How to write Harry Potter magic

painless_j inspired this, and long ago I told sparrowhawk and Moira McDuff that I'd teach magic. Well. How to write it anyway.

Original Magic is rarely well done, but I don't think it's really Harry Potter fanfiction without Magic, and I feel cheated when people just reiterate what's already known. It lacks... charm.

People just don't know how to write it.

Treat it as ordinary.
Magic in Harry Potter is taken for granted, much like we don't think about turning on the lights or stepping on an elevator. Ordinariness is the key.

( Do's and Don'ts )

Magic doesn't always work.
We seem to forget that magic is a skill, and like most skills has to be learned, and some people are just better at a particular type of magic than others.

( Do's and Don'ts )

Make it unexpected.
Don't just transform something from our world into a magical counterpart. It's too obvious. Take things from our life and twist them. Make them do the opposite of what you'd expect, and remember -- magic is generally somewhat uncomfortable.

( Do's and Don'ts )

There are a few ways to 'twist' things.

( How? )

Magic is uncomfortable and/or inconvenient.
Too many people use fanfic magic as cure-all that makes life easier than ours. We all want magic to fix everything for us, right?

( Do's and Don'ts )

Catch Harry off-guard.
The other characters take Magic for granted. Harry walks into it all the time where he doesn't know what he's looking at. Remember if you're writing Harry as your central character, he's the one all those Muggle readers identify with.

( Do's and Don'ts )

Magic as irony.
Another point is that JKR usually uses magic to make fun of something in the 'real' world. There's a tongue-in-cheek humour.

( Do's and Don'ts )

It takes a little extra effort, but it's worth it. AT first you think steam's gonna come out of your ears coming up with this stuff. But as you get into the habit of writing in magical detail, it becomes easier and easier.

Have fun, bring out your quirky sense of humour, and remember... the point of Harry Potter magic is that it doesn't solve all your problems. No more than this computer I'm typing on.



ETA:
* - From Primer to the Dark Arts. It was easier to use my own magic than look up other people's successful spells.
** - From conversation with sparrowhawk on creating magic.
*** - From Fanning the Flames.

Pay me by the word and I can make it stink.

I've just decided that essays are horrible training for a writer and the worst requirement is the page count. I broke the habit of killing my readers with a landslide of adjectives. That was a good thing.

While I'm complaining, please, everyone, when discussing your latest project don't abbreviate. Even when I've read it "Hey I finished the next chapter of JBLTDR" makes my eyes cross.

Okay, I'm done whining.

Icarus on essays.

I'm working on an essay for school, and have done (as can be expected) many of them over the last two semesters in fact I've done a lot of them over the last few months. I'm just as capable as anyone in padding these things out with overly complex sentence structures, intellectual-sounding meanderings and furthermores. I can write a long essay, no problem.

I have no difficulty at all in making the page count. In fact anyone who's spoken with me knows I can run on and on. Ad nauseum.

But I think that this is terrible writing, and I'm having to beat back the bad habits I'm developing in writing essays again in my fanfic. It creates bad habits. Conciseness is valuable in business and creative writing, but the essay form and required page counts reward the verbose. In business you have to be concise. For creative writing you need to be clear and pithy. Yet essays reward all the wrong things.

I'm famous for my long sentences. I once in a school diagramming exercise wrote a sentence that went on for a paragraph without being a run-on sentence. The teacher thought it was hilarious, though the person who had to diagram it wasn't too happy. The essay form and the requisite page counts encourages worthless digressions and a fatuous tone that the majority of readers find some difficulty appreciating. Essay page counts encourage pointless tangents, and for some reason this style of writing brings out a fatuous tone that nobody likes to read. Strategies for increasing page counts and sounding more intelligent include: passive voice, past and present perfect tense, complex sentence structures and the inclusion of related but not particularly relevant facts. It's rife with passive voice, past perfect tense, long over-complicated sentence structures and a complete inability to get to the point.

The essay form therefore lends itself to a certain lack of clarity. I call it death prose.

We must do this. I will do this.

But hear this, oh college students: Most of what is taught in writing the essay form is not particularly valuable outside of school. You'll spend the rest of your business careers unlearning this shit.