Rill from Black Clover

Two of the anime my son and I have watched are ‘Fairy Tail’ and ‘Black Clover’.  We finished the former and are halfway through the latter.  He loves these series because they have magic.  I enjoy them too.  It took me a long time to realize why I find these series fairly unique in terms of magic systems.  At least, when I compare them to what I’m used to seeing.

First, I’ll do a brief overview of these two examples:

Fairy Tail–  This is a world where a lot of people have magic.  Those who do can get trained and become wizards.  Once they are skilled enough, they join a guild or go solo.  Madcap hijinks ensue.  You have standard elemental stuff, but other things like word magic, dance magic, pulling equipment from a pocket dimension, and metal magic.  Even types that seem similar and somehow different.  So, you never know what’s going to turn up.

Black Clover–  This is a world where everyone has magic, except for the main character, but that’s not important here.  At age 15, a person will go to a ceremony and gain a grimoire, which gives them a type of magic.  There are the basics alongside cooking magic, wool magic, mirror magic, thread magic, ash magic, tree magic, and the list keeps going.  As you can see above, paint magic exists too.  That character can even change his magic to be the opposite element of whatever he is fighting.

So, what is the point I’m getting to with this post?

When writing fantasy, you don’t have to stick with the traditional magical styles.  You can use the elements and other commonly used types as a jumping point, but then you start running in a different direction.  This gives you a greater variety of caster types and you can make battles/adventures more interesting.  It’s not just a flinging of fireballs and lightning bolts like the old days.  The audience won’t know exactly what’s going to be flying around if the casters are so specialized.

The trick here is to think both small and big.  You need to take a single aspect of the world or a general concept.  Then, you need to expand it without hopping into other areas.  For example, taking heat magic instead of fire magic.  You can start coming up with different uses for heat without adding fire.  Starting off simple with heat bolts and heat barriers will get the ball rolling.  Then, you can have the caster creating weapons from pure heat, which bypass armor.  Maybe they’ll create a heat golem.  You’ve now taking a small portion of one element and made it a bigger school of magic.

Doing this does require a lot of imagination and creative bending of nature.  A character may have to get the aspect to function differently that what it normally would.  If someone has dust magic, you wouldn’t expect them to be able to do any damage.  It’s just dust, so maybe blinding and hiding.  This is where an author would have the caster mess with the traits of their aspect.  Altering the density of the dust can make it hard enough for armor even if it doesn’t look like it.  Maybe it can be turning acidic.  You can even have them start conjuring sentient dust bunnies that have actual teeth.  Your imagination can still run wild even with the limitation.

That’s really the gist of this whole thing.  Can’t even deep dive into it because the concept is simple to explain, but the challenge is putting it into practice.  Just sit back and think of a type of magic that you haven’t seen much of before.  If you aren’t sure about something then research it to see what its properties are.  I know, chemistry is the most hated science of high school. (Don’t get cocky, physics! You come in second only because most people get to opt out of you.)  Anyway, the more you learn about something, the newer types of spells that you can figure out.  It doesn’t have to be much, but enough to add some versatility to the new school.  After that, let the magic fly.