Finding Fantasy Part 2 - Magic

I am very happy to announce that I am very nearly finished with the rough drafts for my Untitled Fantasy Anthology. (It'll have a title eventually, promise!)

Earlier I had written about how I wanted this collection to be a fantasy sibling to Futures Gleaming Darkly and I truly believe I am accomplishing that. Each story is a vignette of different characters in different situations.

However, unlike the near/retroutures I wrote about before, magic seemingly has less real world examples to build off of. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how incredibly wrong I was.

In the stories I've written so far, I've developed a very loose system for the magic of the world. Essentially, I based it off of creativity. Just as there are many different kinds of art and expression, so are there kinds of magic. Some rely on drawing symbols, others on knowing certain words, and still others on precise movements. Sometimes it's a combination of all of them.

And just as art exists in the world, sometimes it is created by those that devote years of study on theory and others teach themselves. Their styles and execution are different, but no less valuable than the other. A very important component to the magic of my world is that it is not borne into people. Just as anyone can learn a skill, it simply takes the devotion to do so. I may be better at writing than, say, a portrait artist, but you would never ever want me painting your likeness at my current level of skill (which is to say 0).

Just as any magic system should, however, there is a price to accomplish magical feats. Similarly to how imagining lifting a heavy box is wholly different than actually doing it.

I'm very excited to share my creations and see what you all think. This might just be a three book year for me!