hands to exchange substances.

Not in any version of FMA I've seen or read, but I never finished the manga.

It works by spending energy (either from souls and/or geothermal in the manga/brotherhood or just souls in the first anime. The disembodied hands are just a visualisation of crossing dimensions.

[Rodin]

That's a miracle, which is not the same thing as magic in English.

I disagree with this somewhat. Miracle implies divine intervention, whereas magic is performed by human agency.

A tree falling on me suddenly getting levitated out of the way while I'm alone and with no explanation would be a miracle.

A tree falling on me suddenly getting levitated out of the way by Harry Potter would be magic.

Both break the laws of physics as we know them. One is a mystical being taking a direct interest and using super-human powers. The other is a human utilizing natural forces to do things that, to us in the real world, would be impossible, but which are possible for humans to learn how to do in their world.

Miracle also implies good things, although I'm not as up on my etymology on it as I'd like to cover that part.

[McStabbington]

Well, most people seem to agree with me, so I'll just add my $.02 and be on my merry. The short answer to whether adding rules to magic is bad in itself: only if you do it terribly.

The slightly longer answer to your question is that everything should have at least a few basic and consistent rules for how it works. The Warp Drive in Star Trek is basically magic that allows them to travel from place to place in convenient units of time. Yet it has working parts, it breaks if not teched-teched in the right way, and it has clear, definable limits on what it can and cannot do. These are the rules that underpin the magic of warp travel, and you will note that Trek became steadily less popular the more audiences perceived that those rules were being ignored or casually tossed aside by the writers. The rules need not jive with the way we perceive reality or science to work, but they need to be internally-consistent and obeyed by the characters even if they are not explained for the audience to accept them.

Beyond that, it strikes me that what you are really grappling with is not a magic problem. It's a story problem. You have a character fighting an illusionist, and defeating them through understanding how illusion magic works, and you need to know whether a) you need an infodump to explain this, and b) whether it needs to be at this point in the story. The answer to a) is yes, while the answer to b) is no. If you want to have your illusionist-fighting expert explain to the ignorant everyman how he beat the monster later in the story, that would work perfectly. Heck, that's a primary reason why the ignorant everyman is such a common character archtype: they allow the writers to answer audience questions without being super-obvious about it.

[NichG]

For the infodump, rather than the ignorant everyman, there's a method I've seen in a few places that I tend to like.

Basically, you give hints at the information earlier on. Then, during the point where the protagonist puts it together and uses it to succeed, you flash back to the key sentence or two of those points in italics. So that way rather than a big authoritative info dump that seems to come out of nowhere, the audience sees explicitly that the protagonist had exactly the same information they did all along.

[Frozen_Feet]

Magic thinking is a psychology topic named after magic, not a summation of magic as a concept throughout human history.

For one thing, magical thinking is behind plenty of out of date beliefs that weren't historically considered to be magic.

Yes, and? Just because all instances of magical thinking aren't considered magic, doesn't change the fact that what we do consider magic is rooted in the psychological phenomenom. Just as well the ability to see a face in clouds is rooted in the same mechanism that allows us to see faces in paintings, regardless of whether the former is considered more surprising than the latter.

[Mx.Silver]

Not exactly; what it does is demystify it. In other words, it will undermine an attempt to present it as a mystical, otherworldly, force beyond the general purview of most humans. If, on the other hand, magic is presented as more of an expert skill then explanations are going to be rather more in keeping with it.
So whether it works or not is therefore going to depend on why you're including magic in your story in the first place.





Basically, you give hints at the information earlier on. Then, during the point where the protagonist puts it together and uses it to succeed, you flash back to the key sentence or two of those points in italics. So that way rather than a big authoritative info dump that seems to come out of nowhere, the audience sees explicitly that the protagonist had exactly the same information they did all along.

Seems inelegant: if you've already foreshadowed it effectively then you won't need to repeat yourself.
There is also the fact that it involves using 'film language' in a book, which can be awkward.

Honestly, as a general rule you're better off keeping any explanation down to the minimum amount the reader needs to follow the story - focussing more on what it does than how it does it, until the mecahnics of 'how' becomes directly relevant.

[Wardog]

I think the biggest problem in this instance is probably that the "scientific" explanation here is incredibly unsatisfying, and thus it makes a terrible replacement for the mystical explanation. It's also pretty left-field when compared to what you see reinforced in the rest of the series.

