Magic Is a Problem by B.L. Jasper

Or, Defying God in the Machine

The most frustrating and yet fantastic element of magic is the way it solves problems. We build magic into our stories because it helps our protagonist, and frankly, it’s cool. But what happens when all of your story’s problems are too easily solved by magic? Do you make bigger and stronger baddies? Does something come along to incapacitate our protagonist?

Or perhaps your magic system is too generous, and it’s time to return to the drawing board.

I like to look at magic in the same way I look at technology. Technology solves problems, but it also creates them. In abundance. For every one problem technology solves, it raises another three.

Let’s look at the example of the automobile. Cars are great for allowing individual travel between two locations at great speed; they don’t tire like a horse might (though they will need gasoline refills); and you can stuff four or more people in there! Yet the invention of the automobile brought about new problems. Suddenly laws around safe driving were required after too many car crashes. You had to apply for a license, which required bureaucracy that didn’t previously exist. Fuel had to be extracted in bigger and bigger quantities to meet demand, and environmental regulation took a while to catch up. Not to mention the emissions!

The car solved many problems, and yet it created a hundred more. Peer closely at any element of technology, and find much the same. Now, I challenge you to look at your magic system with the same critical eye. Yes, magic can solve many problems, but it can also create them. And that’s the crux of my point: Magic always has a cost.

Whenever I begin building a new magic system, one thought is prevalent in my head: what’s it going to cost? Whether that cost is physical, emotional, interpersonal, societal or some combination thereof, I know it’s going to require payment. Maybe they have power that makes them a commodity, and they are being pursued for it. Maybe they have a power which only does what they want three times out of four, making using it a risk. Maybe they have magic which seems endless and abundant, only to find it’s killing a forest along a far away ley line. Maybe it has a physical marker which brings attention to them as other.

But why? Why create a magic system that may kill or endanger the protagonist? 

The answer is simple. Without a cost, magic becomes a deus ex machina, a god in the machine, a tool to abuse getting the protagonist out of trouble. And there’s nothing satisfying about it for the reader. Readers want to see costs weighed, and choices made. They want to tumble into the darkness alongside your protagonist and come out knowing there was no other way—consequences must be lived with, and power is never innocent. They want to see the protagonist stuck between a rock and a hard place, maybe even the fault of their own magic.

Let’s take a recently published example. The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten is a book where the main character Lore is able to wield death magic (Mortem). But when you wield death magic, it draws death through you, and your eyes begin to sink in your face and your lips draw back from your teeth and your skin begins to wrinkle and shrivel. Luckily, it’s a nonpermanent situation, but being able to wield the magic is, of course, forbidden. Unless you are a part of the clergy, where your task would be funneling leaked magic from the tomb of the death goddess herself, so it does not kill crops and people as it escapes.

The main character has magic she is not supposed to. The magic makes her a commodity, and if she is revealed, she’ll be captured for the clergy, which she does not want. The magic is dangerous to the land and the people, and the physical effects of it mark her as other. The magic is also useful in that those who can wield Mortem are the only people who can prevent the death goddess’s sleeping magic from ravaging the world. So, now she has a set of problems based around her magic. They complicate the world, and her place in it. And the bones of an interesting book are built upon the problems magic creates, rather than the solutions it provides.

I challenge you to look at any of your favorite fantasy novels with a critical eye to assess why the magic system works. What is the cost of the magic, and who pays it? How does it impact the story? What struggles does the protagonist have due to the magic, even if they are not a wielder themselves?

In the same way unlimited technology with no consequences sounds like the worst Sci-Fi book ever, unlimited magic with no consequences sounds like the worst Fantasy ever. So next time you sit down to build a magic system, I hope you will ask yourself this one question…

What is the cost?