Magic Can Endanger Your Writing Career

Fantasy writing comes with a label warning: Magic is dangerous and can imperil your writing career. Because for writers, and namely fantasy writers, magic is real. It has to be real to hook the readers. But Magic can get out of hand. Instead of making the story, it may destroy it. Magic in books enters reality through the editor's office. Be careful, therefore, to keep it under control.

Magic is a common ingredient for fantasy writers and quite some others, too. But like herbs with pharmaceutical properties, too much of it can kill. The wrong kind of magic kills, too. Admittedly, it only kills a story, but that could be fatal to a writing career. Using magic in a story has to be done with planning and in an appropriate dosage. We all know what happened to the sorcerer's apprentice when magic got out of control. And all writers using magic are putting on the apprentice's shoes when they introduce it into a story.

People who can't do magic always assume that magic would make life easier. As any magician can tell them, it makes everything much more complicated. Ask any writer if you don't believe me. If you don't keep a tight grip on it, magic will go on the run like a startled horse. Magic has to be reined in. The halter to do that is logic.

You can get away with a little bit of sloppy logic in a criminal or mystery novel. You can't do that with magic. If you so much as take your eyes of it, it will skip its boundaries and haunt you every few pages afterwards. The physical world is ruled by laws well established by science; with magic, you don't have any of these easy props to help you. When writers start out on that journey, they have to make all the rules and apply them ruthlessly. If they don't, the whole construct of the story will fall apart like a card house.

Magic needs to be limited, because if it can do everything, there is no point in writing the story. Everything could have been done by magic before any problems even start. Even gods need their limits, or they tear reality apart. An example of how things can go wrong can be found in 'The Redemption of Althalus' by David and Leigh Eddings. While the story-line might be quite amusing, it doesn't make sense, and that spoils the enjoyment of the book extremely. But if you want to learn how not to do magic, read it.

Perversely, I can give you the same writers David and Leigh Eddings to read on how to do it. Their five book series 'The Belgariad' is a prime example on how magic does work in a story. They have put down tips on writing in 'The Rivan Codex'; if you are able to overlook the self-adulation in the book, it is a useful writing guide for aspiring fantasy authors. All books are available on Kindle.

Further reading
The Redemption Of Althalus
Book 3 Of The Belgariad
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