Creating your own magic system can be one of the most exciting aspects of writing a speculative fiction story.
However, the thought of drawing up an entire magical system and integrating it into your story can also be intimidating.
Read on to discover how to write fictional magic and allow your story to shine bright.
What are the Magic Types?
Magic in stories can be a product of a writer’s imagination, or a system drawn from pre-existing traditions of magic, or a combination of both.
Because of this, it’s impossible to draw up a comprehensive list of all the possible magic types and systems.
If you’re designing your own magic system for a story, however, it can be helpful to think about some of the most common magic types seen within speculative fiction. These include:
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- Elemental and Nature magic
- Incantations and Spells
- Necromancy
- Magical Items
- Alchemy
- Divination
- Conjuring magic
- Psychic magic
- Creature magic
- Blood magic
- Magical technology
Magic can also traditionally be separated into:
- Dark magic: the use of magic to harm others or increase one’s power for nefarious means.
- Light magic: the use of magic for benevolent purposes.
Fantasy-story protagonists often find themselves having to balance out the light and dark elements within a magic system.
Magic systems in literature can be heavily influenced by traditional cultural practices and beliefs such as shamanism, ancestor worship, witchcraft, voodoo, druidism, etc., but this isn’t necessary.
You don’t need to choose just one magic system for your story: you can pick and choose aspects of different systems and weave them together, as long as you do so in a manner which is consistent and clear.
Let’s examine some of these magic types in more depth.
Types of Magic in Fantasy
Elemental and Nature Magic
This is the use of Nature and the elements to create magic. It’s common in fantasy stories to find magical practitioners who can control fire, water, air, thunder, the growth of plants, and so on.
This type of magic can also include practitioners who possesses a strong understanding of herbal lore, as we see with Professor Sprout, the Herbology teacher, in Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
Nature magic in particular is often linked with potions and spells.
Incantations and Spells
This system is the use of language to create magic.
Language may form the primary source of magic within a system, as in Genevieve Cogman’s Invisible Library series, where an original language exists which can be used to control both mind and matter.
Or, incantation and spells can form one of many parts of a magic system, such as in the Harry Potter series, where spells and wands are used together, along with other forms of magic; or in R. F. Kuang’s Babel, where magical silver bars are infused with language to create power.
Necromancy
Necromancy can be the art of communicating with dead spirits, or it can more generally refer to the use of death and spirits to create magic.
It’s often associated with darker, more nefarious forms of magic.
It’s found in literature from ancient times, such as in The Odyssey, where Odysseus uses spells to communicate with spirits of the dead, right up until modern times. In Stephen King’s Pet Semetary, a father seeks to use necromancy to bring his dead wife and son back to life.
Magical Items
Magical items can be used in various ways within magic systems. They can be items imbued with magic by practitioners, such as the ring of power in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Or magical items can be used to help practitioners create magic, such as the wands in Harry Potter.
Magical items can make excellent MacGuffins in adventure stories, where various characters all seek an item for its inherent power, such as the Holy Grail in the King Arthur legends or the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones.
Alchemy
Alchemy generally refers to the use of magical or quasi-magical chemical formulas to trans-mutate one element into another, such as stone into gold.
Alchemy can also refer to the study of magic where the student seeks to find immortality, such as the use of the philosopher’s stone in Harry Potter.
Alchemy is also often linked with potions and spells.
Divination
Divination generally refers to the use of magic to foresee the future, or the practice of seeking knowledge through supernatural means.
Tarot cards, crystal balls, and Ouija boards are all objects of divination, and we can see there’s often a crossover with Necromancy or Blood Magic in these areas.
A great variety of divination means exist within fantasy literature, including:
- Bibliomancy: predicting the future through reading a random book passage
- Bone-throwing: tossing bones to gain answers to questions
- Brontomancy: divination by thunder
- Dreaming: dreams that include elements of the future
Conjuring Magic
This usually refers to the use of magic to move objects through space, or bring a spirit from an astral plane into our world.
For example, in the Harry Potter series, the Expecto Patronum spell conjures up a Patronus, a protective spirit for the practitioner.
