No obvious magic until the very end?

[Fizgig]

NaNo has motivated me WAY more than I expected, and I just typed my 51,000th word of my young adult WIP (woot!). I know I have about 6,000 or 7,000 words to add here and there and the first draft will be done, so exciting!

However, writing so quickly has created a problem. Rather than revise as I go (which is what I normally do...which is probably why I've never finished a novel before), I've just powered through my doubts and let the story flow. But, as I approached the climactic battle scene, something happened that I didn't expect.

Rather than a little fluff of barely-magic in the final battle, my characters busted out with full on wizard and witches, firebolt kind of stuff. There is clearly magic in the world from the get-go, but I worry this will be too much of a change.

It makes for a much more exciting climax, and I think it is a sort of cool transition, to see mundane characters the MC has met, showing up in regalia and wielding magic, but I'm afraid it will give the reader whiplash.

I wonder if there are other books like this out there? Anyone else pulled off the big magic reveal at the very end of their book?

 

[cbenoi1]

> Anyone else pulled off the big magic reveal at the very end of their book?

I remember going to a play many years ago where a character which was supposed to be dead was revealed to have taken a special potion to make him look dead and hence play havoc with the other characters on the scene from the shadows. Seconds after that reveal, the actors received a rainfall of pennies and nickels from the audience, which lasted a good ten minutes. I don't know what happened after that because we all left.

-cb

 

[Fizgig]

Ha, well that is...kind of what I feared. I saw another thread here about something similar, and the author said it was a disaster. But I was sort of hoping I was wrong.

 

[Mr Flibble]

This is your first draft so try not to sweat

Can you load in some foreshadowing in you second draft? Hint at How This World Is?

It doesn't have to be in your first draft, but I think there should be at least hints in your final one. Or I will give you the old side eye.

That's the thing about first drats -- all this weird stuff comes out, and then you have X amount of rafts to make it all make sense.

So pew pew pew with your magic. Just make sure you get it in earlier, hint as to its existence (and your MC being good with it) early on.

Simples!

 

[Quinn_Inuit]

NaNo has motivated me WAY more than I expected, and I just typed my 51,000th word of my young adult WIP (woot!). I know I have about 6,000 or 7,000 words to add here and there and the first draft will be done, so exciting!

However, writing so quickly has created a problem. Rather than revise as I go (which is what I normally do...which is probably why I've never finished a novel before), I've just powered through my doubts and let the story flow. But, as I approached the climactic battle scene, something happened that I didn't expect.

Rather than a little fluff of barely-magic in the final battle, my characters busted out with full on wizard and witches, firebolt kind of stuff. There is clearly magic in the world from the get-go, but I worry this will be too much of a change.

It makes for a much more exciting climax, and I think it is a sort of cool transition, to see mundane characters the MC has met, showing up in regalia and wielding magic, but I'm afraid it will give the reader whiplash.

I wonder if there are other books like this out there? Anyone else pulled off the big magic reveal at the very end of their book?

Remember Chekhov's Gun (and this is nearly a literal usage, for once). If someone's going to use a weapon of any sort, IMO you have to make sure to let the audience know about it in advance. You can mess with them, of course, but after the reveal they should be able to look back and see that they should have seen it coming.

A fascinating example of this is Deja Fu in Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time.

 

[Leedwashere]

As a reader I think I would feel pretty cheated. Especially if the use of similar magic would have solved the plot much earlier. I would file that under the "idiot ball" if using TVTropes.

UNLESS, as a poster above me mentioned, it was foreshadowed that this might happen coupled with a good reason that either 1. Using this power before would not have solved anything, thus no reason to bust them out before or 2. some explicit and overcome-able prohibition preventing their earlier use

 

[Mr Flibble]

A fascinating example of this is Deja Fu in Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time.

Oh, good call.

 

[MookyMcD]

This is exactly where deus ex machina comes from -- writing into that corner and taking the magical way out (or the Navy SEALS suddenly appear, or the UFO rescues Brian from the cross). That's one big difference between a first draft and a manuscript.

I'm not saying it couldn't work, but you'd almost need to be structuring the story around it so it was more of a "of course!" moment. Like the story was converging on that moment from Chapter 1.

 

[rwm4768]

It would feel a bit strange to me. If the characters are going to start throwing around magic like crazy, I want some foreshadowing that that is actually possible.

 

[Becky Black]

First off, well done on getting your 50k!

Sounds like you definitely need to do some establishing about the magic in your editing if you don't want it to come across too Deus Ex Machina in the end. You say it's clear it exists from the start, so that's good. Maybe what you need is a reason for magic not being used throughout, until the ending.

• Maybe magic is like the nuclear option, you're not going to use it until things are otherwise utterly hopeless. It could leave some kind of fallout, so you don't mess with it unless you want to deal with walking trees and talking animals for the next two hundred years.
• Maybe the magic can only be used when the land is threatened.
• Maybe magic users are afraid of the effect using it has on them. You toss a couple of fireballs at the enemy, and next thing you're building a tower and imprisoning rival wizards on its roof. They have to be persuaded this is a dire enough situation to risk it.
• Maybe the magic has to be generated and stored up somehow and this takes until the climax. A bit like building weapons for the coming battle.

 

[richcapo]

Great ideas, Becky Black. Very nice. I suggest the OP seriously consider them.

 

[cbenoi1]

> Ha, well that is...kind of what I feared.

The usual way around this is to have an early scene that demonstrates that sort of magic, so that later on the audience is not surprised about it. The other way, as suggested, is to build up expectations along the way through foreshadowing.

Nano is a race. Just assume it works and write it as it is. You can always fix it in a second pass later on.

