posted
I seem to recall OSC once mentioning that magic (or any source of power) should always come with a cost.
This idea has never sat well with me, and in my own stories I'll often have char's with massive amounts of power available to them.
I was re-watching some old "Next Generation" episodes the other day, and realized that the character "Q" is the ultimate example that you can easily have power without consequence. For all intents and purposes, Q is a god who can do anything. He can alter reality to whatever he chooses, and he doesn't ever "break" a story.
I think that the key to having char's with limitless power is making sure that they are a "trickster" style character, with very little involved in the overall story. If one of the officer's of the Enterprise could be like Q, there would have been no suspence at all... but since Q acted much like the "trickster" from Native American lore, it seemed to work.
Sorry for rambling Just trying to sort things out .
posted
Any "rule" can be broken, of course, but *generally* I agree with Card.
And the cost of magic has nothing to do with how grand the power is. Q answered to a continuum. I seem to recall that during one episode, he pissed them off enough that they made him mortal.
I do agree that you can bend or break this rule better with minor characters and more specifically, with antagonists. The protagonists having to fight seemingly insurmountable odds can make a great story. Q was a pest that the crew had to use cunning and guile to overcome. If Q had been the captain of the ship, what a boring show! Heck, even if Q worked in the engine room but was generally on their side, it would have been a boring show.
posted
Q wasn't the protagonist. I'd check Card's statement to see if he meant all magic anywhere, or what the protagonist has access to.
How interesting would a story be from Q's perspective? This was expressed in the story where he was mortal. He said he'd simply alter the laws of reality and move the massive asteroid somewhere more convenient, and shrugged. No big deal. It becomes harder to develop the tension and conflict needed when power is free and unlimited. Humans merely intrigued Q. At any time, he could have simply made it so they never existed. He proved this in the series finale.
A cost is important, and it should be relative to the magic performed. But mind that cost can be many things. It can be time, it could be pain, it could be blood, and it could a steep learning curve.
Harry Potter's world doesn't have much cost for magic. Then again, neither does our own world. We may pay an electric bill for the ability to talk instantly over large distances, but we hardly give it much thought (except maybe when the price goes up.) Is that breaking a rule? I don't think so; everyone had access to it (mostly). The real power in Harry's world came from sacrifice. The kind of sacrifice that Dumbledore and Voldemort, and even Harry, displayed.
So when I think of cost in that statement, I'm pretty flexible. But I always have a cost for my magic.
posted
It would seem that you guys generally agree with me that you can have char's with limitless power, provided that they are not on the side of the POV char's in your story.
It's interesting that if a char has this type of power and is a "good guy" the story is instantly boring, but if the omnipotent character is either evil or neutral, the story becomes much more exciting. An interesting dynamic of storytelling.
posted
Q's power does have a limitation. It's the limitation of his own pride and arrogance. He finds himself a near omnipotent being so his only pleasure comes with screwing around with people. Have any of you played Sim City for too long? You get your city perfect and its boring. So what do you do? Unleash a disaster on your perfect city so you can have fun fighting it and rebuilding it. Q does the same thing. He screws something up and then sees if those involved can fix it. Only he doesn't really care if he can or not.
To answer lehollis' question, there was a book about Q from his perspective. It was pretty good. It had to do with him meeting up with powers more powerful than even his own. So, to make a story interesting from Q's perspective, you have to make it so he isn't omnipotent, one way or another. The story was called I,Q for anyone interested.
posted
Perhaps Q's limitation was his writers. Perhaps they could have constructed some paradoxes or other tough choices that vexed even Q. (Perhaps this happened in I, Q. I didn't read it, but will think about a sequel: Me, too, Q.)
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posted
They dealt more with Q's limitations in "Voyager" (there was even a Q war where some of them died) but I think the major cost of his incredible power was boredom. Every time you see Q he is just trying to have fun, trying to find someone who can beat him. (and then come up with some reason why they didn't actually beat him) I think everything should have a cost because things should have consequences. That said I don't care what the cost is to the Cheshire cat, (another trickster) because he doesn't show up much and the story isn't really about him. If the character is in the story a lot I'd like to read about what their power costs.
