Writing Excuses

If you're doing any writing you owe it to yourself to grab the Writing Excuses Podcast. 15 minutes long because you're in a hurry and they're not that smart. This is an excellent series brought to you by three wonderful authors. The authors of the series are Brandon Sanderson author of Mistborn, (Yes he's the guy finishing Robert Jordan's Magnum Opus The Wheel of Time) Howard Taylor of Schlock Mercenary fame, (If you're not reading it get out of here and go check it out) and Dan Wells a horror novelist. Sadly I have not read any of Dan's work but from hearing this podcast I soon will. They cover in fifteen minute nuggets, topics ranging from how to get published to how magic systems work. At the time of this entry their latest podcast on Magic will soon spark a series of new articles here. All three are brilliant speakers and the podcast never feel tired. As an aside I also try to listen to Webcomics Weekly but their hour long format and less organized presentation makes it fun but not as informative in my opinion.

The latest discussion on magic in Writing Excuses has really gotten me thinking about how I want magic to work in DuskHaven. My main characters all use magic and at this point it's been fairly nebulous. I have rules but nothing firmly defined. I plan to rectify that tonight. Well I'll start on it tonight. I plan to stick to the six major schools of magic that I defined earlier. Light and Earth are currently the two systems that need the most definition with Fire coming in a close third.

From listening the Writing Excuses group and thinking about what I read they're spot on as to why main characters need rules if they use magic. Without rules readers are left confused as to what abilities the characters have and lack the sense of suspense as they expect magic to solve every issue.

If Rolard was not my main character I might leave things more ill-defined but I can't imagine doing the story from another perspective right now. Although the notion of an Everyman or perhaps an Everywoman is intriguing....

Now I'm rambling and I hate seeing that in other blogs. So to wrap up for today a well defined magic system for your main characters good, rambling in blogs bad.