Writing Magical Battles
Writing fight scenes
with Multiple Magical Participants.
Your first major problem is knowing how to Put into Words that kind of a battle scene; one with Many participants, without confusing the Readers.
I suggest figuring out how to write a basic one-on-one fight scene first.
Link --> ACTION and the Evil "AS"
Multiple fighters makes using Action THEN Reaction vital to write that scene clearly enough for the Reader to Visualize.
Once you add more participants to a fight scene, you're going to need a pencil and some scratch paper just to keep track of where all of them are, in addition to who and what they're fighting, plus what powers each is using.
Just make things more complicated... A scene where a character switches from fighting one opponent to fighting a new opponent once they finish their first fight, will end up in a nasty mess if you don't keep track of everyone, and every thing, involved in the fight.
The Pacing and Timing of your scene-switching from one set of fighters to the next, will be crucial -- because there is no way in hell you can write that sort of pitched battle without scene-switching.
Just remember to do a line break of some kind, such as: * * * or just a single blank line between each and every scene switch and POV change.
Having more than one POV (point-of-view) in a battle will make your fight scenes a snarled mess to read. Stick to Only One per battle scene.
More importantly, Never pick the Bad-Guy's POV. It ruins all the surprise and suspense generated by the fight, especially if that Bad-Guy has one more Ace up their sleeve.
As for your Summoner, Do Not use their Beast's POVs. If you have to do a scene with Beast vs Beast, use NO POV at all. Write it from an Outside Observer's POV. No internal narration at all. Just the Facts, Ma'am. Mainly because a summoned beast's thoughts and feelings should never be seen, unless the Beast Vocalizes what they feel themselves.
The Summoner should always be worried that their summons will Turn on them. Don't ruin the mystery. Keep out of their Beasts' heads.
Over-Powered Characters!
Make sure that your Magical Fighter doesn't look like a Mary Sue/Marty Stu, over-powered, Wish-Fulfillment character. Add realistic character flaws and internal conflicts to balance out all that power. If you do it right, you'll have an awesome story.
Link --> Common Mary Sue Traits -- TV Tropes
However your most difficult problem will be coming up with How the summoner summoned their beasts, and what kind of beasts they can summon.
In short: your Magic.
And What are the Summoning?
If you haven't figured that out yet, THIS is where research really needs to happen.
Rather than trying to make up a whole new form of magic, it is much easier is to base your Magic on an existing magic or spiritual tradition.
Historic and Mythical Onmyoji: Abe no Seimei
in Japan
Abe no Seimei who lived during Heian period, is the most famous onmyōji (Onmyōdō practitioner) in Japanese history. He summoned his beasts and monsters with Shikigami, meaning: paper spirits.
First, he presented an offering to get the spirit's attention, then created a contract with a spirit by promising to do it a favor in compensation for doing him favors. In some stories, the spirit wanted revenge for a wrong done to it, in other stories the spirit just wanted to stay in his company. He then wrote the spirit's name on a small piece of paper, or had the spirit write its own name. Sometimes these papers were folded into origami animal or flower shapes, sometimes they were talisman tags. It depends on the story.
To summon a spirit to him using the papers, he supposedly used a drop of his own blood as offering.
Historically, the spirits summoned were invisible. However, according to his myths, he gave a portion of his own life force to bring them into reality.
Abe no Seimei did Not make 'shadow puppets' with his hands. (Ahem...)
Everything Abe no Seimei is recorded to have done to gain his spirits, call his spirits, and fight off other spirits, were basic Shamanistic techniques. Anyone familiar with shamanism would recognize his skill set immediately because contracting and summoning spirits is what every shaman does.
Of course, working with spirits wasn't all that Abe no Seimei did.
Onmyōdō (陰陽道, also In'yōdō, lit. 'The Way of Yin and Yang') covers a heck of a lot more magic than just summoning spirits.
Onmyoji practitioners, especially the ones that worked for the Imperial Court, did a lot of fortune-telling using astronomy, calendars, and the five elements, to divine good fortune in terms of date, time, direction, and general personnel affairs. They also did Feng Shui: checking if a house or property's location, direction, and furniture set-up drew in Luck, and Prosperity, or Ghosts and Malice
Beyond the shamanistic spirit work, the rest of the techniques an Onmyoji used came from the philosophy of yin and yang and wuxing; magical traditions that had just been introduced to Japan from China, at that time. Rather than separate the two styles of magic, they just...added them together.
And that's just Japan.
There are spirit summoning traditions all over the world, in every native culture, contained in every form of shamanism that exists.
are you basing your Magic on?
In JuJutsu Kaisen, the author bases their summoning powers on the traditional Onmyoji skill set. In fact, most of the 'powers' in JJK are from traditional Onmyoji myths and stories. So are many of the monsters.
Cultivation novels use Chinese mythology for their monsters and spirits, and Taoism traditions for their magic.
The movie Black Panther uses African traditions for their magic.
The Harry Potter magic
system was pretty much made up by the author, but was influenced by
Celtic, Wiccan, and Norse traditions.
My magic is based on the Wiccan traditions and borrows heavily from the Celtic fairy stories and myths from the British Isles.
On the flip side, Author Jim Butcher's modern wizard series; the Harry Dresden books, uses a magic system based on the Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) role-playing game. He freely admitted this.
In fact, many, many anime,
manga, and manhua use the Dungeons and Dragons magic system; a
game created in the early 1980's that was based on JRR Tolkien's
books.
-- And it's Obvious to all of us that actually play D&D.
-- The power Blink. This is an exclusive D&D ability. It does not exist historically.
-- A wizard's abilities are magically bestowed by Books, without needing to Read them.
-- A healer's power is Green.
-- The Orcs look like Pigs and are Green. This whole race comes straight from JRR Tolkien, however Tolkien's Orcs were not Green. The color change was introduced in the D&D game.
-- The goblins are
Green. JRR Tolkien's goblins were Not green, they were gray;
the color of mold.
-- Rings of power.
-- Dungeons.
If you're determined to create your own Magic, your best place to start is with looking up the History of Magic that already exists for whatever culture you happen to be writing in. Use it as a jumping off point, or a framework that explains why your magic works the way it does. Simply adjust the facts to fit the story you want to write. Add things, or subtract things as needed.
Just please be aware that there will be actual practitioners in your reading audience. We will Know when you mess up and don't keep to your own lore, just as easily as we know when someone is using Dungeons and Dragons as a base for their magical system.
After all, we love Fantasy stories too. If we didn't, we wouldn't be practicing magic in the first place.
☕
Morgan Hawke
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