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posted
The question isn't can you do power without consequences, but is it generally a good story if you do it that way. I don't generally discuss TV shows because I frankly think they are rarely first rate storytelling.
A much more salient point would be Pug in Feist's Riftwar series or Zed in Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule series. In both of these the wizards have almost god-like power with little or no cost to them. The books sell, but that still leaves it open to question whether that is the best possible storytelling.
In both instances, the author uses the rather hoary device of having the powerful wizard disappear, get lost, or simply decide not to help. Otherwise there is no problem since either can generally snap their fingers and POOF the problem is gone.
It is very hard to plot a believable conflict in a story in which an important character has nearly limitless power. I have very little patience with stories like these. How many times can Pug disappear before all you do is yawn and skip to the back to see when he shows back up? Well, obviously this is one of those irritating occasions when I agree with Mr. Card.
posted
I agree that there should generally be a price to magic, without a price you wonder why people don't do everything with magic (though if you are in the Harry Potter they do do everything with magic, but there is a cost for underage wizards, expulsion and snapped wands). But it can be interesting to have a character with unlimited power, but who has a good reason to not use it. The character who comes to mind for me is Simkin from the Darksword Triology, you realise that he can do anything with magic he wants, but he has a vested interest in not fixing the world, and therefore it falls to Joram who has no magic.
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I am destiny
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posted
Interesting question. (I hated Q BTW) In my series my MC first deals with peoples reactions to him. That is the cost for the origional emerging of "Magic" powers. As the series goes on, he can use what he is developing and honing but it takes energy and weakens him. So he must be judgemental as to wether he should use them now or later if something even worse happens. He also has to deal with teaching others to contrioll thier powers and the posibility of getting hurt by them as the powers flare or controll wanes.
Yes there is a cost to power in my books but there may be none in yours and that, IMHO, is okay....
posted
Somehow, it has always seemed wrong to me as well, that magic always has to have a cost. I mean, if magic does have a cost in any given story/world, that's fine with me, but why should it always have a cost?
Or perhaps I'm limiting the usage of the word "cost." I envision "magic has a cost" in a way like "in order to use magic, you must lose something for the exchange" like requiring a blood sacrifice, or losing your memory, or shortening your lifespan, etc etc.
On the other hand, my WIP is more similar to the Harry Potter world. Some people can do magic. Some can't. Some are better than others, even since birth. It takes some training to do it right, but once you get it down, there's no real cost for using magic.
At the same time, I do believe that there should be limitations on what magic can accomplish. As people have mentioned, having a Q-like character as a "good guy" would pretty much make any plot developments irrelevent, and ruin the story. But at the same time, at the end of my WIP, one of the characters ends up (not exactly on purpose) being instilled with divine "unthinkable" magical power, above and beyond what anyone else in the world. The trick, in writing the sequel (which I'm currently doing) is figuring out, even with "near-absolute" power, what he is still vulnerable to, and making *that* the next challenge.
For that matter, such an absolute power can't be good for the human psyche. Even without any more external antagonists, a story might follow the saying "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Heck, with absolute power, maybe that "good guy Q" would actually BECOME the antagonist. After all, if you or I were truly omnipotent, how bored would you soon become? How many months, years, decades, would it take before we all transformed into the role of the trickster, messing with lesser beings just to see how they react?
I guess I'll stop my ramblings now too, but in short, you're not the only person to think that "magic must have a cost" just doesn't feel right.
posted
So if someone has absolute power with no cost--I am afraid I seriously don't see any conflict. Without conflict there is no story.
I just finished Godslayer (Banewreaker and Godslayer are unimaginably better than her Kushiel series imo). In in the magic is unimaginably powerful--but the cost is horrific. What is the true cost of using such power? How much does one have to suffer for it?
Edit:
quote:Or perhaps I'm limiting the usage of the word "cost." I envision "magic has a cost" in a way like "in order to use magic, you must lose something for the exchange" like requiring a blood sacrifice, or losing your memory, or shortening your lifespan, etc etc.
Well, it can be done that way, but I happen to think that is a more shallow cost. How much might a being have to give up? What might be the ultimate consequences?
