The Science of Magic: Writing Speculative Elements You Can Feel by Amy V. Borg

Much like the genre name "speculative fiction", "speculative element" is an umbrella term that allows us to talk about both futuristic tech and various magics without getting caught up in particular definitions. And if you're writing any sort of sci-fi or fantasy (or anything in between), speculative elements are one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. In short, they're all those elements that take your writing out of the realm of reality and into the realm of "but what if?"

This is my second article exploring the use and development of speculative elements in your writing, based on a workshop I conducted for Jericho writers back in 2019. If you're looking for a wider overview of developing basic ideas for sci-fi tech or fantasy magic in your writing, check out the first part here. It'll walk you through deciding what you want your speculative elements to do, as well as figuring out how to set limits on your magic or technology -- a major component of maintaining tension in your stories.

But of course, once you've got a sense of the basic workings of your magic, technology, or paranormal elements, it's time to put all that power down on the page. Often, when writing fantasy or sci-fi, it's so easy to get so caught up in the how and why of things that it can bog down our narration and even create confusion for the reader. Much like writing action scenes, writing speculative elements is a particularly tricky part of the craft. And today, I'm going to talk about two techniques to help you get past the "rules" and make your magic something the reader can feel.

Technique One: Metaphor

So back when I was first starting to write fantasy seriously, I was also still really big into video games. This turned out to be a bit of a blessing and a curse. I always had the BEST ideas for amazing action and magic scenes, but when it came time to actually write things out, I found that mana pools and spell scrolls aren't the most... evocative way to describe the limitations and requirements of using magic. It all feels very technical, which is great way to confuse and even alienate your reader.

This can be especially tricky with complex foreground magic systems and heavily utilised technology with a lot of rules, capabilities, and limitations. In these cases, it's often useful to come up with an illustrative metaphor in order to communicate the rules and limitations in a way that your reader can immediately and intuitively grasp.

One of my favourite examples of this is from A Wrinkle in Time, where Mrs. Who and Mrs. Whatsit describe travelling by a tesseract to the far reaches of the universe suchly:

Mrs. Who took a portion of her white robe in her hands and held it tight.

"You see," Mrs. Whatsit said, "if a very small insect were to move from the section of skirt in Mrs. Who's right hand to that in her left, it would be quite a long walk for him if he had to walk straight across."

Swiftly Mrs. Who brought her hands, still holding the skirt, together.

"Now, you see," Mrs. Whatsit said, "he would be there, without that long trip. That is how we travel."

A fitting metaphor will not only translate some of the inherent abilities and limitations of your speculative element, but should ideally also resonate with your readers, and illuminate some of the nature of your world building as a whole.

Technique Two: Sensory Imagery

The other half of translating speculative elements onto the page is showing how those particular elements actually affect the characters who encounter them. While there's a mental component as well, a really effective way to bring this to life is by focusing on the really fundamental writing mechanic of using sensory imagery.

So if we focus on the five sensory elements of touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell, plus your sense of emotion -- all of those are going to be involved when one of your characters encounters a speculative element. Even while you're writing something completely made up, you should still be thinking: what would this feel like, look like, sound like? What emotions would using magic or time travel or that really big gravity gun bring to the surface?

An example from Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet:

Deep down in the bowels of the ship, the bore awoke with a baritone howl. Rosemary was glad that Kizzy had warned her about the bore beforehand. It was the sort of sound that felt capable of ripping bulkheads apart.

Ashby tapped the arm of his chair ten times, evenly spaced. As he tapped, a trembling grew within the hull. The thing on the underside of the ship pulsed and bellowed. The floor panels shuddered. 

With a terrible silence, the sky ripped open.

It swallowed them.

Rosemary looked out the window, and realized that she’d never really seen the colour black before.

It's All about Craft

Finally, it's necessary to remember that writing speculative elements -- just like writing action, tension, or dialogue -- is something that needs to be practiced. Hopefully now that you've got a couple tools for translating your speculative elements onto the page, you'll find that practice just a little bit easier to tackle.