How should I explain magic?

[Harick]

So, in the VN I'm working on the magic is kinda strange.
The types of magic are:

Time magic, which can slow down or speed up time.

Space magic, or Matter magic which can control and create matter.

Light magic is basically lasers, though it's possible to do different things with it like make light physical.

Fate magic, can basically control fate, as in someone is fated not to die in a battle or such.

And Chaos magic, it's hard to explain but basically if you want to do something, it happens in a way that ignores the rules of the universe. This can be like if someone stabs you with a sword, but instead of being stabbed the sword just passes through you.

The problem is how I should explain it without dragging down the pace of the story with exposition. The story is going to be quite short, no longer than an hour. I'm only planning to have three types of magic in (Space, Time and Fate). Any help is appreciated.

[DVXRedstar]

Well, I suppose the way I would tackle something like that in a story rather quickly would have a conversation of magic come up briefly between some of the characters. Just something that would flow in a regular conversation with your characters, don't try and make them over explain it though as it won't feel natural and it will really feel like an explanation more than a conversation. I imagine a way to bring that up is by weighing pros and cons of magic type x and y compared to z, something along those lines.

If you would like to try something else you could always show rather than tell through the actions of the story. A way this could play out would be something like this: Say a battle was going on and a character casts magic type x, now since this a VN you get to explain things through art and words, the art would be the character casting that magic and showing the effect of the magic, and your words could be the main character pointing out what exactly that is.

I'm not sure if this is helpful to you, just try and juggle a few ideas and you'll have your "ah ha!" moment of knowing exactly what to do. Good luck with your writing!

[Kia]

I don't see any explanations more than "I can control x or y".
maybe few more word for Chaos Magic: "I have the power of Chaos, with my magic your logic is useless".
If you really want to have that explanations anyway take a look at naruto's fights, enemies with intent of killing each other stand and explain their "jutsu"... an easy way to make cheap anime scenes...

[SexBomb]

Because you are planning such a short game, you might want to consider a very small scene in the very beginning, in which you explain the setup of your game--including the various types of magic. I know you don't want to drag your story down with exposition, but sometimes it is the fastest way to relay your point and ideas. It can only be a few short bits--the barest bones of what the player needs to understand the setting.

Just a few lines can help set up your story:

"the year is ____"
"your character is ____"
"there are four types of magic, they are ____"
"your mission is ____"

And then the game takes off. In my experience, this is a much less clunky setup than having characters waste time explaining it for the player's sake (this always seems so unnatural), especially when the narrative is going to be so short. Good luck!!

[Harick]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'm still not sure on what to do, though I'm not sure about a lot of what I should do (like wether to make it an in universe fairy tale, which character to follow etc.) so maybe the answer will come when that's decided.

[DCH]

I'll quote a popular meme "it's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit."

Unless the explanation of how it works is particularly important try to avoid explaining it. If the story demands that you explain it, then you the author need to have some idea of how magic operates in your world. You should write out a very long personal document that explains magic, how it works, and its history. Then you can just use the most interesting sentences in that document. It may help to have small short stories about how magic users discovered various things, or some of the feats they performed with magic that you can reference.

In one of my stories the wizard explains absolutely nothing while he performs mysterious actions. He douses a door with two cups of cinnamon, throws a measured tablespoon of nutmeg at it, chants, and the door explodes. This is a more comedic take on magic, where I draw a lot of parallels between cooking for his branch of magic. The comedy is with his fellow adventurers completely mystified at how exactly he created an explosion from doing that. For him it all has a purpose, but all they see is the random actions of a madman that actually work.

In another story I have a complex system in place where every mage has a core concept and the difficulty of casting a spell lies in connecting what they want to do to their own core concept.

Basically, try to come up with something that interests you in deep detail about how your magic works and focus on the parts that are visible or the mental processes required. Once you have the deep details and you know how it works, you can provide the briefest necessary descriptions possible.

But this is very much a "less is more" thing. Magic requires the audience suspending disbelief and accepting it. Too much explanation or too flimsy of a system is just going to make it feel less and less realistic. Shift the focus back to the action as quickly as possible.

[gekiganwing]

Consider reading Sanderson's Laws of (Fictional) Magic. If you get one or more good ideas from it, then that's great! If you think it's too much to handle, that's fine.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'm still not sure on what to do, though I'm not sure about a lot of what I should do...

It has been a few weeks. If you're still thinking, then perhaps you'll benefit by taking it easy. A short story might not require any explanations. Or perhaps your story includes a main character who doesn't know much about how magic works.

[Harick]

Didn't really think I'd get more responses, so thanks for that.

@DCH I'll keep that in mind, thanks (lol, btw)

@gekiganwing Thanks for the link! Hadn't read that before but I already had some similar ideas. It'll be quite useful, I think.

[Chocopyro]

Sure, I'll see if I can take a crack at this. Magic lore is always really fun to work with.

Time and Space magic: An exploitation of the fundamental geometry interwoven in the universe.

Light magic: Drawn from the leftover mists of creation that still churn abundantly in the spiritual realm.

Fate magic:
1: As opposed to bending fate, this form of magic steels outcomes from parallel realities which had better results.
Or 2: Lump it in with Time and Space magic, meaning by exploiting the inherent magic of geometry, you can also rewrite karma, chance, and destiny.
And lastly 3- Fate is dynamic and malleable as opposed to being set in stone.

