It’s a grim anniversary, and I have spent too much time reading about depraved people excusing it and celebrating it. Not a great day to have to write something about writing. I’ll just put my thoughts on another subject, although my mind keeps returning to this one.
As one of the world’s most inept mechanics, who has by force of circumstance ended up doing far too much in way the mechanical repair, I know: circumstances dictate. Ability and knowledge be damned, sometimes one simply has to do ones best. Sometimes you end up being quite effective at it – especially by the third try. Over the years I have made good the deficiencies of my purse and my knowledge by sheer persistence and ended up with working (sometimes in a manner of speaking) bits of kit which there was no other way I would have got, achieving things I should not have.
This is a valuable trait for an author (or even a small country surrounded by implacable enemies) as it has a lot in common with my writing career, at least. Some people have different experiences. Some people aren’t trying to make 50 year old outboards go, or teaching themselves how to operate a 16 ton excavator either. Strictly speaking, no-one taught me how to write a novel, let alone navigate the shoals of publishing. Yes, I know, it shows, but I have still been somewhat successful, despite it. Possibly more successful than if I had known even vaguely what I was heading into.
As I’m quite a logical monkey, it mostly comes down to two things: 1) trying to understand – if not every detail, just what the various parts of the machine (or book) do and how, 2) looking at working bits (or only slightly broken things) and saying ‘just like that is a good place to start.’
Which brings me back to the ‘magic’ part. Fantasy, of course, has a fairly large reliance on magic. This last week has seen much argument on X about how magic in fantasy is done right. The opinions range between it’s got to have a rigid set of rules and a ‘system’ to ‘dude: it’s magic‘. Neither side accepts the other side’s premises, so the argument seems kind of futile. Now, because my background is science, I tend toward logic and a system… but here is the thing: If the engine goes, IT DOESN’T MATTER. There is no doubt that both points of view have authors who have made successful books on the basis of the one prefer. And, possibly more relevantly, there are books with fascinating intricate systems – and the opposite, that just don’t work.
The magic is in the writer, not the ‘magic’. What makes it work is carrying the reader along.
Mad Genius Club 
5 responses to “Mechanical or magical”
This piece reminded me of the ‘fix-it’ character in “Joy Cometh With the Mourning.” Just so memorable; one of your best.
This post has made me realize what I was doing with the character of Leonid Vetch, who is the main character in the stories I submitted to the Magical School series, and whose adventures will be collected in my next collection.
In Dracoheim, magic has become industrialized and Magus Vetch has retired from private practice to become a teacher at a technical school. At one point he refers to himself as the last of the old school wizards–he’s the equivalent of backyard grease monkey in a world dominated by engineers.
But he knows what works, and how it works, and when he’s faced with an emergency he knows how to forget proper lab procedures and just get the job done by whatever means necessary.
He’s an eminently practical man, a deliberate inversion of the trope of the absent-minded starry-eyed genius type of wizard. Vetch is a careful craftsman, who has done all this a million times before and knows it will work–even if it’s a bit unconventional.
Now, in Dragonfire and Time, I had Mae. She was all starry-eyed about magic once. Then she learned it. Now she’s a good, efficient, rather disenchanted wizard who knows she’s doing a lot of good with the magic as well as earning her living.
That sounds like a very tedious argument.
Hard magic systems work, soft magic systems work, they just work for different things in different ways.
Want to create a sense of wonder and/or whimsy? Soft magic.
Want to use magic to solve problems and advance the plot? Hard magic.
Sanderson’s First Rule applies, but there’s plenty of room for both Neverwhere and Elantris.
It started with someone insisting that if you didn’t have science-but-call-it-magic, which was explained to the reader, you were a bad writer.
….because repainted science is the only magic allowed. Not, like, actual magic.
We have a word for magic that works reliably and is understood. It’s “science.”