The Great Net Spellbook & Prayerbook. Magical World Builder. By, Stephanie Cottrell Bryant <map name="admap78618" id="admap78618"><area href=" shape="rect" coords="0,0,468,60" title="" alt="" target="_blank" /></map><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width:468px;border-style:none;background-color:#ffffff;"><tr><td><img src=" style="width:468px;height:60px;border-style:none;" usemap="#admap78618" alt="" /></td></tr><tr><td style="background-color:#ffffff;" colspan="1"><center><a style="font-size:10px;color:#0000ff;text-decoration:none;line-height:1.2;font-weight:bold;font-family:Tahoma, verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-transform: none;letter-spacing:normal;text-shadow:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:normal;" href=" target="_blank">Ads by Project Wonderful!
Your ad here, right now: $0</a></center></td></tr></table> The Magical World Builder's Guide is a tool for creating a fantasy universe. Fantasy, like all fiction, is a function of the imagination. In another classic fantasy example, Ursula K. Basic World-Building Books. The Power Of Limitations - Sanderson’s Second Law Of Magic. This article follows on from the article “Have You Mastered The First Law Of Magic?”
“Limitations > Powers” Brandon Sanderson, 2011 Essentially this law is saying that adding limitations to your magic system are what will make it both interesting and memorable in your readers mind. They force your characters to be more creative with their abilities and so it forces you to write more interesting scenes where your characters are using magic. Some of the limitations I’m going to list below will be more beneficial to those authors who are using a hard magic system over a soft one. In “Creating Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds” Michael James Liljenberg describes a magic system as having “two parts, the gears, rods, and wires that work under the surface and the knobs you use to control them.” “Mana – A root magical concept in which various fields of magical energy exist along side of the fundamental forces of physics like gravity and electromagnetism. Erotic – Sometimes called Tantric. Have You Mastered The First Law Of Magic?
Welcome my dear Witches, Wizards, Warlocks and all you other magic folk sat in the rafters.
Today’s lesson is the most fundamental lesson you need in order to use magic in your story world. “An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.” – Brandon Sanderson, 2007 In 2007 Brandon Sanderson wrote an essay proposing the above law as a rule of thumb to follow while including magic in a story. It rather makes a lot of sense and so I would encourage you to adhere to Sanderson’s First Law. If you have never read the essay then please first visit Brandon Sanderson’s website and read the essay before continuing this article. The essence of The First Law is to allow you the flexibility to create a fantastic magic system for your world yet not fall into lazy story telling by using magic as a Deus Ex Machina. Sanderson presents two categories of magic systems: Soft Magic and Hard Magic. Soft Magic Use soft magic if you want to: