If so, then where are they? What magic do they do? What role do they play in society?

If not, why would the first magic user spontaniously appear? Is there some ancestor or radioactive spider that caused this? How would you react, realisticly, if you spontaniously found your hands burning and if you touched something it combusted? (odd tangent to clarify the question, insert the magic you plan on using to replace the tangent)

But what kind of price. The loss of health, or something like that. I think that headaches and nosebleeds like David Keith off of "Firestarter" could be a good example of a price.

Just an example.

Take the price up from there.

Questions to consider: is your queen familiar with her magic (meaning, does she know what she can do with it, how fast she is drained, etc?) or is it all rather new to her, so she's less likely to rely on it unless other, more familiar methods have failed her? How often in the course of your story does she encounter a situation in which it would make sense for her to use magic? That can make big changes in plot and flow.

The most important thing to realize is that, if magic is a part of the everyday world, people aren't going to react to it as we would, with disbelief/incredulity or whatever. They see it all the time, so to them it's no more impressive than a car going down the street. Or maybe it's less common than that, but we aren't astounded every time they try to send something into space anymore, either.

Any major element to your milieu should have a purpose, and magic is one of those things. Consider how magic would be perceived in your society, how people would react to those with magical abilities (would they fear them? shun them? exploit them? revere them?) Who else has this magic? How did the magic evolve?

If you use magic, make sure it is well integrated as a whole in your entire milieu.

As you can tell, I'm very passionate about this story, and I think I have good strong characters, but it's my first serious effort as a writer, and I'm terrified of messing it up. So the help y'all are giving me is very much appreciated.

My best advice is probably to avoid cliches. It's easy to fall into magical cliches -- elemental magic in particular is prevalent and hard to put a new spin on. If you have an idea to put a creative twist on a common cliche, so much the better... but if it's possible, make your magic system unique and blend it as seamlessly as possible with the world of your story.

I'm currently experimenting with two story worlds; in one, magic occurs naturally in nature, but not in humans. People may use the magic in nature, as in potion making and similar pursuits, but they have no magic of their own. A group of people, though, has been embued with magic; naturally, when the fact that it's possible to gain magical power of your own unnaturally gets out, it is something that the helpless and power hungry want to do for themselves... there's more to the story -- it doesn't center solely on the magic -- but that does add a helpful backbone to parts of the plot.

My other story world is positively saturated with magic -- two separate types. One, the more noticeably prevalent one, is highly volatile and unpredictable. It's a physical magic, influenced by words and gestures, but not requiring a lot of willpower; as a result, it's not a very reliable magic, as when you're casting things don't always turn out as you're expecting them to. The other form is a mental magic brought on more by necessity, will, and concentration. In large amounts, it's very mentally draining. Mages well trained in its use are both rare and very steadfast, stuck in their ways -- which is often more inconvenient than good, since the ways they're stuck in aren't always the right ways. In most cases, though, magic is so prevalent that it's nothing to remark upon -- it's like any other aspect of life, and prey to ordinary differences and prejudices. Mages of the more mental division of power scorn physical mages as putting their trust in something fleeting and unpredictable; physical mages scorn mental mages for practicing something so needlessly wearing when physical magic is much simpler and less draining. Some orders of mages teach purist magic, separating the practice into elements taught separately; some teach craft-specific magic, creating healer-mages and smith-mages; some teach physical and mental magic hand-in-hand... It's like learning different disciplines of science or... cooking. In this world, my magic is both essential and nearly irrelevant; it crafted the world, and the place wouldn't be the same without it, plus my main character uses it for a major spell early on that affects the story forever after... but other than that, it isn't really very important to the plot.

I just suffer from meticulous world-building.

Anyway, I got to ranting, which probably wasn't good. Sorry ^^; Hope I've helped in some strange way.

Does that sound like something that could work for your piece?

Just something that popped into my head a few minutes ago.

Thanks

quote:

---

Um... in the Alvin Maker series, Alvin eventually marries Little Peggy, who is an only child.

---

I was just trying to say that where there is magic, there are rules and the rules cause certain behavior. P.S. Or maybe apart from causing behavior, they create a structure in which to show behavior that exposes character. Alvin and Calvin are both seventh sons, but because their characters are different their interaction with the world is very different.

The thing about a miracle is that, as the name implies, it is a thing to be looked at more than to be used. Of course many miracles are known and celebrated for the good effects they had, but the primary qualification is that the event showed unambiguously the power (and, sometimes, identity) of God.

In the same way, classroom laboratory experiements aren't designed to directly accomplish anything remotely useful, nor are they really intended to teach a practical skill of any kind. They are designed to allow the students to see the predictive capabilities of current scientific theories, and are a means of promoting faith in the theory. Even when they take place outside of the classroom proper, like the experiment where you drop pumpkins to time how long it takes them to fall various heights and how much impact energy is developed over a given length of free-fall. Actually, this kind of experiment goes beyond teaching faith in the mathmatical laws of gravity, it is designed to inspire with the attitude that science is not only predictive, but fun.

Actually, though, while classroom science is the best established in our own world, there is quite a bit of this sort of "miracle" involved in various competing belief systems in the world today. One thinks of Ben Kenobi putting the blast shield on Luke and then telling him "See? You can do it." That sort of thing is something of a commonplace for noviates learning the mysteries of dance or martial arts. And of course our medical establishment combines the classroom exercise with actual life and death outcomes for the benefit of those learning their craft.

Transposed into a world of intolerance and suppression of a religious system incorperating belief and practice of a particular type of magic, I think that the use of a clerical could be very interesting.

Since most of her power is stripped away, she's limited, if I understand correctly. It occurred to me that perhaps the limitation is that she can't affect much outside of herself, and even then, she can't maintain any changes she invokes. Knowing she is going to die and she can't stop it, perhaps she could use that last bit of magic to turn herself into some sort of beacon of hope, physically. What that is depends on your story and your creativity, but it could be the simple giant statue or pillar of fire sort of thing, or whatever. (Those are just examples; I don't think they're that creative.) It would have to be something that can withstand the enemy's efforts to destroy it, hide it or move it out of view. You would also have to deal with the question of why she didn't turn into something that could prevent her death. (To me that would be her choice. She could have fought back, but chose to do something for her people, instead). Since you want her to be almost saint-like, it seems, you might want the choice to represent her religion somehow, too. There are other, less physical, alternative; she could do something that shares her natural talent with magic with the rest of her people.

It is just an obvious question that if you have a name like Christopher, people will wonder how it fits.

and I wasn't complaining, it makes no difference to me.