How to use magic in your story without it burning your plot?

Question

I’m creating a story about magic for a contest, and I wanted to know if magic should or shouldn’t be used to solve problems.

Some people say no, while others say yes – because we should know which problems we want to solve through magic. Problems like defeating the villain or finding something using magic or using magic to get out of a dangerous situation. My magic is a hard system has explicit rules.

If I use magic to solve problems I'm worried that it could become a deus ex machina. What’s the truth?

Answer 1

The criticism of Deus ex Machina is that it is un-earned. It represents literal divine intervention.

Other modern criticisms show a similar innate criticism when a protagonist has it too easy. Plot armor, protagonist-centered morality, chosen one, and Mary Sue are all criticisms against a character getting un-justified story 'gifts' from the author.

Imagine going to a sports game and the referees openly cheat for the team they like better. That team doesn't score legitimate points, but they win anyway. It's not necessarily a flaw in writing, but in our sense of entertainment, and 'fairness' in general.

It seems like a contradiction. Readers want magic in their fantasy, but they want the magic to have some limits, and they want it to be a challenge for the character.

They want the magic to be special, not routine.

Make it Harder

If the magic is treated as a skill that must be learned, we usually get a try-fail cycle, probably a mentor. The character attempts to use magic to solve their problems, but we see they are not skilled enough to take success for granted. We may see them fail at the exact magic task they later win.

Give it consequences

Another trope that prevents magic 'solutions' is to give it consequences. There is either a cost on the user directly, or a moral cost because of 'balance' or 'natural physics' or the law of conserved energy. The magician cannot make it rain here, without taking rain away from somewhere else. They cannot 'magic up' an easy solution without potentially creating a bigger problem somewhere else.

Add a twist

The magic may come from an unknown source, or it may be an illusion hiding a sinister agenda. The magic seems to be working fine, but actually some kind of debt is accruing. The magic may promise an easy solution, and through no fault of the protagonist it all goes pear-shaped. They didn't read the fine print, or the 'easy' solution was a lie all along.

Avoid 'just so' stories

A 'just so' story (named after the collection of bedtime stories by Rudyard Kipling) are elaborate justifications after-the-fact to explain how or why something evolved: How the Elephant Got His Trunk.

Readers are not impressed by a 'prophecy' that turns out to be word-for-word factual. It is clear the author wrote the story first and then made up a prophecy later to fit the circumstances of the plot and character.

Similar issues with an MC that had centuries of breeding to create a perfect hero, or a naïve MC who is too closely 'entwined' with the biggest evil arch-villain of all history. These characters are set up with special properties and circumstantial abilities, making them the only person in the galaxy who can win (the chosen one), but it is no coincidence. We know the author decided this and constructed aspects of the story to fit this premise.

Don't over do it

This can all feel like a contradiction.

Readers want magic in their fantasy, but they want it to be special. Magic should retain a sense of wonder. Use it sparingly and it can be exciting every time. You don't want to bring out a birthday cake for every desert. Build anticipation, and let the reader hope for it – all the better for story emotions if it's not a sure thing or has consequences – the reader can experience conflicted emotions of wanting the magic solution AND worrying what will go wrong.

Answer 2

Consider the Wizard of Earth Sea. In that story, much of the plot revolves around and depends on the use of magic. It never feels unearned because of how the author develops the world. Magic is constrained by the balance. That the wisest wizards are reluctant to use their knowledge until they understand the consequences of weaving a powerful spell. The way the story is written, magic feels natural and make sense. At critical moments in the story the main character uses magic in unexpected ways. They save their village through magic, they threaten the safety of the world because of a rash act using magic. In the end, they use magic to redress the threat they themselves caused. I've thought that the author uses magic as an allegory for knowledge, suggesting the knowledge is dangerous in the hands of a fool and useful in the hands of the wise.

On the other end of the scale is Harry Potter. Magic in the wizarding world is largely silly and whimsical. It doesn't have the feel of being limited or constrained; just learn the right words and you can kill someone or repair someone's broken glasses. Its just takes being born magical, and having a wand, and knowing the right words. But, the Harry Potter stories work because the plot points of the stories don't depend on magic to be resolved. Sometimes they need the characters to be courageous or brave or loyal. Other plot points require the characters to be wrongheaded, proud, or foolish.

So use magic in your story if you want, but construct your plot so it depends on more than just reading a scroll or waving a wand, that something is at stake that a person can get right or get wrong.

Answer 3

1. Impose limitations.

   A spell can only be cast on a full moon in winter by someone who has never lied.

2. Exact a price.

   The magician has to sacrifice part of his body. To start a flame, a few hairs are enough, but to kill someone, he has to burn one of his fingers, and to destroy his greates foe, he has to give up his own life.

3. Make the rules of your fictional world clear to the reader from the beginning.

   A deus ex machina is a solution that appears suddenly, unexpectedly, and out of the blue. If the reader is told or shown from the beginning that the character can do magic, they will not only accept it but actually wait impatiently for the character to use their magic and will feel satisfied instead of cheated when he does. Similarly, if the sudden use of magic is not a solution but causes problems, it is not a deus ex machina and might provide an intriguing turn of events.

4. Every aspect of your writing (including the use of magic) has to support your story.

   If your tale is about how a deposed ruler struggles to reclaim their throne, it is boring if they just snap a finger to remove all opposition. But if your story is about how someone didn't know they were the daughter of a goddess, then of course they must discover their magic ability in a sudden and surprising manner.

5. Use foreshadowing.

   In movies, the music changes to let the viewer know that something is going to happen. This both increases tension, but also serves to make sudden events feel more plausible. After all, the viewer knew that something out of the ordinary was about to occur. Similarly, in writing, we begin to indicate that things are about to change well in advance. The character can feel different that day. Small, odd things can begin to happen around them. Hints (like words and ideas related to magic) can be distributed over the preceding paragraphs. And so on.

6. Your characters must earn their rewards.

   Readers want the protagonists of the stories they read to achieve their goals, but that achievement will only feel satisfying to the readers if the characters had to work for it. The harder the struggle, the more earned and satisfying a happy end will feel. Getting everything you want whenever you want it might be a nice daydream, but reading about it will quickly bore most readers after a couple of pages.

Answer 4

There are a lot of excellent answers here, but I noticed one approach still lacking:

Don't give a medieval peasant a gun

Often the approach to balance magic for the story is to make it incredibly difficult to perform, make it exclusive to certain people or circumstances, or make it very costly. Which, for the most part, is a fine approach. However, it does not solve all cases. With enough preparation, our deep pocketed chosen one can still simply magic the BBEG out of existence in one fell swoop, leading to a potentially very unsatisfying conclusion for our readers.

However this approach can be seen as akin to "just give a medieval peasant a gun". Which, for the purpose of their aspirations for assassinating their lord, will have the same effect. Of course, this isn't how our current world works. But, also, sometimes it is exactly how it works.

Think of your world, and treat the magic you want to use as a gun, or a power tool, or anything from our society that can trivialise an otherwise tedious or impossible task. I'll go with gun for now. Then, think of how our society would counteract this scenario. For example our hero might have to smuggle their wand through magical metal detectors. Or they might have to go through shady back alleys to purchase their magic supplies because they are highly illegal. They might confront the BBEG with a magic-proof vest where the spells bounce right off. Or, most likely of all, the BBEG has magic too, and a huge fight ensues with wand slinging guards coming in from all around.

What I'm trying to say is, rather than nerfing the magic, make the world and the story actively trying to counteract or resist the use of it. What makes your story interesting is not the resolution with or without magic, but the journey to reach this climax. The number, complexity, and creativity of the obstacles the protagonist faces before they can use their magic would mean much more to the story than the conclusion itself.

Lastly, don't make the magic a surprise. Establish exactly what your protagonist can do and what the limitations are far before the conclusion. This way, when it is time to use the magic, it doesn't suddenly come out of left field. Even if magic is used only once in your entire story, the reader should know it is possible, even if they can't predict its use.

Answer 5

I've written something like this before with regard to what makes villains menacing, but it applies here too: what drives an interesting story is almost always conflict, stakes, the possiblity of consequence.

