Keeping Magic Magical
Brandon,
I’d love to agree with you—but I think you’re wrong. Readers say that the following books in a series are worse because they have been worse. I can’t think of any epic fantasy that’s gone beyond a trilogy that has gotten better. (Doubtless, there must be some, because I don’t think that the structure problems are insurmountable, and I absolutely expect you to give me a big counterexample with your forthcoming work.)*
But I think the reasons for the slumps are simple—and they aren’t because readers are impatient or misunderstand stories. I think it’s because the longer the series, the more a writer’s limitations show and the more the novelty of a world wears off.
If you have a character tugging their ear to express frustration every five pages, no one will notice it in a ten page short story. But in 5,000 pages, there are going to be a thousand ear tugs. Pretty soon, any time someone tugs her ear, readers cringe. And they should: it’s bad writing. It’s just bad writing that you don’t notice in a short span.
If a writer’s greatest skill is exploring new worlds and by book 5 they’ve explored everything, book 6 is going to have to rely on different skills that the writer isn’t as good at.
I also see lots of reasons why book 8 could sell better than—but not be as good as—book 1: the cumulative effect of eight marketing campaigns, eight years of those first awesome books gaining new readers, and eight more years of people hearing about a writer over and over and finally giving him a try.
But maybe we’ll have to agree to disagree, and I don’t want to tear anyone down; I’ve just been curious to explore the structures of our genre and the challenges inherent in it.
So let’s talk about magic. How do you keep magic, well, magical over multiple books? How do you balance the rationalist impulse of “I need to explain how it works so it seems well thought out and balanced” with some of that Harry Potter-esque sense of wonder? How do you balance the ability to surprise your readers with being careful not to make the magic feel like a deus ex machina ? Is the presence of magic in fantasy about more than adolescent power trips? Must the functions of magic be analogous to other technologies or physical processes, or can it be truly alien?
To paraphrase one of the commenters, if you dissect the magic too much, do you risk it dying on the table?
*Maybe I’d put JK Rowling as an exception, arguing that eventually what she was writing was epic fantasy. And it did get better. Mostly.
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