Why Magic Systems don't feel Magical

in a lot of fiction magic is pretty mechanical  sure it may be weird and volatile but it more or less Works how and when you want it to drink  a health potion your wounds heal recite the magic words summon the monster unsheath your fire  sword fire more or less predictable outcomes some stories even take that to the extreme and make  an entire system out of their magic this table you're looking at right now describes just  one type of magic from Brandon sanderson's mistborn series look how intri

cate this  is and this is just a basic surface level breakdown it gets far more complicated than  this as creatives it's pretty easy to think of magic this way a lot of fantasy authors do  but when you break out of the conventions of high fantasy and think more broadly about what  magic really is what we mean by using this word confusing phenomenon reveals itself throughout all  of these systems fantasy Rule books magical laws it almost seems like the more you know about the  magic you're using

the less magical it is [Music] foreign [Music] got a really great idea for a story but don't  quite know how to put it all together well there's a 12-part class you can take for free that I  think will really help it's certainly helped me creating unique and Powerful worlds taught by  many time author and professor of fiction Lincoln Michelle check the description to see how you  can get access to it and finally get your story project going without spending a dime a big thanks  to skillshare for

sponsoring this video and giving us the opportunity to tell you about it this class  has been a really special one for me and I feel really lucky to get to share it with you this way  definitely check it out when you have the chance here let me paint you a picture four little  Hobbits Frodo Sam Mary and Pippin have found their way to La valorian the realm of the elves  they stand astonished surrounded by the ancient empowering trees the Ethereal silver lights  swaying from the bows The Impossib

le depth of the night the countless stars shining down  on them through the leaves there's not an elf in sight but their magic can be felt everywhere  taken with all of this Sam utters that he'd like to see some true elf magic for himself first hand  and fortunately for him galadrion the lady of the wood is happy to oblige one evening while they're  staying as guests in her realm Frodo and Sam are beckoned to look into what she calls her mirror a  mysterious Basin of water which according to her

will show them each a vision meant only for  them perhaps it will show them their beloved home the Shire which they are so very far away  from perhaps it will show them something to come on their Journey prepare them for when they  must once again leave the safety of the wood it's a gift she's offering them miraculous  and Powerful but the two Hobbits hesitate they are only Hobbits after all they aren't used  to such things and galadriel's power scares them did you not say you wish to see Elf M

agic  she says turning to Sam for this is what your [ __ ] with call Magic I believe though  I do not understand clearly what they mean they do end up looking by the way and what they  see impacts their Journey deeply but that's not what I want to talk about here what's always  stood out to me about this sequence is this strange thing Galadriel says this moment where  one of the most powerful magical beings in their world admits to them that she doesn't know what  magic is something even Hobbits

the smallest of all the world's peoples understand intuitively  it's a fleeting detail in the three volumes in more than a thousand Pages which make up the  Lord of the Rings but also one of the most poignant to me because I think this is how most  people see magic think of a magician performing a trick for a child with a sparkle in his eye  and a theatrical flourish he removes his top head the child watches as he demonstrates that  it is in fact empty in sight she watches as the magician puts

it down on a table nearby and  then she watches in pure Wonder as the magician reaches his hand in a bit further than he should  be able to and pulls out a live rabbit magic right that was magic it had to be at least through  the child's eyes to her this guy just shattered the laws of physics a complete impossibility hats  aren't that deep and a rabbit definitely wouldn't be able to live inside of one for very long  everything she knows about the universe thus far tells her that what she just wi

tnessed cannot be  yet there it was magic for that moment this child is a hobbit in the elves wood but like Galadriel  the magician doesn't see it although he's the one performing it to him it's less magic and more  trick because unlike the child watching he knows how it all works he knows about the hole in  the table and the compartment underneath just big enough for a rabbit he knows how to push open the  bottom of the hat to reach through he knows that the laws of physics are in fact still pe

rfectly  intact for him there's no leap of logic no seeming contradiction in the nature of perception and  the nature of reality he experiences no magic both of these little case studies lead me to  an interesting conclusion about the nature of this thing that we call Magic it seems to me that  magic is not just a matter of perspective but also a matter of understanding the more empirical  rational systematic it is in the mind of the beholder the less magical it appears to be the  trick is just

an allusion to the magician but a breach of physics to the child the mirror is just  a powerful tool to Galadriel but Elf Magic to the hobbits even the most mundane things can appear  magical to someone who lacks context imagine if a creature from some tiny isolated Woodland came  to visit your modern industrialized world and started calling things like water fountains  and mechanical pencils human magic as Arthur C Clarke famously put it any sufficiently  advanced technology is indistinguishabl

