How do you decide that a magic system you’re working on is done?
When I feel like the stories I’m telling are working, I go with it. That doesn’t mean I have every little thing worked out - I’m a planner, so I have a lot of them, if I don’t have something worked out I like to sort of let people know in the book - here’s a hole that the characters have noticed, if that makes sense. But at some point you just have to write. So it’s a more by instinct thing.
I’ve created a couple magic systems and done worldbuilding, but whenever I think it’s done, I come up with another facet that I think would be interesting.
I say, if you want to tell stories, write the story and write down all the facets in a separate file. Then in a revision, go foreshadow that these things could exist, but don’t deal with them until you get to a future book. If you look at Mistborn, there’s hints about how Feruchemy works, but we don’t really deal with it in Mistborn since there’s so much already piled onto you.
Brandon on magic systems
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