The Rules I've Just Made Up

"Show me what it's like to dream in black and white..."-Breaking Benjamin, Unknown Soldier

So as I sat in my chemistry lecture today learning about bits and pieces of atomic theory and whatnot and basically learning all the strange idiosyncrasies of the way our world works it got me thinking about magical systems and the way fantasy worlds work.

The conclusion I eventually came to is that the decisions you make can be as arbitrary as you like, as long as their consequences are thought out and followed to their conclusions. The example I drew from chemistry is the way in which the random motion of electrons eventually leads to the polarization of molecules and the alignment of certain substances in electric and magnetic fields. In short, order forms out of chaos. Cool stuff, and certainly the fodder of magic and science fiction. Yet scientists buy into it because the mechanisms that explain it (which I won't try to go into here) are very logical and step-by-step.

Fantasy readers, at least the ones who care about the worlds behind the stories (which is a lot of them, I think), function the same way, so take heed: if you can get a scientist to buy it, you can get a reader to buy it.

And now, for the fun portion of the program, we consider how the above revelation reminded me of this lego re-enactment of a sketch by the inimitable Eddie Izzard:



You can thank me for finding a way to post an Eddie Izzard video later. In the meantime, I intend to gather together all the characters living in my world, explain how magic works to them, and say, "Those are the rules that I've just made up--and I'm backing them up with this delete key..."