Psychic Magic
Magic which enters the minds of others falls into this category.
For example, in Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six, there are a few different types of psychic magic wielders, including telepaths, who can see into another’s subconscious; empaths, who can read and affect the emotions of others; and illusion-breakers, who can see through illusions.
Any type of magic which involves mind control or mind reading falls under this category.
Creature Magic
Magical systems where magic arises primarily from magical creatures fall into this category.
Magical creatures might include fairies, as in Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries; unicorns, as in A. F. Steadman’s Skandar and the Unicorn Thief; dragons, as in Rebecca Yaros’s Fourth Wing, and so on.
Blood Magic
Blood magic usually involves the sacrifice of living beings, or the use of blood and entrails, for purposes of creating power or divination.
There’s often a crossover between blood magic and necromancy, as both tend to represent darker forms of magic.
In Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House, for example, secret academic societies use various forms of blood magic to read the future of the stock market and thus increase their wealth and power.
Types of Magic in Science Fiction
Whether or not magic can correctly be included in the genre of science fiction is a matter open to debate.
Arguably, once magic is used within science fiction, a book becomes science fantasy (i.e. a crossover genre book).
Others might argue that in soft science fiction books, where speculative elements are given very little scientific explanation, you can find elements of magic within the story, especially if forms of unexplained or quasi-magical technologies are used.
Let’s look in more depth at this.
Magical Technology
Time travel stories, for example, might fall into this category. In Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time the reader is asked to accept the existence of time travel with no scientific explanation provided. Arguably, one could find an element of techno-magic within this story.
Dystopian stories often provide examples of techno-magic within Science Fiction. Dystopian literature is generally considered a sub-genre of Science Fiction, and examples abound of dystopian stories which use technologies that are arguably more magical than scientific.
For example, in Naomi Alderman’s The Future, we find futuristic high-tech suits, which allow for the wearer to communicate with the suit, which will provide for the wearer’s needs. There’s no attempt at a scientific explanation for these suits. One could argue that these suits are as magical as they are scientific.
Or in Marvel’s The Flash, the protagonist super-hero gains the power to run faster than the speed of light. Although this is portrayed as the result of a scientific accident, the scientific explanation is pretty thin, and Flash’s power could be viewed as quasi-magical in its nature.
Plenty of clear dystopian-fantasy crossover stories exit, too. For example, in Moira Buffini’s Songlight, a futuristic, post-climate change world exists where telepaths are hunted and killed. There’s no magical technology here, but rather a form of magic (psychic magic) presented more as a future fact than as a magical system.
Ultimately, the debate as to whether magic systems can exist in Science Fiction stories comes down as much to personal opinion and semantics as it does to the nature of the genre.
If you want to use magic in your science fiction story, you can either deliberately choose to write a science fantasy crossover, or you can write a soft science fiction story where you hold back on providing scientific explanations for your speculative elements.
In either case, your target readers will not be hard science fiction readers, as they will expect a high degree of science and scientific exploration within the story. Their expectations are likely to be incompatible with magic systems in your story.
Decide which genre category your story falls into, and market it accordingly.
List of Magical Powers
The list of possible magical powers you could give your characters is as large as the human imagination: i.e., limitless.
The short list below is merely intended to spark your imagination and is by no means a comprehensive list of all the magical powers you can find within fiction.
- The power of invisibility
- The power of flight
- The power of time travel
- The power to create and end life
- The power of seeing/ travelling to alternative realities and astral planes
- The power to control Nature and the elements
- The power to cast spells
- The power to communicate with animals and/ or magical creatures and beings
- The power to communicate with spirits, ancestors and the dead
- The power to read and/or control minds
- The power to control and/or shift physical matter
- The power to run exceptionally fast
- The power to raise the dead
- The power of immortality
- The power to control and create new technologies
- The power of perfect luck
- The power to defy gravity
- The power to make someone fall in or out of love
- The power to speak in any language
- The power to see the future or the past
- The power to heal
- The power of immunity
- The power of shapeshifting
- The power to control light and/or sound
- The power to breathe underwater
- The power of super-strength or super-skills
- The power of mimicry
- The power of perfect memory
- The power of regeneration
- The power of illusion
- The power of telepathy
Tips for Creating a Magic System
Tip One: Balance Magic System vs Story Elements
Magic systems in fantasy literature offer great potential for creating strong plots filled with high stakes, internal and external conflict, strong goals and character growth.
