Tropes…love ’em or hate ’em, some seem to be here to
stay. Whether they should or not is
actually up to the individual reader. I
think the main problem with tropes is that an author reads a story, they’re so
drawn into the world of those characters, and they love those characters so
much, they decide they want to write a story like that. Okay, that’s great. Imitation is often referred to as the highest
form of flattery. However, there’s a
problem. When someone decides to write a
story like that, they often have a tendency to rewrite THAT particular
story. Oh, not in the manner of
plagiarism—though that’s happened—but they’ve taken the bare bones of the
inspiring story and just dressed it up in different clothing. There’s not a whole lot out there that hasn’t
been done before, and most stories have commonalities as their core. Because of this, you have a tendency to see
certain tropes that pop up quite often in specific genres. Some of those tropes have such a universal
theme you’ll find them in other genres as well.
The secret is, if you do decide to go with a tried and true trope that a
lot of readers still love, then you need to find a way to put a new spin on
it. To teach an old dog new tricks.
M is for…
Magic Without Boundaries or Consequences
While this is primarily found in pure fantasy novels, you’ll
come across it in other genres where the story has fantasy elements. You’ve probably come across it in one novel
or another, and you might even be able to name that novel right off the top of
your head. Simply put, Magic Without
Boundaries or Consequences occurs when the magic-wielders can use obscene
amounts of magic without ever getting tired or suffering any ill side
effects. It also occurs when you see
magic-wielders who are supremely powerful and have a spell that will take care of anything and everything.
There are a couple of reasons this is problematic. First, if the magic-wielders are so powerful,
why is there even a struggle in the manuscript?
If the good guys have such a powerful magician/witch/wizard/sorcerer, why
can’t they just destroy or capture the bad guy before he gets out of hand? How is there even any conflict? If it’s the bad guy who is so powerful,
again, how is there a conflict? Why
doesn’t he just take over the world? Why
don’t either of these characters basically take on a god-like persona?
The exception to this would be when you’re dealing with
characters who are gods of some sort.
Their lack of involvement is usually explained with the age-old reason
that they don’t involve themselves in the affairs of mortals, unless it
directly impacts the gods. Fair
enough. In those cases, the gods may
become involved, but what they can or can’t do is usually limited, and there are
reasons for that. For example, one book series I know of has
gods who become involved in the affairs of mortals because it has direct
bearing on the gods. Another god of
their pantheon is the one causing all the trouble. However, the other gods are reluctant to get
involved at first, because they have their own very specific laws about how
they must deal with each other. Much to
the annoyance of the humans involved.
Due to circumstances like this, the display of a god’s all-powerful
magic either isn’t seen at all, or it’s saved for something very specific.
Back to our normal magic-wielders. You’ve seen them. They’re the ones who continually blast through
devastatingly powerful spells, and they just keep right on doing it. They don’t need any time to rest and
recharge, because they don’t get tired or pass out, or suffer any other ill
effects. Now, this can depend on the
magic of your world, so you have to have a pretty concrete idea of how it
works, and you should communicate that to your readers without boring them with
it. Does the magic come from within the
mage? Does the mage have the capability
of drawing the power directly from the world?
Does the magic depend entirely on spell components? Knowing how the magic in your world works is
important, because if you know how it works, you can set limits on the magic
and create consequences that are believable.
For example, most magic is portrayed as coming from power within the
mage. Since this type of magic is
essentially energy, a mage’s magical ability should be limited by their physical
energy. They should get tired and need
rest after using a lot of spells, or even after one or two very powerful
spells. They should black out or suffer
another major side effect after overexertion, after attempting a powerful spell
when they haven’t had enough time to recharge, or after attempting a spell that
is too advanced for them.
Though they’re from movies, I can think of two good examples
where consequences for using magic were employed.
The first is from
The Covenant.
In this movie, there are four young men who
are warlocks and are referred to as The Sons of Ipswich.
They’re descended from four of five magical
families.
While they have some power
earlier, they don’t come into their true power until they turn eighteen.
The drawback?
Using their power is addictive, and their power is tied to their life
force.
The more they use it, they more
they WANT to use it.
When they use their
power, it takes away from their life force.
At one point in the movie, we finally see the main character’s father.
Even though the man hasn’t really even hit
middle-age chronologically, physically, he looks like he’s in his eighties…and
time hasn’t been kind.
Not only is the
magic seductive, making the user addicted if they aren’t careful, it ages the
user dramatically.
The other is from Mirror, Mirror. While it isn’t quite as complicated or
involved as The Covenant, it does use the premise that magic ages the user.
What about if your characters are able to simply draw the
energy from their world? Should there be
any consequences for that? This one’s a
little trickier, because I can see both sides of the coin in this situation. First, you could say that because the
character is merely a conduit, it shouldn’t require any energy from them, so
they shouldn't suffer any kind of drain. I
can see that argument, but I can also see why some people would say it would
take the user’s energy to tame the wild energy of the world and to use it to achieve
the effect they want. Honestly, I can
see this particular situation going either way.
If an author chooses to use this in their world, I think they should
still flesh out how the magic works and find a way to explain either situation
believably.
What if your characters only use magic that comes from spell
components? With this one, in my
personal opinion, the mage is still going to use energy to achieve the desired
result. Now, you may set your world up
so all the mage has to do is learn the words to the spell, follow the directions,
and use the proper components to explain why there isn’t any physical
drain. Of course, in a world like this,
you’d have to plan the magic very carefully.
Unless you could find a plausible explanation, there wouldn’t be a lot
of elemental manipulation, or at least not in the form of a character being
able to conjure fireballs out of thin air, or being able to shoot lightning
bolts from their fingertips. Elemental
magic would require careful considerations as to how you could make it
work. And what would be special about
mages? In a world like this, anyone
could be a mage. If you don’t want to
create a society where everyone’s a mage, in a world like this, you’d have to
be able to explain why everyone can’t be a mage. Maybe only people from certain families are
allowed to be mages. Maybe there are
schools that children are sent to, and unless you completed training through those
schools, it was illegal for you to even own magical implements. Perhaps the laws are so strict that a person
who is untrained and found to merely be in possession of a magical implement is
imprisoned for an extremely long time, or even put to death. If the children attend schools to learn how
to be mages, how does that work? Do
parents apply the moment their child is born and hope they get in? Do all children attend a basic magic school,
and then the school determines who they want to continue on into the more
advanced studies, with those who were rejected being forced to agree to never
practice magic? Are all of those
rejected children put to death? Are they
forever watched to make certain they don’t try to use what little magical
knowledge they have? Or is there some
kind of memory wipe (whether technological or magical) that makes them forget
what they learned?
While there are some tropes that I actually enjoy, I have to
agree this one can be annoying. If you choose
to have characters who use magic, keep these things in mind. A lot of people enjoy stories with magic in
them, but they also get exasperated with this trope. They want magic they can believe in, and
since most magic-wielders in stories are humans, it’s hard to swallow a mage
who has an unending supply of spells, who has a spell for EVERYTHING, and who
has an unending supply of energy. None
of us have an unending supply of energy, and it stands to reason that magic
does require the use of energy. There
needs to be some kind of consequence for using magic. At the very least, the mage needs to be tired
after using it. And it can’t be the
answer to everything. If it’s used as
such, it’s basically a built-in deus ex machina. And really, who wants that?
