Your Hosts: Mary Robinette, C.L. Polk, Fran Wilde, and Howard Tayler
Let’s put a stake in the ground here: disabilities do not grant magical powers. And yet that exact trope can be found in multiple genres, across multiple mediums. In this episode we talk about why this happens, and how we might better portray the magical awesomeness found in our bodies.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Daniel Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson.
Everyone is going to be disabled. Look at your cast and decide which disabilities they have (visible, invisible, known, unknown). Make sure none of those are plot points.
Your Hosts: Dan Wells, Fonda Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Tayler
Magic and technology are tools that we, as writers, use to tell interesting stories, and they’re very, very similar tools. In this episode we’ll examine some ways in which both magical and technological elements can be used in our stories.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson
Come up with one speculative element to add to our world. “Children have night vision.” “Dogs can talk.” Come up with as many aspects of the world that would be different from our own as a result and mark one or two that would be the seed for interesting stories.
We’ve spent a lot of time talking about magic systems in our worldbuilding. It’s time to talk about science and technology in that same way. This has been a staple (perhaps the defining staple) of science fiction since before “science fiction” was a word.
At risk of opening the “where do you get your ideas” can of worms, this episode covers a little bit of where we get our ideas, and where you might get—and subsequently develop—some more of yours.
Credits:This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson, and mastered by Alex Jackson
Let’s design magic systems! We talk about how we do it, and how the principles of magic system design apply to the science fiction systems we create, and vice-versa.
NOTE: In this episode we’re talking about “hard” magic systems, where there are well-defined rule sets (even if the reader isn’t shown them explicitly.) Next week we’ll talk about “soft” magic.
Credits: This episode was recorded by Dan Thompson and mastered by Alex Jackson.
Brandon has some rules about magic systems — rules he uses as guideposts for his own writing. In his own words, “I name them Sanderson’s Laws partially out of hubris…”
Sanderson’s third law states, in effect, that a thorough exploration of a single magical ability is better than the creation of lots of different abilities–going for depth rather than breadth. And to immediately break that rule, we explore the wider application of this rule in other arenas.
We talk about how we apply this principle–depth rather than breadth–in many aspects of our own work, and then we drill back down (*ahem*) on its application in the creation of magic systems.
