The role of magic in my stories

Magic doesn’t dominate my plots.

It’s in there. And it plays a role. But it’s not some deus ex machina crutch in my stories. I’ve tried to create a magical “system” that is a believable extension of a realistic world much like ours.

I’ve heard from some people that they like the way I handle magic—because it makes my stories more accessible. But I’m sure that people who love wizards casting fireballs on every page are not my biggest fans.

So why do I employ magic at all? Why not just write more “mainstream” stories without all the magic?

I believe that magic fulfills something inside fans of fantasy-like me. (And SciFi people have their “future tech” fulfilling a similar role.)

So what is it that magic is fulfilling, exactly?

I think the answer is bound up in our beliefs. In our faith, or our search for enlightenment. In our desire to believe in something beyond our everyday experience. And, in the process, to escape.

Is attempting to escape a bad thing? Does it mean we are avoiding our “real life”? To hide away from our lives in the pages of a book? It certainly doesn’t have to.

Stories have been helping people to learn things about themselves, or how to cope with the real world, through the vicarious adventures we’ve experienced in their pages, for thousands of years. And even in the spoken word stories of pre-literate civilizations. Every bibliophile can relate to that. And anyone with a subscription to Netflix. No matter what their favorite genre or subject matter might be.

So what is it that makes us, we fans of fantasy writing, of Tolkien, Eddings, Sanderson, Rothfuss, and Jordan, love our fantastic tales of worlds where our earthly rules do not apply? Or at least, our rules cannot explain the whole picture?

Some people have posited that the reason we gravitate toward stories like The Lord of the Rings is because they paint a world in which good is clearly good and evil evil. A digestible and straightforward world that feels more comprehensible than our own. But what of Boromir and Gollum? Or, for fans of science fiction, what about Darth Vader? Not one of these characters is entirely good, nor entirely evil. There are innumerable other examples. Want a more current one? Consider many of the characters from Game of Thrones!

No, it’s not a simplified world we seek in reading science fiction and fantasy. I would suggest that a well-crafted fantasy tale includes much of the complexity we feel exists in our own lives. Deceit, shame, internal turmoil. Nobody wants to read about perfect people who live uncomplicated lives. That would be unbearable.

But magic . . . magic is something we don’t get to experience first-hand. We seek out magic because it is so far removed from our daily lives that it requires us to suspend our disbelief. Forces us to have faith in something beyond ourselves. Magic is a tool. That much is true. But, if used properly, it is not a crutch. But rather a vehicle to transport us to another world. A magic carpet, a starship, or a dragon . . . take your pick.