Hey subfuries! Have you ever read a story where the characters are going about their questy-business when they find themselves in a
mysterious place steeped in ancient magic and there are mysterious wizards who do sparkling mysterious magic things and the magic is...
...never explained? Well chances are that you're reading a story with a soft magic system.
This is part two of three of a writing series and last video we talked about hard magic systems - how to design them and how
they fit into fictional worlds.
I recommend watching that to give the full discussion.
But to paraphrase: a hard magic system has clearly defined rules,
consequences, and limitations that govern what one can or cannot do with magic.
Soft magic systems on the other hand, often have a vague, undefined, or
mysterious set of rules and limitations to being used.
Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is probably the most famous example of this. Middle-Earth is full of magical things,
places, and people from Agent Elrond to Saruman to your mother-in-law.
But we don't really know how magic works - its limits, or what it requires.
We know Gandalf is a wizard and all, but if you asked him about the specific limitations or costs of his wizarding magic powers,
Gandalf gets a little vague.
[Epic Sax]
Now while hard magic systems are largely about how you design
magic to work, soft magic is more about how it can be worked into a good narrative
and that's what we'll be talking about today. This can boil down to thinking about three things:
tension, point-of-view, and unpredictability.
Brandon Sanderson writes stories with very hard magic, but his three laws of magic apply to writing stories
anywhere on the spectrum from hard to soft and
Sanderson's first law is still incredibly important to soft magic stories.
So firstly, tension.
How well you can resolve tension and solve problems is essential to making a good story.
This is where having a soft magic system can make things more difficult, because tension is
Incredibly difficult to build if your reader has no idea of the capabilities of your characters.
But that's the thing about soft magic -  the reader may not understand much about the limits or costs of it in your story.
They don't know when your swashbuckling heroes are faced with a real challenge. Whether the wizard can turn around with a wise bearded look, say
[Epic Sax 2]
then magic them away from danger.
Using soft magic, the reader cannot predict or doesn't understand to resolve conflicts can feel like the author is just screaming:
throwing a Deus Ex Machina in your face and expecting you to get on with your sorry life.
Does this mean that you can never use soft magic to resolve tension?
The answer is, of course not!
Magic systems can be anywhere on the spectrum from hard to soft and there are plenty of stories that find a great balance between the two.
Harry Potter is a relatively good example of this. Throughout the books, very few real limitations can be applied to magic as a whole.
There could be a spell to accomplish almost anything a wizard might need. Want to kill someone?
There's a spell for that. Want to repel muggles? There's a spell for that
Why drink to forget when you can just erase the memories
And Rowling regularly introduces new spells for things when she needs them, like Expecto Patronum in the third book when creating
spirit animals made of happiness became important to the plot. But Harry Potter himself has limited powers,
he can't just make up a spell on the spot to do whatever he needs
His capabilities are limited to the spells he has learned and trained to use throughout the book. The tension is built up maintained and resolved well
because when magic does solve problems in these stories, the reader understood Harry's capabilities
even if those abilities came from a soft magic system.
Readers don't feel cheated because even though
It doesn't feel like
Now while readers may feel cheated if soft magic is used to miraculously resolve tension
It's virtually never a problem if it causes tension.
It's a lot easier to have antagonists with vague or undefined powers than protagonists.
This is why we might not understand the powers of the Mind Flare in Stranger Things
but it still makes for an interesting villain.
While we do understand Eleven's powers to an extent because her powers are used to solve problems in the narrative.
It's just important to remember to be consistent with that villain's powers later on.
Likewise, it's perfectly okay to create challenges that the characters must solve with unexplained magic. So feel free to be the
ALL-POWERFUL, MANIACAL OVERLORD YOU ARE AND WREAK HAVOC ON THE LIVES OF YOUR CHARACTERS AND MAKE THEM SORRY THAT THEY WERE EVER BORN
Secondly, we need to talk about how soft magic fits in with your point of view characters.
Whether you want to tell your story from the viewpoint of a magical or a non-magical character may change how you write.
While this is in no way a rule, stories with softer magic tend to not be written from the perspective of magic users.
For example, The Black Company has a very soft magic system, and there are even main characters who use it regularly,
but it's told from the perspective of Croaker, a non-magical character.
There are a number of reasons an author might want to do this. One: if magic exists outside the point of view, you can align
the reader with the main character, who may view magic as this mystical and unknown force in the world.
That may be something that you want your reader to experience.
Sanderson writes in his essay, the First Law of Magic that
And that sense of the mysterious unknown can be harder to achieve if writing from the perspective of someone who must
understand something of your magic. My favorite example of this is the Hobbit because
Tolkien tells his story through the eyes of Bilbo - a hobbit and handkerchief enthusiast.
He adds to the tension in the story by using Bilbo's perspective.
It reinforces that sense of the unknown in Mirkwood forest because Bilbo cannot possibly predict what enchantment spells or
kind-of racist elf kings he might face in there.
It would be far more difficult for Tolkien to create that
mysterious tension if the story was told by Gandalf; who would know a lot more about what to expect.
But let's say that you want to write your soft magic story from the perspective of a witch or a wizard.
How would you do that? There are an infinite number of ways that you can do this without breaking Sanderson's first law.
But we are only going to talk about two that are particularly common and add really interesting dynamics to a story.
