This will probably be the shortest post in this series.
A key question for any fantasy world, regardless of sub-genre, is who can learn or perform magic?
There are myriad approaches to answering the question, many of which mix a couple answers simultaneously. But, I think the answers can be boiled down to three possibilities:
1) Magic use is genetic among the world’s primary species (usually humans).
Mages are those who inherit the talent from their parents. Their parents may or may not be mages themselves, as with all genetics it is possible for latent traits to skip a generation or two. This is the wizard/witch magic of Harry Potter, Eragon, and a lot of current urban fantasy. Study is usually required, to control the talent, but without the talent the magic doesn’t work.
2) Anyone can learn magic if they simply study hard enough or are initiated properly.
Magic is simply a matter of being initiated into the right mysteries or studying the right subject(s) in school. Anyone can potentially become a mage. This is a more historical magic, particularly according to 15th to 18th century European and American writings on witchcraft—there involving a pact with a devil—or records regarding astrology, alchemy, and related magics in the same era—most of the magicians were educated men who learned “occult arts” while they were learning philosophy, medicine, and law. The important part is that no special, genetic, talent is needed to learn.
3) Every species has its own kind of magic.
A more involved worldbuild, but one that has significant use in the genre, is one in which every species possesses its own variety of magic. In these cases, magic may still be learnable or innate depending on the species. Middle Earth is a great example, in which the elves had their own magic, the Istari had their own, and other species had theirs. Likewise, Michael Moorcock’s Melniboné can be included as different species have access to different magics—Melnibonéans versus humans—due to ancient pacts with Law, Chaos, and elemental beings. Or White Wolf’s World of Darkness line—mage magic is different from shapeshifter magic is different from fae magic is different from vampiric magic.
Based on a long time reading in the genre, those are the three broad approaches that come to mind as I consider this topic. Whether there are others, well, I’m sure there might be and I’d be happy to hear about them because as much as I’ve read in the genre, there’s probably 10x as much that I haven’t been able to get to.
You gave me more to think about magic! I had not considered the third option, each species has it’s own kind of magic. I am still trying to figure out the magic system for my series, The Veil Saga. What is magic like in the world you are creating?
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Which one?
Currently, I have one novel draft in editing (world A – one magic system), one draft being written (worlds B & C – two different systems), and am building a rather complex setting (worlds D, E, & F – one system for all three).
Each has a mix of all three elements from this post, though. I may put together more on that for Friday.
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Wow! So you are creating five different worlds at that same time! That’s impressive. Are they all for the same book or different books?
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One’s a more or less complete second draft.
One’s on chapter 10 (two worlds).
One’s nothing but a thought experiment (3 worlds) right now. Really, I had a magic system to play with and couldn’t decide whether to go trad fantasy, urban fantasy, or science fantasy, so I’m doing all three.
Technically, since I’ve established a multiverse in the “completed” piece, they’re all part of the same in that they can all be part of the same multiverse.
I compulsively build worlds, have done so for many, many years now for stories and RPGs (mostly GURPS, but also AD&D). I think I have Word files for 150+ so far in various stages of development.
I find it’s better for me to work multiple projects at once.
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There are at least 8 different worldbuilds represented by stories on my other blog: https://disjointedfiction.wordpress.com/
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GURPS! I use to play GURPS! I loved all the material they had and how they made it real easy to build characters and worlds.
That sounds like quite the undertaking. Are you planning on independently publishing or traditional?
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At this point, I don’t have time to go through the publication process (been there before), so I’m just writing to write.
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Best wishes with your writing!
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