"Why Magic in a Story Should Make Sense" up at Fantastic Worlds

[jordan179]

N. K. Jemisin argues, in "But, but, but - WHY does magic have to make sense?"

http://nkjemisin.com/2012/06/but-but-but-why-does-magic-have-to-make-sense/

that magic in a story shouldn't have to make sense, because

This is magic we’re

Comments

[kalance]

It's weird that the blogger would refer to magic as a "force of nature", and then suggest that's why it didn't need to make sense.

Nature makes sense. Wind, rain, tornadoes, hurricanes, they all make sense and follow specific patterns and have rules. You can predict them for the most part (though some of the variables often escape us). An earthquake doesn't just spontaneously "happen"; there are causes, effects, and limits.

So if we're going to label magic as just another natural force, why shouldn't it be held to the same standard as the rest of them?

[jordan179]

Yes, precisely. If magic is a "natural force" in a given storyverse, then it obeys and is part of Natural Law, like any other "natural force." The rules may be different, but they would still be rules. Whether or not they are completely understood by the characters.

Indeed, it's difficult to see how totally chaotic magic would even be possible consistent with a world which in any other way looked anything like our own, or which would be capable of supporting human life.

[cutelildrow]

Diane Duane's Young Wizardry series is a good series for you to read, I think. Wizards are Creations IT and Repair department, and how magic works evolves on a local scale no less. She averts the phlebotium hard.

And if you want a series that sees magic as a literal natural force, I recommend Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms series. I think you'll be delighted by the storytelling- I am, and she's clearly having a fun time with the series. Also, Jim Butcher's Codex Alera. "Write a story using the concepts of Pokemon and the Lost Roman legion

[polaris93]

Aleister Crowley said that "Magick is the Art and Science of causing change in conformity with Will." In other words, engineering, by another name. Will, or purpose, is characteristic of all life -- every living thing strives to survive and pass on or protect its genes, which striving is, of course, willful behavior. And in some cases that striving manifests in strange ways, such as plants' use of quantum mechanical aspects of physical reality to make the efficiency of photosynthesis 95% -- higher than any other known physical process. That form of information processing entails electron tunneling and other "action at a distance" phenomena -- and fits the common idea of Magick as causing results by means of the mind alone, operating over a distance. Animal brains do the same sort of thing to achieve high efficiency in their information proce3ssing. Similarly, Siberian shamans have been observed by qualified anthropologists to do things that amount to wizardry, while Australian aborigines have frequently demonstrated

[polaris93]

Another thought: To do anything, a living creature must expend energy, and this is as true of us as any other type of organism. Likewise, in doing anything, an organism makes the total entropy of the universe increase, even if it decreases locally, and this applies to us. This is the common life experience of all readers, even those that wouldn't know what entropy was if it came up to them and bit them ("Down, Murphy, down!"). If in a given story these things donot hold true for wizards or anyone else, the reasons why had better be given, or the reader will become disinterested and won't keep reading. Since Magick can only be done by living creatures, the operation of increasing entropy and the depletion of energy had better apply to the wizard, the king, the peasant, the scientist, etc. -- or if not, the reasons these don't apply have to be consistent with the natural laws underlying the storyverse, and make sense to the reader. Otherwise the story soon deviates so widely from the reader's most basic and personal perceptions of

[marycatelli]

Except in reality the biggest violation of the laws of physics you usually get in SF is that the fuel requirements for what they do would be prohibitive in real life.

[polaris93]

That's true. At my age, and with my interests, it's hard for me to suspend disbelief in the face of the sort of scientific faux pas that are so common in too much science fiction, whether it has to do with thermodynamics or cosmology or astrophysics or whatever. Like clumsily described Magick, such scientific illiteracy goes a long way to spoil even otherwise good stories. Maybe I'm just too picky.

[marycatelli]

Eh, we all have our strengths that the book has to encompass to suspend disbelief. I tend to get annoyed with people who have no concept of the history of ideas, or who try to pass off sophomoric musings as their Wise Man's Wisdom.