Could you have a scientific explanation that replaces the mystical explanation? Sure, but it should be significantly more interesting than the mystical explanation...and it'd be nice if it didn't render the mystical explanation a load of hogwash in-universe.

My headcanon:

The "Midichlorians Theory" was just another example of how the Republic-era Jedi had lost their way.

It wasn't until he'd spent a couple of decades meditating in a swamp that Yoda achieved enlightenment, realised the true nature of the Force (Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship). (And also went slightly crazy in the process).

***

Anyway, on topic:

There were and are lots of traditional folk-beliefs about magic, and these generally did have rules, and did have explanations. Plants that look like particular body parts are good medicine for treating diseases of those body parts. (Why? Well, why would they look like that if they didn't). Wearing a talisman made from a particular animal grants you powers related to that animal (obviously). Ritually acting out a hunt or other important event will help it succeed. (But preparing for a successful result without doing the proper rituals will jinx it). Etc.

We now know that the universe doesn't work this way (it does have rules - just different ones). But if the world had turned out differently, we could have all sorts of magic actually existing, and have rules and explanations for it, and the world would still be "magical".

I think the reason that "explained magic" often fails as a trope is because the author tried to mash together ideas based on pre-modern understandings of the world with modern science, in such a way that they just don't make sense when taken together. (E.g. having death/sickness/decay magic in opposition to life/health/growth magic makes sense if life depends on having a vital essence, and illness is caused by imbalanced humours/miasma/evil spirits. It doesn't make sense if sickness and decay are natural biological processes involving other (micro) organisms living and growing healthily).

[Marillion]

For example, in Patrick Rothfuss's The Kingkiller Chronicle books, much of the story is about the trials and tribulations of the protagonist, Kvothe, learning different types of magic. The books frequently go into great detail and often plot points hinge on the understanding of how the magic does (or doesn't) work.


I especially liked how he knows about some forms of magic, but doesn't know about others.

"Don't get this wet, it'll explode."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"You know nothing about alchemy."
"Pfft, whatever."
[it gets wet, explodes.]
"....I know nothing about alchemy."

[veti]

There were and are lots of traditional folk-beliefs about magic, and these generally did have rules, and did have explanations. Plants that look like particular body parts are good medicine for treating diseases of those body parts.

(Believe it or not, that one is still with us. I saw someone on TV peddling it, only a year or so ago. It's amazing the lengths people will go to to sell books.)


Wearing a talisman made from a particular animal grants you powers related to that animal (obviously).

Makes psychological sense, up to a point. If you wear a bear claw as a souvenir, it reminds you of that time you took down a freakin' bear. Surely you're not going to be afraid of some piffling Vikings after that, are you?


Ritually acting out a hunt or other important event will help it succeed.

Also makes a lot of sense. In any kind of team event, it's important to make sure that all your people know their roles and their teammates. One way to do that is to have a rehearsal, a pretend-event before the real one. That's why the army conducts training exercises. Even if you're going solo, it can help to visualise and practise exactly what you're planning to do.

One that I don't have an explanation for is "if you dress up a doll as your enemy, then abuse it, those things will happen to your enemy." That's a very widespread and long-lasting belief, and pop culture staple to this day.

[huttj509]

One that I don't have an explanation for is "if you dress up a doll as your enemy, then abuse it, those things will happen to your enemy." That's a very widespread and long-lasting belief, and pop culture staple to this day.

In a world where you're not likely to see your enemy again, it could be very cathartic.

[goto124]

I haven't seen the film but that isn't true in the books.

Voldemort's goal is to make himself immortal, as powerful as possible and be able to treat people around him as he wants to. Deathly Hallows are just neat things he would grab if he had the opportunity but only ever deliberately seeks out one of them for reasons unrelated to it being part of a group of items.

Horcuxes aren't the source of his powers, they actually weaken him in return for one ability. All his other powers are the same kind of magic everyone else has, just stronger due to talent and experience.

Yeap. The explanation given, well, explains the plot rather nicely. Like why Harry's chasing the Horcruxes (they're preventing Voldemort from dying), why he must use special means to destroy them (of course you'll set a lot of magic protections on stuff that's literally keeping you alive), why he has to destroy every last one of them (as long as there's 1 Horcrux, it anchors Voldemort to the mortal world and keeps him alive), why so few people use them for immortiality (it corrupts your soul), etc.

Which should be the purpose of magic in stories. To explain why the characters are acting in this and that way. Internal consistency and somesuch.