e for Magic a phrase underpinned by the idea  that magic represents a gap in understanding but I also don't think that's the whole story it  makes sense to mean that magic requires a gap in our understanding but that also just kind of seems  like a condition for it to exist rather than what it actually is if not getting it where enough to  make a thing magical then every beginner at every task would technically be a wizard in training  every student who ever failed a math problem or a science ex

periment would technically be having a  magical experience think back to our magician what if he were to perform the same trick but this time  for an adult he might wow them sure evoke a moment of Wonder surprise curiosity Fascination but  after that moment passes they'll almost certainly immediately ask themselves how did he do that how  is the trick performed they assume that this thing that they just witnessed works that it makes sense  that it's somehow possible even if they don't get how it

was done they know implicitly that it  was done within the laws of physics unlike the child unlike the hobbits the adult rejects the  impossibility of what they've just seen out of hand this time when the trick is performed between  the magician and the adult there is not one single Speck of magic and that's because magic is  not a phenomenon it's not a thing you do not an action or a system or a set of laws magic is  acceptance the moment of true belief that you are witnessing something which

by your established  systems of understanding should not cannot be a gap in understanding can make that more likely  to happen because a smaller less inclusive system is easier to violate but the Gap itself is not  the magic if you assume there's some rational explanation for a thing you don't yet understand  it's not magical it's just thus far unknown but when you accept that you've genuinely  observed something that really does violate any model or system that you would  otherwise use to expla

in it that is Magic and that kind of puts magic systems in a weird  spot because if what we've come to here is true then that means magic cannot exist in a system  magic is fundamentally system breaking that's what makes it magical of course we also love a  good magic system we've done a few videos on them already and we're probably going to do a whole lot  more in the future but if magic and systems are kind of Polar Opposites that does make things a  little awkward for these very explicit syst

emized hard magic Brandon sandersonian approaches to it  they are a fascinating spectacular narratively they can do almost anything as softer less  structured magic system like the one in Lord of the Rings can do heck sometimes they can do  a whole lot more but the one thing they can't really do be magical any sufficiently advanced  technology may be indistinguishable for magic but likewise any sufficiently advanced magic is  also indistinguishable from science these hard magic systems with thei

r rationality and rules  and detailed inner workings are really a lot more akin to an alternative secondary World science the  story surrounding them tend to be a lot less about experiencing magic and a lot more about exploring  the fascinating what-ifs these alternative rule sets enable and it really is a blast to watch the  characters figure it all out turn these new rules to their advantage it's a similar feeling to the  one you might get when figuring out how to employ a magical power in a v

ideo game it's not the  Wonder of the hobbits in La Florian or the child watching the magic trick we're feeling in these  moments it's the very real moving gratification of solving a puzzle if you do want to feel  that magic look to less systemized approaches soft magic instead of hard magic that has some  like to call it when you leave the workings of these new rules and Powers vague when they're  allowed to be a little less rigidly defined and a little more fluid it puts the audience in a  hea

dspace a little closer to that of the child watching the magic trick in Harry Potter we're not  following Dumbledore or Voldemort we're following a child encountering Magic For the First Time  In The Wizard of Oz We're not following the good witch Glinda or Oz himself we're with Dorothy  looking at this fantasy world with fresh eyes most of the time in Lord of the Rings we're not  following Gandalf or Galadriel we're experiencing things as a hobbit would through eyes which see  Elf Magic is stra

nge and rule-breaking and awesome enjoy World building enjoy magic systems  enjoy finding clever ways to explain all the weird stuff that happens in  your stories but also remember that the most powerful magic happens when we  simply accept that it cannot be explained however even an inherently magical world still  has some rules being okay with magic just being magical doesn't necessarily answer the question of  complexity with all your other World building does it it can be hard to figure out

how this whole  fictional World thing works but fortunately I recently found something that will absolutely  help you it's a 12-part video series called creating unique and Powerful worlds taught by  many time author and professor of fiction link and Michelle he walks you through how to begin your  new world what the Ripple effects of that starting idea will be like across your world how to create  themes within your world how to create characters to experience the world you've made and then  fi

nally how to put all of these things together the prospect of creating an entire world can be  really paralyzing but it doesn't have to be this course will absolutely help bring the size of the  task down to something you can really understand and manage I can say from personal experience that  it is so liberating just to have a road map for a project like this and thanks to our sponsors  skillshare you can actually watch it for free I personally would sign up for this course alone but  you also

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rted and I would definitely hurry because those  slots are going to fill up fast once you've finished this class creating unique and Powerful  worlds please come back and tell us the impact it's had on you as a Storyteller I cannot wait  to hear the success stories anyway that's all for this one thanks for watching and keep  making stuff up I'll see you next week bye [Music] [Music]