Fantasy Novels: Do The Rules Of Magic Matter To You?

EricNoah said:

I don't think you can have tension and excitement if you don't know what is and what is not possible. A good author will set up a number of "establishing scenes" that help us understand where the limitations are, so later in the story we know whether we are supposed to be worried.

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I agree with this.

Personally, I love novels where the workings of magic are presented in a transparent way. I love when characters (in first person) explain the way specific magic works or at least what they understand. I love when a third person narrator discourses about the magic to reveal its power and pitfalls. I do think it adds tension and a quasi-realism (yeah...that's weird considering it is magic and completely part of an imaginary world).

But, in good stories/fiction, that doesn't mean that under specific circumstances (especially if the seed of growth, change, new learning is plausible) characters can't pull off some incredible feat of magic.

frankthedm said:

Do be consistent.
Give it a cost.
Use english when possible. Don't make up descriptive words just to make your magic sound different. It probably isn't.
Give the audience some basics with "show, don't tell", so the audience can infer the more complex stuff before it is revealed.
NEVER put characters in seemingly inescapable peril followed by a rescue only possible through the working of a magic the audience had no information about. This is an ass pull.
DO NOT LET MAGIC RESTORE LIFE.
What is done must stay done. Save the time travel for Sci-Fi.

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I disagree with the last two those are not rules those are your personal preferences. I have raise dead handled very well in fantasy novels and the same with time travel magic.

I'll try to keep this short...

The rules of magic in any particular fantasy novel matter as much as the author makes them. It depends on what the novels goals are, what magic is in the story.

If magic's ultimately a problem-solving tool upon which critical plot points hinge --ie the book is a kind of magic-procedural-- then the rules matter a lot. If magic is something else, anything else, really, then not so much.

Heck, even if magic is used as problem-solving tool, you can still pull last-minute changes out your posterior if the there are other pleasures to be had in the text --for example, great characters-- in the same way it's possible to create a great mystery/detective story where the mystery (and it's solution) doesn't hold together, or even make any sense.

There isn't one correct way to use magic in fiction, one proper way to world-build. It all depends on what the authors is building the world for. I'm really against the suggestion fantasy --or fiction in general-- should always operate an overtly literal level.

Or, to paraphrase, there are more things in Heaven and Middle Earth, dear Horataio, then imagined in your rational, scientific fantasy novels... not that there's anything wrong with rational, scientific world-building in fantasy, if that's your thing. It just shouldn't be the default thing.

Mallus said:

Or, to paraphrase, there are more things in Heaven and Middle Earth, dear Horataio, then imagined in your rational, scientific fantasy novels... not that there's anything wrong with rational, scientific world-building in fantasy, if that's your thing.

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Except most of the folks here aren't talking about magic being rational. They merely want it to be consistent, and follow it's own rules, rational or otherwise.

Umbran said:

They merely want it to be consistent, and follow it's own rules, rational or otherwise.

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That's (partly) what I meant when I wrote 'rational & scientific'. Rules-y and consistent are included in that.

Let me try to explain where I'm coming from. I don't ask that my science fiction to be consistent and rules-oriented, let alone my fantasy. For example, I'm fine with the 'rules' governing Star Trek transporters being: they generally work fine unless it's dramatically appropriate for them not to, in which case they may simply cease to function, necessitating a little shuttlecraft drama, or malfunction in a metaphoric and/or plot-enabling way, perhaps by splitting you into your co-dependent id and ego, or by creating a doppleganger of a past self.

Mallus said:

That's (partly) what I meant when I wrote 'rational & scientific'. Rules-y and consistent are included in that.

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Ah, okay. Well, it sure doesn't mean that to me. The magical "Law of Sympathy" is by no means rational or scientific. But if the author tells me that the rule applies to magic in the world, I expect the author to stick to that.

Let me try to explain where I'm coming from. I don't ask that my science fiction to be consistent and rules-oriented, let alone my fantasy.

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Well, that's your own problem

For example, I'm fine with the 'rules' governing Star Trek transporters being: they generally work fine unless it's dramatically appropriate for them not to, in which case they may simply cease to function, necessitating a little shuttlecraft drama, or malfunction in a metaphoric and/or plot-enabling way, perhaps by splitting you into your co-dependent id and ego, or by creating a doppleganger of a past self.

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Thing is, there's nothing all that inconsistent about the usual transporter shtick. Transporters work, in general. But they are mechanisms. Mechanisms break, or fail in conditions they weren't designed to deal with. If your car can break down, or not make it up a really muddy hill, why can't a transporter have issues?

And no, the "but if they were that unsafe, they wouldn't use them" argument doesn't hold much water with me. Being in Starfleet at all is incredibly risky. Ships get blown up, eaten, infested with alien fungus, and just slip away into the timestream with great regularity. An occasional transporter malfunction in the highest-risk ships in the known galaxy is not really an issue, to me

In the most recent movie, however, is an instance of them breaking their own rules, and having it irk me considerably. We are given to know that transporter have a limited range, so we need starships. But then a villain, through no known effort, has a transporter that blows that range out of the water, in such a way that should reshape the fictional universe. He can transport between star systems. This feat is more important than any other event in the movie, as it means we no longer even need starships, and it is just glossed over. The death of the very concept of Starfleet is at hand, but meh, who cares?

Every time an author pulls something out of his ass, my first question is always: how did it get in his ass in the first place?

Johnathan

Richards said:

Every time an author pulls something out of his ass, my first question is always: how did it get in his ass in the first place?

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If you have to ask the question....