I considered writing this post in invisible ink to work by demonstration, but realized it would not be searchable if I do so. You’ll have to settle for regular “ink” (pixels, for most readers).

Most people will have an image of magic spring to mind when it’s mentioned. This might be stage magic or magic in fiction. I know for Rasta’s generation, Harry Potter is likely to be one of the first examples. Magic is as old as writing, and some speculate that early writing was intended to work magic. Well, I speculate that. I’m some.

All good writing is magic, evoking imagery or emotion or something in the reader, but that’s not the kind I mean here. I mean the usual hand-wavy broomstick flying, fireball flinging sort. Or the magical realism of a girl with wings or a man waking up as a giant bug.

Magic in fiction can be separated into a lot of different categories, and fantasy authors would be spending their time well to think about how different authors have treated it in their books.

For me, all of my stories have some bit of magic, but I don’t consider myself a fantasy author. I write magic that moves the story along (at least, that’s my intent). Sometimes (alright, often) it’s ambiguous whether that magic is intended to be real within the story world. I’ve written before about unreliable narrators, and there’s a lot of crossover here: it’s possible to read these narrators as actually reliable but living in a world of magic.

One of my favorite “magic” settings in writing was the TV show Dexter’s Laboratory. Kisstopher told me once “Oh, it’s a show about a boy’s imagination.” I… hadn’t actually made that connection. I’d just accepted it as real. For me, the best magic is like that — some will see it as real, others as mere imagination.

Does magic pop up for you in your writing or reading?