-cb

 

[Cathy C]

First off, well done on getting your 50k!

Sounds like you definitely need to do some establishing about the magic in your editing if you don't want it to come across too Deus Ex Machina in the end. You say it's clear it exists from the start, so that's good. Maybe what you need is a reason for magic not being used throughout, until the ending.

• Maybe magic is like the nuclear option, you're not going to use it until things are otherwise utterly hopeless. It could leave some kind of fallout, so you don't mess with it unless you want to deal with walking trees and talking animals for the next two hundred years.
• Maybe the magic can only be used when the land is threatened.
• Maybe magic users are afraid of the effect using it has on them. You toss a couple of fireballs at the enemy, and next thing you're building a tower and imprisoning rival wizards on its roof. They have to be persuaded this is a dire enough situation to risk it.
• Maybe the magic has to be generated and stored up somehow and this takes until the climax. A bit like building weapons for the coming battle.

Also,

• Maybe they didn't realize they were capable of that level of power and they're more surprised than the readers.

Book 2, if you choose to do one, could have them dealing with the moral and emotional fall-out of having that kind of power at their command.

 

[Quinn_Inuit]

• Maybe the magic has to be generated and stored up somehow and this takes until the climax. A bit like building weapons for the coming battle.

That reminds me of OJ Simpson's character during the gunfight on the roof in Naked Gun 2 1/2.

 

[Once!]

Back in the day I used to play text adventure games on the glorified calculators that we liked to call computers. A core component of the adventure game was the inventory, better known to its friends as inv or sometimes just i.

"You are carrying a rusty key, an old book, a bird in a cage and an intercontinental ballistic missile. There is an annoyingly random dwarf here."

The rule was (and is) that stuff had to be stuff. That rusty key had to be a rusty key because it needed to fit into a rusty lock. That way the world made sense. It had an internal logic, even if it felt a bit weird wandering around with all these disparate items somehow squeezed into a backpack.

> Put dragon in backpack.

> Which dragon - the green dragon, blue dragon or baby dragon?

> Put green dragon in backpack.

> The green dragon is now in the backpack.

> Inv

> You are carrying:
a lantern
a copy of War and peace
a cup of tea
a green dragon

When you came up to an obstacle or a puzzle, you would look in your inventory for something that would solve it. You would "unlock door with rusty key" or "kill annoyingly random dwarf with dragon."

But you couldn't solve a problem with something that you didn't have. And we would get very upset if an object did something that we weren't expecting - say if the green dragon was an itsy bitsy jade statuette instead of a fire breathing monster. I've been carrying this thing around in my backpack for the past twelve hours. I would have noticed how big it was.

It's the same with books and films. We simply can't solve a problem with something that we don't have in our inv. The reader wants to be able to share in the hero's predicament. They want to empathise. "How would I get out of this situation?"

They can't do this if your backpack has a star trek stylee replicator or a 3D printer or some such.

> You are standing in a cavern. There is a locked door to the south.

> Replicate battering ram.

> You turn on your pocket replicator and replicate a battering ram.

> Smash door with battering ram ...

 

[mamiller512]

I think some breadcrumbs sprinkled along the way could help you keep an exciting ending.

 

[NeuroFizz]

...and then a miracle happens...

**book flies across the room into the fireplace**

 

[Fizgig]

Thank you all for the suggestions!

Becky Black, that was an amazing list of ideas!

Buying Deja Fu to read.....

I looked back over my draft last night after posting this question and I realized that I did actually leave a lot more bread crumbs than I remembered. I still certainly have to go back and make it more clear but sometimes I wonder if my subconscious isn't writing its own book along side the book I think I'm writing....

Cathy C, that is actually exactly where I thought about going. I have the series outlined in my mind and the next book is much more magic-y. I realized I was holding back, trying not to go too overboard, aiming for something closer to Magical Realism, but I think I just need to go for it with the magic and make it a little more rollicking, a little less "literary."

 

[Marian Perera]

There's a major magical event at the end of A Game of Thrones, in a world that's almost devoid of magic up till that point.

But prior to it, there's a lot of foreshadowing, and the event itself is only caused by a significant sacrifice that one of the main characters was not aware of before the end and probably wouldn't have been able to go through with before the end either. I'm being vague because I'd rather not spoil it, if you haven't already read the book or watched the show. What happens is startling and wonderful, but it never comes across as a deus ex machina. Worth reading to see how Martin pulls it off.

 

[BigPawsBrown]

I agree you need some foreshadowing. Otherwise what you're doing is known as deux ex machina.

 

[Quinn_Inuit]

Buying Deja Fu to read.....

??? That particular incident happens in "A Thief of Time," by Terry Pratchett.

 

[Fizgig]

Thanks Quinn Inuit, I haven't read much Pratchett and would have been rather vexed trying to find something that doesn't exist.

 

[Quinn_Inuit]

Thanks Quinn Inuit, I haven't read much Pratchett and would have been rather vexed trying to find something that doesn't exist.

No problem. Here's an Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061031321/?tag=absowrit-20

It's one of my favorite Discworld novels.

 

[K.B. Parker]

I had a similar thought in my head while working on my nano last night. Out of nowhere I decided that in the last page my character was going to reveal his 'dark secret' to the tune of saying, "I think I'm a witch."

Except there would be no foreshadowing or mention of magic in the entire novel. On one hand, I've always wanted to write a book like that (then continue it as a series).

It's probably not in my best interest to do so, but I'm going to keep all my cards on the table for the future.

In your case, the only thing that would potentially put me off is a massive explosion of magic. If handled with foreshadowing I think it could be done well.