“Magic is anything that breaks the laws of physics.” I’ve heard it many times before. People seem to take it as the definition of what magic is in fantasy. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with this…
Except that it’s entirely wrong.
People as a whole seem to prescribe to the belief that magic operates independently from physics in fantasy worlds, that any law of physics can be broken with magic. What people don’t understand is that, in a fantasy world, magic is a part of the physics of the world. Or at least it should be. To help prove this, we’ll use Merriam-Webster’s definition of “Physics.”
phys·ics \fi-ziks\ 1: A science that deals with matter and energy and their interactions.
2a: The physical processes and phenomena of a particular system. b: The physical properties and composition of something.
Let’s take a classic spell used often in fantasy: the Fireball. Let’s say I want to light Carrot Top’s hair on fire with my fireball. The fireball has no fuel to burn, so we must assume that its fuel is magic. We know that this fireball can light hair on fire, so it radiates heat, which is a form of energy. Magic, which we can assume is some form of energy, is “burning” as a fireball and letting off heat energy, which in turn sets Carrot Top’s hair on fire. His hair is also fuel, so once that’s up, hopefully we have the good fortune of the rest of him burning away with it, but I digress. The point is, there is an interaction between the magic energy, the heat energy and Carrot Top’s hair.
Wait, but isn’t that the first definition up there? Holy shnikes, it is! So if magic existed, chucking a fireball at Carrot Top would not only have happened a long time ago, but it would have been completely in agreement with the laws of physics! Why is this? It’s because the laws of physics change with the world. If magic is part of the world, the physics of that world will account for it.
But now we get to the real problem. Being part of the physics of your world, magic must have rules as well. If it doesn’t, you’ve got a whole lot of energy doing things without any rules to govern what those things are. Your world is in complete entropy. If you’ve made a world without rules to govern magic, congratulations. You’ve just destroyed your world before it could even exist.
But notice how I only say that your world needs rules. I don’t say what those rules should be, or even that you have to know all the rules. There are parts of real world physics which we don’t even know yet, so it’s perfectly possible that there are unknowns in fantasy worlds.
Now we come to my second point. I don’t care what your world is, but everything comes from somewhere. You can’t make something out of nothing. Period. I don’t even care if what you use to make it is “magic energy” and that’s all you use to make it. The idea that anything can be made from nothing at all doesn’t even make sense in fantasy.
Now I say you really don’t have to know all of the rules of your world, but you do need to know some of them. In general, the more you know, the better your world will be. Creativity doesn’t lie in making up a spell to do exactly what you need it to, but making what you have work within an established system. For example, if I were playing D&D (3.5, in this case.), what would be more creative? Using a spell you prepared that trips an opponent or maneuvering your Tenser’s Floating Disk to hit your opponent in the back of the knees?
I hold a good, well-defined magic system as an essential part of a good fantasy world. An example would be the “Metal Magic” from Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series. All three different kinds of magic are very well-defined while staying open to new possibilities, such as the introduction of Electrum in the third book. Each metal has a very specific effect and part of the skill involved in using them is finding new ways to use those effects, like using brass to discover if people are alomancers by where you can’t sense pulses instead of where you can. This isn’t to say your magic system can’t be open-ended like in most Dungeons & Dragons settings and be good at the same time, but it is something to think about when you create your world.
So basically my point is that you should never treat magic as separate from physics. It should instead be thought of as a part of physics. Make sure you know at least some of the things magic can do in your world as well so your world actually has a foundation. Keep that in mind and you’re well on your way to making a great fantasy world!
Continuing in the wake of this essay will be what I’m planning to be a series of essays aimed at discussing what goes into making a good fantasy world. There are a lot of things to think about in such a large effort, so these will hopefully serve as conductors to help with that.