As fun as it is to go wild when developing your own magic system, it can be helpful to bear in mind how each aspect of your magic system allows you to bring out the various elements of your story.
It’s particularly worth looking at how your magic system influences the following story elements within your book:
Conflict: How central is your magic system to the main conflict within your plot? If your magic system is unrelated to the primary obstacles your protagonist encounters, it may feel like an awkward add-on, rather than a key aspect of your story.
It’s very rare for a fictional magic system not to have inherent limitations built into the system, because this will help prevent your characters from being omnipotent, and ensure they face both external and internal conflict. For example, Superman is invincible except when exposed to kryptonite, and this limitation allows him to develop greater empathy for the humans he saves.
Tension: How does your magic system impact the stakes in your story? Fantasy and Sci-Fi stories tend to feature high stakes plots, with the fate of worlds often resting upon the shoulders of the protagonists. Will the type of magic system you use relate to the type of stakes at play?
For example, if you’re using a magic system based on Necromancy, does the use of this magic cause others to die? That creates substantial ethical obstacles in the use of this magic.
However, if your protagonist can use Necromancy to prevent an entire civilisation from dying, will the ends justify the means?
Balancing out competing stakes and conflicts can help make a great central conflict within a story.
Goals: How integral is the magic system to your protagonist’s goals? The more integrated the magic system is with these goals, the more necessary and relevant it will feel to your story. Consider both internal and external goals.
For example, if your protagonist’s external story goal is to get married, and his special power is telepathy, you want to ensure not only that he uses his telepathic skills as he pursues his goal, but also that your story considers issues of communication and privacy as key themes,
When it comes to internal goals, think about how the strengths and limitations of your character’s magical abilities can help them to learn and develop as a character. If your protagonist must draw strength from unwilling participants to power her magic, will she need to learn better skills of communication, empathy and kindness as the story develops?
Tip Two: Make it Immersive
Magic systems can easily bore a reader if they can’t be visually conceptualised.
If readers can’t easily see what your characters are doing as they wield magic, there’s a risk they’ll lose interest fast. Adding other senses is valuable too, but we use sight as our primarily sense, and it’s important to prioritise the visual aspects of your magic.
Avoid using too many words your reader won’t understand, especially if you’ve developed your own magic system language.
In general, we read speculative fiction for enjoyment, and having to learn an entire new language feels like too much work. It’s risky to create a magic system that’s so complex, readers struggle to understand it, especially if they can’t understand your story without understanding the magic system.
Tip Three: Make the Magic System Clear
You’re reader must understand the magic system before it is used to solve or create any problems.
This is really important.
If you pull out a new area of magic each time your character needs to solve a problem, the reader will feel cheated. Readers need to understand the magic system, its powers and limitations, well before your character needs to use this magic to overcome obstacles. Otherwise, it may feel as though you are making it all up as you go along.
This can be challenging to achieve if you’re trying to show rather than tell your magic system within high-stakes scenarios, to keep your story tension high. Nevertheless, it’s important to find ways to show your magic’s abilities and limitations before your character needs to use them to solve a high-stakes problem.
Without you having done this, the reader won’t be able to engage with your magic system, as they won’t be able to think through the various ways your characters might use magic to overcome obstacles.
This is why it’s so effective when in Harry Potter we see characters learning magical skills first in order to pass exams, and then employing this same magic in life or death scenarios. We understand their magic: its powers, its limitations, and how wielding it requires the characters to grow – before it becomes necessary for them to use this magic to solve real-life problems.
Conclusion
Creating your own magic system is an exciting task, which should be fun and inspiring.
The purpose of these suggestions isn’t to limit your imagination, but rather to give you a structure within which you can work to create the strongest magic system possible for your story.
I hope these examples and tips have inspired you to dream up your own fantastical magic systems and stories.