The idea that any great power is without consequences is just unthinkable. In real life, our "magic" has consequences--how large we may not even yet begin to know. Chernobyl was certainly a consequence and therefor a cost as an fairly simple and straightforward example.
Nothing comes without a price.
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited September 13, 2007).]
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited September 13, 2007).]
posted
At the same time, I do believe that there should be limitations on what magic can accomplish.
My personal feeling is that cost is just a limitation. I think saying magic should have limits works, too.
If all magic can do is put a little red dot on the wall, does it really need a cost? I don't think it does--because it's so limited that a cost isn't needed. (Even a modern laser pointer has a cost, but most people would consider it to be negligible.)
If magic can split a city in half, then it's not very limited. So it should have a cost (unless it's the bad guy we're talking about, maybe. Even then, I recommend a cost.)
So cost and limit kind of go hand in hand, a sort of balance. When one is small, the other should probably be a bit bigger.
If you consider Harry Potter, could the regular magic of the everyday wizard do much more than we can do in our modern world with magic? A few things, perhaps, but we could do things they thought were fascinating. To me Harry's everyday magic setting wasn't so different from characters in the modern world.
posted
I'm inclined to think the issue revolves less around "power" and more around "absolute." Is it even possible to conceive of a power that has no limitations? Or powers that somebody else can't point out limitations on?
(I liked Q, especially in later episodes, though I dropped out of regular "Star Trek" watching after "First Contact"---much too gory for my tastes.)
posted
To me, this question is a relative one. Many people have suggested that the cost does not have to exist if it's not the protagonist. I'll expand that a little and say that I think that the cost of magic does not have to appear to the reader if it is not the POV character performing the magic.
Simply put, the POV character may not even know what the costs are, since it may be a form of magic they do not have access to or knowledge of, and therefor it would be out of character for them to know what the dangers are. I think that what Card meant, was that any character, POV or otherwise, who uses magic, would inherently need to know the consequences, but others would not. Otherwise, the characterization would be incomplete and unbelievable.
Now, it has been suggested here that the costs can be somewhat less physical, as in Q being bored. I agree that that kind of thing can work, as long as that boredom creates opportunities in the story for conflict or suspense, as it often did in the Q episodes. Physical consequences are obvious, while other consequences might take a little more thought to present well, but I imagine, such usage could be rewarding.
[This message has been edited by luapc (edited September 13, 2007).]
posted
The best example of the cost of magic that I've seen is in The Fionavar Tapestry, where each mage has another person, his source, who is linked to his magic and supplies the power for the magic. It's an interesting dynamic in that the person casting the spell doesn't face any direct physical limitations on their magic, but the person they are most closely bonded with in the entire world pays the entire toll. It also creates teriffic character differences, as some mages are sympathetic towards their sources, and some see themselves as in a higher station than their mages, so the source is automatically at their disposal.
In my opinion, magic should have some form of cost. If I remember from Harry Potter there is a slight cost, in that whoever is casting the spell would experience a little fatigue if the spell was too complicated or if they did it all day. The cost was very minute, though. Having a cost for magic makes the effort more humane - which of us can perform tasks without paying some cost, even if the costs are small?
Similarly, I think that near God-like powers are a bit of a waste of time. Who can relate to the ability to change physics to meet your needs, or crack a planet in half down the middle? It makes for great special effects, but it doesn't help with immersion.
posted
I think with non-limited or non-cost associated powers, you run the risk of readers wondering, "well, why don't they just conjure up a snazzy deus ex machina?" I've made this comment on several of my writing buddies' works, where the magic just felt too powerful, and so any conflict the characters got into felt contrived. Also, I think magic works best when it has defined rules, some sort of physics they have to follow, if you will.
And as someone pointed out (Christine?) it's much more interesting when there's costs associated.
[This message has been edited by annepin (edited September 15, 2007).]
posted
There price of having power, which applies to us as much as to Q, is you have to live with the results of how you've exercised it. In Q's case, it has turned him into a petty, annoying trickster. There was an episode where he identifies a young girl who happens to be a passenger on the Enterprise, who has emerging continuum powers. The issue is whether she will use these powers to try and bring back her parents or go on and fulfill her potential.