One way is to write characters who have magic, but do not control it directly,
that only your eponymous hero can wield the ancient magical sword of plot convenience
that also happens to indicate he should be king for some reason.
"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government!"
This trope can be seen all over the place - in King Arthur or Rincewind in The Light Fantastic
But Daenerys Targaryen is an excellent example of this. In a Song of Ice and Fire, Daenerys has this thing called Valyrian magic,
which we know has a lot to do with fire and blood
but
Not much more than that
It's Valyrian magic that allows Dany to bond with dragons
and survive standing in a funeral pyre at the end of the first book. But George R.R. Martin said
In other words, it was an example of very soft magic. But while Dany is magical it's not an ability that she controls
It doesn't break Sanderson's first law because it is used to make her story more interesting
without resolving the conflicts in her story
It's not the hero's magical ability to wield the sword that no one else can that allows them to defeat your totally-not-generic Dark Lord
It's that your hero worked and learned how to wield the sword.
Fundamentally soft magic can facilitate the resolution of your conflict
but not resolve it in and of itself. That comes across as
[Epic Sax 3]
A second way to write from the viewpoint of a soft magic character is with an element of unpredictability
While hard magic relies heavily on it being predictable and consistent,
Soft magic is allowed to be a lot more unpredictable.
Having not just the reader, but the characters themselves be unsure of the limits or capabilities of their magic can be really interesting
and it retains that feeling of mysticism without you needing to explain how it works precisely.
The character Melisandre in A Song of Ice and Fire is a fantastic example of this.
She is one of the few viewpoint characters who actively try to use magic to accomplish things
But not only does the reader not fully understand the limits or rules of her powers
But neither does she entirely.
For example in the second book, she performs a huge sacrificial ritual for Stannis Baratheon
Believing it would transform him into the 'savior of the world and English grammar.'
"Fewer" (?)
but it didn't.
She can call on the Lord of Light for guidance and other times, it just doesn't work.
While she is powerful the rules of her magic aren't as clear as 'magical action [x] = magical effect [y]'
But the focus of unpredictable magic should not be on its ability to solve problems,
rather its role in the story should center around-
~Guess what~
Its unpredictability, and how that can enrich your narrative.
Soft magic can add fantastical elements to a story in a way that is difficult to do with hard magic
And authors who do that well truly enhance their writing.
For example in many scenarios where characters do use unpredictable magic,
it can often go horribly wrong and create more problems for the characters.
In the Death Gate cycle, the more powerful, the magic the more drastic the unpredictable side effects will be.
When one character performs necromancy, another random person will die
One of my favorite variations of unpredictable magic is from the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett
which, if you haven't read, is the perfect balance between fantasy comedy and dreadful existentialism
In his books magic has something of a personality
It isn't easy to control and can simply decide to do things on its own
If you really want to set your soft magic system apart,
consider how its unpredictability could play into your story -
thinking about how hard it is to control - perhaps giving it some form of sentience that makes it not just a tool to be used
But something to be incredibly wary of for your characters
and this is a major difference between hard and soft magic where hard magic will go wrong because the
Practitioners didn't understand the rules or limits of the magic, soft magic is more likely to go wrong simply because of its nature.
Unpredictable magic can actually increase tension with a sense of risk to using it and is less likely to feel like
[Epic Sax 4]
If the reader never loses that feeling of unpredictability or risk of disaster,
What's difficult for authors is working to maintain that feeling.
Of course, none of this means that your soft magic has to be unpredictable
This is just one way to make soft magic interesting
Especially if you're writing from the viewpoint of magic users.
Thirdly you have to ask how many magic systems do you want?
Oftentimes fantasy stories only have one magic system like the Inheritance cycle, the Belgariad, or Star Wars
But it is possible to include more than one magic system in your story if you like.
In the Kingkiller Chronicles, there is sympathy which is a much harder magic system
But there's also things like naming magic or fae magic that are far softer
In a Song of Ice and Fire, there's an all-you-can magic buffet with the faceless man,
The Old Gods, the Lord of Light, the Others the Children of the Forest, and Valyrian magic.
Few of them have much or anything to with one another and they are a mix of harder and softer magic systems.
You can write a story with both and which style is best is simply up to what fits best for your narrative.
Though, if you really want to distinguish your novel, you might want to use multiple magic systems
It's not particularly common
And I often feel that it's a missed opportunity that hasn't been adequately explored in fantasy
Having multiple can add to the mysteriousness of your world while having one may help establish that sense of predictability and consistency
Required for hard magic
And fourthly, style.
Soft magic systems have an advantage of being extremely versatile and flexible
Authors are free to include a ritualistic magic,
spell magic, theater core magic that calls on demons and angels or ley lines that create wells of magical energy
They can use all of that without it feeling out of place
Hard magic systems, on the other hand, typically rely on one or a few styles at most
They need to be restricted for there to be clear rules.
At its heart / fundamentally...
This was part two of a three part series analyzing magic systems, and you voted for it so the third part
I want to examine a particular magic system in detail
Avatar The Last Airbender - How it's developed, how it fits in with Sanderson's third law of magic in particular, and where it works
Or doesn't work within the narrative.
Question of the day
Which do you prefer? And why?
Hard or soft
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
And I'm talking about magic systems.
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And thank you very much for the massive response to my last video. I'll see you in the future