In other words, a story is made interesting by the possiblity that your characters can lose something. It could be their life, their dignity, their family, their money, their reputation, a bet, or almost anything else, depending on the story, but no stakes means no real conflict, and no conflict means a story that most people will not find interesting.

What people are warning you about is, in essence, the risk of solving all your problems with magic. This removes the stakes and creates an invincible protagonist. This is not even exclusive to magic, by any means. It's perfectly possible to write a story where a cell phone, an automobile, a large bank account, or mere luck enables a protagonist to achieve all their goals without any difficulty or stakes, and such a story will likely suffer from the exact same problem.

Magic should be something that solves some problems, but not all. It should be something that solves problems in conjunction with other interesting character traits and plot elements. That's the key. Magic can be as large or as small as you want, as long as it does not preclude the possiblity of consequences that matter to the reader—stakes, in other words.

Answer 6

Lots of the answers here have given good advice about when you use magic in your setting. However, one thing that they over look is:

Don't forget about the magic. Or, rather, watch out for places where you don't use it, but readers will think that you should have. (This being the "magic not solving a problem" side of the question)

If you establish in Chapter One that a certain character has a special magic that lets them extinguish fire, and they are present when an important building burns down in Chapter Twenty, then readers are going to want to know why they didn't use their magic. Which, in reality, might just be "Chapter One was written 18 months before Chapter Twenty, but they were read mere minutes apart by the reader".

And, of course, watch out for the other way around too: if the building burning down happens in Chapter One, and in Chapter Twenty you establish that the character has been famous for their fire-extinguishing magic for decades, then you get the same questions.

Essentially — and especially in a hard-magic system — you need to know what the Rules of Magic are, and stick to them.

(But, of course: the actual Rules of Magic that you, the author, know might not be the same as the perceived Rules of Magic that your characters learn. In much the same way that Classical Mechanics isn't the exact way that Physics really works in the Universe: it's just as close as Newton was able to work out, and has since been improved and expanded upon.)

Answer 7

Remember Sanderson's Laws

Brandon Sanderson is a fantasy author who's famous for his elaborate magic systems in his books. And in most cases, he avoids it feeling like a deus ex machina—when it does, like at the end of The Final Empire, he says he considers that a writing mistake.

He says that the key to this is:

An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.

In a series like A Song of Ice and Fire, nobody really understands how magic works or what it does. That's the whole point of magic in the setting: it's wild, mysterious, difficult to control. And as a result, it tends to create problems and plots for the protagonists; it never solves them.

If Melisandre did a blood sacrifice that suddenly resolved the entire war, that would feel like a deus ex machina. But Melisandre doing a blood sacrifice that kicks off the war, by assassinating one of the claimants for the throne? That fits the thematics just fine. That emphasizes how the characters are dealing with forces (both political and magical) they don't fully understand, they can't fully understand, and just have to deal with it as best they can at their limited individual level.

If you want magic to solve a problem—or superpowers, or advanced technology, or anything that doesn't exist in our current world—the reader has to understand it. The readers not understanding is what creates a deus ex machina.

Soft magic creates problems, hard magic solves them.

If you want your magic to solve problems, the readers need to understand it. This means it needs rules and limitations, things it can do and things it can't do, costs and drawbacks and a system.

You say your magic already has these sorts of rules. Great! In that case, you just have to make sure they're understood by the readers, as well as the characters. Setup and payoff: that's the key.

Answer 8

I would treat magic the same way you treat hidden knowledge, because after all any kind of magic is ultimately based on something the wizard knows that "ordinary people" don't. Like, horses and guns were perceived as powerful magic by the Aztecs. If you can place magic in such context, I believe the problems you describe should not occur at all.

In practical terms this means that when, say, you know certain spell that you should pronounce to perform certain task, but you don't know why pronouncing this spell solves this task, I would say this is "bad" magic: you do things without knowing what you are doing, and what additional consequences your spell might have. You are, so to say, not a wizard, you are something you get if you substract wisdom from a wizard. Whereas if you have knowledge of how and why this spell works the way it works, and know all the consequences this spell might have, then this is no more Deus ex Machina than using some sophisticated technology that you happen to be aware of.