A similar issue was raised in "The Mirror of Erised", a chapter of Harry Potter. Love is the source of the greatest power in the Potterverse, but not if it turns you into an eemo, pining away in front of a visual pacifier.
Well, yeah. Power doesn't have a cost, everyone has quite a bit of power, but most of us don't do anything with it. We all have the same number of hours in the day as Orson Scott Card, but apparently none of us have used it to write dozens of best selling novels. Is it because he is sacrificing squirrels in his backyard to gain literary power? Probably not. He just hasn't let his fear of what other people think block him creatively. The way I see it, anyway.
posted
I want to run this idea past everyone. I've written a novel that's the first of a planned series. In the first one we're getting used to the world and the protagonists are just mortals. At the end, though, one is endowed with certain powers. I kept thinking that in a sequel there has to be some defined cost of magic. I don't want to just say 'the bad guy has more power than the good guy until the end when the good guy wins'. So, I've been thinking about this a lot and I think I've come up with at least a partial answer.
What if the cost of magic was your humanity. The more powerful you become, the less human you are. It works for me because any cost of magic has to apply to everyone, not just the good guy. So, the reason the bad guy is so powerful is because as he gained power he lost his humanity. You can see parallels in our world with Hitler and Stalin. They gained so much power that the question for them became not, what should I do, but what can I do?
Looking back, this cost works for what I've already written because the characters with less power are still pretty human-like, where the ones with more power, while not necessarily evil, are more apathetic. They just don't care what happens to the world.
quote:"well, why don't they just conjure up a snazzy deus ex machina?"
I watched a movie or a TV episode recently (I forget what) where someone needed to perform a big spell and the spell recited was "Deus ex Machina!" My wife and I both laughed at that.
quote:Is it because he is sacrificing squirrels in his backyard to gain literary power?
Well, there is that scene in Ender's Game, involving Ender's brother and the squirrel. It still gives me the heeby-jeeby's.
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posted
The "cost of humanity" would be a parallel to Star Wars and the Force, in my opinion. Not that it's a bad thing, it's actually quite a good thing. But that's what it is.
posted
I guess it all depends on what you define as humanity. Like, who is your quintessential human? I'd say Gandhi, since he was awesome but hasn't actually been deified, you know? Once you get deified, then comes the sacriledge and all that.
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posted
The way I look at it, you don't have a quintessential human. The humans have problems too, but if you actively use magic, they you will become more and more detached from the things that make us human: love, compassion, tolerance, etc. If you want something to be such a way, you would do it even if it may hurt many others.
The catch is that to beat the antagonist the protagonist would have to risk the same thing in using magic to defeat the antagonist.
posted
I was thinking last night maybe I should change the rule for myself.
Instead of saying that magic should have a cost, I should say something like the author must know when, where and how to give power (not magic only) a cost and/or limit so as to make the story interesting.
quote:Well, yeah. Power doesn't have a cost, everyone has quite a bit of power, but most of us don't do anything with it. We all have the same number of hours in the day as Orson Scott Card, but apparently none of us have used it to write dozens of best selling novels. Is it because he is sacrificing squirrels in his backyard to gain literary power? Probably not.
Of course, power has a cost. ALL power has a cost.
No, instead of sacrificing squirrels, Mr. Card is sacrificing his time and his energy at the cost of other things he could use those for.
EVERYTHING has a cost, even if a minimal one. If I walk across the room the cost in a tiny bit of energy. When I sit here at my computer, the cost is my time and the money to pay for the equipment, the use of the electricity and the broadband.
When dealing with uber power or god like abilities the sacrifice or cost is generally going to be in there humanity or ability to relate to humanity.
You see this in Hollywood/Washington and in the very wealthy. The influence and power they have accumulated insulates them from the masses and they can no longer relate to what it's like to wonder where the rent money is coming from or how they are gonna feed there family today.
In general this is not a cost that is going to trouble the individual paying it, unless they notice it early on. It will however, trouble the reader and the characters surrounding them.
posted
I think yes losing your humanity is an interesting concept... It actually makes me think of Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So, yes, this is a theme that's echoed elsewhere, but it's a powerful theme and I think it works.
