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When building a magic system, authors are faced with a balancing act. If they restrict their magic too much, then it won’t be cool and interesting. That defeats the whole point of magic! On the other hand, if an author doesn’t put enough restrictions on … read more »
Is there any way to set up a divinely mandated masquerade in a setting involving deities from historical pantheons? The myths I’m going on don’t have a precedent for non-interventionism, as (for example) the Greek and Norse deities regularly got involved in mortals’ lives. I’m … read more »
Characters are overpowered for all kinds of reasons, but the effect is always the same. Either the character overcomes challenges way too easily or the author has to insert a massive contrivance to keep the conflict going. Neither outcome is satisfying, so if you ever … read more »
Recently, I wrote an article on ways to explain the urban fantasy masquerade. As soon as it was published, I realized my mistake. In my excitement to offer what solutions I could, I’d forgotten to tear down all the stories you like. *cough* I mean, … read more »
Mages are difficult to oppress, what with how they can teleport and shoot fire out of their hands, but that doesn’t stop authors from trying. Some stories manage to get past the practical barriers of oppressing mages before running into the socio-political ones, but we’re … read more »
Speculative fiction storytellers will go a long way to make fantastical situations feel plausible. Sure, they will never be perfectly plausible because magic isn’t real, but it’s still no good if our audience is wondering why the hero won’t use teleportation during our tense climax. … read more »
The term oppressed mages refers to any situation in which characters are systematically marginalized for their supernatural abilities, whether those powers come from spellbooks or mutant genes. When I first wrote about this trope, I mostly stuck to general points rather than going after specific … read more »
How do I mix magic and science fiction tech without it feeling haphazard or unbalanced? – Anon Hi Anon, From a storytelling standpoint, magic and scifi tech are nearly identical except for theming. If you’re not careful with things that feel different in theme, it … read more »
Let’s face it: most of us really want to attend a special school where they teach you magic spells. The only problem is that these schools all seem to be incredibly dangerous. Sometimes they’re filled with monsters, other times there’s an evil teacher out to … read more »
I’ve noticed recently that a lot of my favourite stories centre around gods or god-like beings, such as more or less all of mythology, Doctor Who, The Sandman. Discworld’s Death books, the RG Veda manga, the Oh My Goddess anime, the Haruhi Suzumiya anime, the … read more »