Jujutsu Kaisen
Making MAGIC 2
Writing
Magical Battles
Have you read the first one?
----- Original Message -----
I like 10 shadows from JuJutsu Kaisen (JJK). The essence
of the ability in a nutshell is the ability to [summon spiritual
beasts]. I want to change the summons, but leave the main point.
Authors who made abilities similar to this one, what problems will I
face in writing fights?
-- Wanna Write Magic Battles
Here
are some Problems that Will
come up when
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.
Take Notes!
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.
Scene-Switching will Need to Happen.
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: * * * between each and every scene switch and POV change. If you're writing online, you need a black space, a line with * * * then another blank line.
It looks like this:
Tanjiro nodded toward their father. "It's in the way he breathes."
Naoki frowned at his older brother. "Like when you told me to breathe with the drum?"
"Tanjiro nodded. "Exactly, but that's
just the beginning." He grinned. "Don't worry, Tou-san will teach you,
just as he's teaching me.
Naoki
awoke under the heavily padded robe he used for covers staring up at
the ceiling rafters wondering how he even got into bed. He'd slept so
hard, he hadn't even dreamed. He sat up slowly, mildly disoriented with
the distinct feeling that something was not quite right.
You can use other symbols if you like, but No Names announcing whose POV you're switching to.
Writing the character's Name as a title at a POV switch is Not Done in
the publishing industry. It's something that appeared in Fan-Fics
written by beginners. No professional publishing house will allow it.
One POV per scene!
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 Summon's POVs.
-- If you have to do a scene with Summon vs Summon, use NO POV at all. In other words, No internal thoughts, feelings, or narration. Write it from an Outside Observer's POV. Just the Facts, Ma'am. Mainly because a summoned beast's thoughts and feelings should never be seen by the Reader, unless the Beast actually Speaks what they feel themselves.
The main reason for this is: the Summoner --whose POV you should be using-- should always be worried that their summons will Turn on them. Don't ruin the mystery. Keep out of their Summons' heads.
Be Careful with your
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: the Magic that makes Summoning happen.
How does your Magic do
Summoning?
And What are they 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.
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.
Historic and Mythical
Onmyoji: Abe no Seimei
Historic
Spirit Summoning
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.
However, first he needed a spirit willing to be summoned. This was done
by presenting an offering to get a spirit's attention, then creating 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 people-shaped
cut-outs, sometimes they were talismen. 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 borrowed Feng Shui from China to check if a home or business 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.
Don't
Limit Yourself!
There
are spirit summoning traditions all over the world, in every native
culture, contained in every form of shamanism that exists.
However many, many of those traditions summon the spirit into the practitioner's body
rather than as an external creature. The old Norse Berserkers summoned
Bear spirits and Wolf spirits into themselves before going into battle.
Many of the Native American traditions did the same.
Make sure you do your research.
What
Magic or Spiritual Tradition
are you basing your Magic on?
Cultivation novels use Chinese
mythology for their monsters and spirits, and Taoist or Buddhist 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 mixed with mispronounced Latin incantations.
The movie Serpent and the Rainbow showcased many actual voudun (voodoo) traditions from Haiti.
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), a
table-top role playing game created in the 1970's that was based loosely on JRR Tolkien's
books. Butcher freely admitted this.
In fact, many, many anime,
manga, and manhua use the Dungeons and Dragons magic system.
-- And it's Obvious to all of us that actually play D&D, or one of the other role-playing games, such as Magic the Gathering, Vampire the Masquerade, WarHammer 40k, or Pokemon.
A Few Signs
that the Author
is using D&D books for their Magic:
-- The skill
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.
-- The Orcs look
like Pigs and are Green. This whole race comes straight from JRR
Tolkien, however Tolkien's Orcs were Not Green, they were the colors of dirt and stones because that's what they were made from. The
color change was introduced in the D&D game.
-- The Goblins are
Green. JRR Tolkien's goblins were Not green. They are gray skinned with black hair and glowing yellow eyes. They were originally elves that were corrupted by Morgoth the Evil. The
color change was introduced in the D&D game.
-- Dungeons that aren't in the basements of castle towers.
-- Adventurer Parties.
-- Adventurer Guilds. This originally came from RPG video games, but D&D picked it up and ran with it.
-- The existence of Ents. Another thing borrowed from Tolkien.
The most obvious sign of all:
-- Stat Lists. While all RPG games use Stat Lists, D&D did it first.
There is nothing wrong with writing a
Literary RPG (LitRPG)
story.
Many, many readers adore them. There are even a few very well
written stories that I enjoyed: Kill the Hero, Solo Leveling, That Time I was Reincarnated as a Sword. It's just not something I would write. However...!
If it's your genre of choice, have at it!
Just please be aware that there will be actual D&D players in your reading audience. We Know when someone is using Dungeons and Dragons
as a base for their magical system, and we will definitely notice when
you get something wrong. After all, we love Fantasy stories too. If we
didn't, we wouldn't be playing D&D in the first place.
In Conclusion...
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, even if you're just
using the D&D books. 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.
Also, please, please try to make it Not look like you copied it off of a turn-based table-top game you played last weekend.
Most
of all, for all of your Readers' sakes, Do Your Research. Far too many
of your reading audience will Know when you get something wrong, even if
it's just the math on your stat sheets.
Morgan Hawke