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quote:EVERYTHING has a cost, even if a minimal one. If I walk across the room the cost in a tiny bit of energy. When I sit here at my computer, the cost is my time and the money to pay for the equipment, the use of the electricity and the broadband.
But if everything has a cost, does Power have a particular cost? That I use my power to play minesweeper doesn't mean I am not using my power.
I had a tantrum to get what I wanted at Home Depot a couple of weeks ago. That's one way to use power. The cost of that was I have to drive a little further to go to Lowe's instead. But I've always liked Lowe's better anyway. I don't have to drive to Lowe's. I just never want to go into that Home Depot again. It would be funny if I actually wind up running into other people who are avoiding the Home Depot because of my tantrum. Oh well. Some things, it will be a relief for everyone to see if there is playback in the afterlife. Because I just wish so much I could make it right and there is no way, that I can think of, that I can without complicating matters for any employees I may have gotten in trouble.
Hopefully their manager said "That's okay, that lady was clearly just crazy, it's not your fault".
posted
I agree with OSC that all magic or power has a price.
Quote: A much more salient point would be Pug in Feist's Riftwar series or Zed in Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule series. In both of these the wizards have almost god-like power with little or no cost to them. The books sell, but that still leaves it open to question whether that is the best possible storytelling.
Both Pug & Thomas (another character in the riftwar saga) pay a price for their power/magic. Both give up part of their humanity (especially Thomas). Pug has to pull his power from within himself. I think that their price for power is just more subtle than say someone who sacrifices squirrels.
I do agree though that in some of the later books in this same world that it seems that Pug has all this power without paying anything from it - because he already has paid for his power in the earlier books.
walt
BTW - how do you put the quotes so they are so small and indented a bit.
posted
Well, I get irritated at Feist because he made Pug too powerful in comparison to the price he has to pay for his power. The thing is he paid a huge price for it in the first two books, but little in later ones. All he has to do is basically show up. His having paid ten books ago doesn't make for good storytelling in the current books.
Another thing is that Tomas didn't give up his humanity. He looses it for a while, but was given it back. He ended up paying no price for the power.
Probably the problem of making characters and their magic so powerful that no problem really exists for them is another issue. But the only way to balance a character having a huge amount of power is to make the cost of using the power huge. Otherwise, nothing is any challenge and all problems end up being solved with a snap of their fingers.
I very much prefer the kind of cost in Godslayer where Satoris uses so much of his power that he left himself vulnerable. He knew he was doing it, and it was a terrible price he paid for the choices he made.
Let's just say if you take the cost out of using power, then in my opinion you take most of the depth out of stories.
So I do agree with the TANSTAAFL theory.
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited September 15, 2007).]
posted
Power without consequences is what a child has, and John de Lancie played Q as a big child. See also the Twilight Zone episode with Billy Mumy and the Original Star Trek character Trelane. Such a character makes a great antagonist but does not work as a protagonist.
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posted
I'd go one step further and say that using power comes with a consequence and a gift. One has the opportunity to use or not use the power, to accept or deny the consequence, and to accept or deny the gift. The gift may be knowledge, responsibility or love, or any of a million other things. All of these characters that you mention, Rick, are who they are because they refuse to accept responsibility for their power, and refuse to learn from their gifts - they do not use them wisely or well. And that is a choice, just like using power is.
It is also the difference, to me, in characters like Gandalf and Saruman
posted
I think one of the points of magic/power requiring cost is that things that do not cost are not valued.
Every single one of us has god-like power that doesn't cost us much if anything. But since everyone else also has similar god-like power, we don't consider it magic.
Me, I like the magic of breathing. And having wounds that heal. And being able to calm a child's fear with a single kiss.
(I had written that I liked the magic of healing - ambiguous. If I had meant I have the power to spontaneously and rapidly cause others to heal, that would be pretty cool and would demand a pretty serious cost (other than getting worked to the bone because everyone wanted me to do it for them...))
[This message has been edited by meg.stout (edited September 16, 2007).]
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Just trying to sort things out 