Chaos magic: By imbuing or branding one's soul with the sigils of an alien star entirely foreign to all known creation, one can transcend its boundaries.

How's that?

[Parataxis]

Not sure if this helps, but it seems to me quite obvious that Chaos Magic (Bending the World to your will outside what is normally possible) is just a very advanced form of Fate Magic (Bending the the world to your will within reason) or at least would appear as such to people in your world. (I suspect, given it's inherent power that it is a rare and/or secret form of magic known only to a few--perhaps even inherently legendary).

As for the rest, I find Space magic to be the most difficult since it seems to be basically generic catch all magic, and thus sort of out of place with the rest of the more esoteric and specialized categories. (And, frankly, not at all what I would picture given the name since Time has more to do with Space than Matter does.)

That said, the others seem totally intuitive. If you say "Oh she's using time magic" or "Light Magic" then there is no more explanation required given what you indicate they are used for.

[AllegroDiRossi]

Another approach is to just have all the characters inherently understand it and have a "grimoire" in your pause screen where people can go and look up facts about the in-game universe such as descriptions of the types of magic and any other kinds of stuff you think it interesting to include, but doesn't directly propel the story forward.

That's the important part: anything that doesn't directly or indirectly move the story forward shouldn't be in the story proper. You can have appendices for the extra stuff. Some people really get into that and will read it and others will just breeze through it and only check if they don't understand something.

[Harick]

Sure, I'll see if I can take a crack at this. Magic lore is always really fun to work with.

Time and Space magic: An exploitation of the fundamental geometry interwoven in the universe.

Light magic: Drawn from the leftover mists of creation that still churn abundantly in the spiritual realm.

Fate magic:
1: As opposed to bending fate, this form of magic steels outcomes from parallel realities which had better results.
Or 2: Lump it in with Time and Space magic, meaning by exploiting the inherent magic of geometry, you can also rewrite karma, chance, and destiny.
And lastly 3- Fate is dynamic and malleable as opposed to being set in stone.

Chaos magic: By imbuing or branding one's soul with the sigils of an alien star entirely foreign to all known creation, one can transcend its boundaries.

How's that?

Well, the problem isn't how the magic works in universe, I have a pretty good idea on how that is. The problem is more on how to introduce what types of magic there is and their uses and limits in a short story without bogging down the pace with long explanations. But thanks for the ideas, I'll keep them in mind.

Not sure if this helps, but it seems to me quite obvious that Chaos Magic (Bending the World to your will outside what is normally possible) is just a very advanced form of Fate Magic (Bending the the world to your will within reason) or at least would appear as such to people in your world. (I suspect, given it's inherent power that it is a rare and/or secret form of magic known only to a few--perhaps even inherently legendary).

As for the rest, I find Space magic to be the most difficult since it seems to be basically generic catch all magic, and thus sort of out of place with the rest of the more esoteric and specialized categories. (And, frankly, not at all what I would picture given the name since Time has more to do with Space than Matter does.)

That said, the others seem totally intuitive. If you say "Oh she's using time magic" or "Light Magic" then there is no more explanation required given what you indicate they are used for.

Well, that wasn't the idea of chaos magic but when you put it that way it makes sense. (I was gonna write about how fate magic works but I realized your description was actually much better and shorter than what I could write) But chaos magic is actually supposed to be an amalgamation of all the types of magic, but would be almost useless to anyone who hasn't spent their life studying it, but I like your take on it too.

And yeah, I should just have called space magic matter magic instead, english isn't my first language so I thought they were the same thing, but whatever. I don't quite understand what you mean with a catch all though. That it's the most versatile magic? That was kind of the point in that that's what most magicians would focus on, but is outshined by the other types of magic in most cases. (in combat by light and time magic, and grander things like army warfare by fate magic)

Another approach is to just have all the characters inherently understand it and have a "grimoire" in your pause screen where people can go and look up facts about the in-game universe such as descriptions of the types of magic and any other kinds of stuff you think it interesting to include, but doesn't directly propel the story forward.

That's the important part: anything that doesn't directly or indirectly move the story forward shouldn't be in the story proper. You can have appendices for the extra stuff. Some people really get into that and will read it and others will just breeze through it and only check if they don't understand something.

Yeah, that might be the best solution. Then I can include other stuff about the world that isn't necessary for the story! Yay! Thanks, I wouldn't think of that myself.

[Cakey]

Well, actually you can explain not exactly magic origins but how it works "scientificly". It will seem more real.
Like how particles works when you creating it in space magic. What are the rules of it?
How you can actually Time magic works(maye the person just moves faster or slower?)? How it feels? Maybe there was some scientist in past who could use tiome magic?
You can connect Fate magic with the psychology of human. You can do a lot of it if you connect magic with a lot of things

[Harick]

@Cakey I thought of having stuff like that in it, but it wouldn't fit with the setting (a fairy tale esque medieval story) or something as short as I'm making it (1 hour more or less). But if I were to make a sequel (or spin-off, not sure what it would be considered if it's in the same universe but different settings and character) I would want to incorporate something like that.