Elves and Technology
Aug. 25th, 2009 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kippurbirdBrain Chewage.
Not quite an essay rant thingy.
A friend of mine,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
obadiah gave me some critic on the three chapters of the novel that I'm going to send out to the Tor editor. One of the things that he mentioned in the critic was how the magic of the world felt "humdrum". It was an every day thing that everyone had and everyone used. He wanted to have the magic more magical and fantastic. For it to be more mysterious. He felt it would make it more exciting. For me though, I want the magic to be purely a "background" thing taken for granted. That way the threat of having the magic taken away and not being able to do things like turn on lights would be more acute. And besides the non-wizarding lands aren't so magic reliant.
But it got me thinking. If in a technology heavy world magic is seen as amazing, wouldn't it be the same the other way around? If magic were everyday then technology would be a novel thing. In my world technological growth has been seriously stunted by the fey. The fey fear that technology will lead to greater iron usage which would prevent them from manipulating and existing in the "human" world.
Which now that I think about it is rather opposite of what other fey and elves do where instead they generally allow themselves to fade away and be trapped in Fairie because of the iron that men make. My fey actively cause technology to not be worthwhile to keep their hold on the human realms. Basically if anyone starts making a big production with iron the fey send them a warning of stop. If that doesn't work BOOOOOOM. After all if the fey are so powerful, why would they just let themselves go and fade away? I mean humans wouldn't do it. It's rather suicidal of the fey/elves to do such things. (My elves are different?)
Anyway, I digress. So I think I will try and make technology the sort of magic that a magic user would find magical and novel. Alec's older brother, Greywolf, is already fascinated by technology and is a tinker. Which will likely lead into trouble. But he's one of those people who want to know how things work. So, I'm going to try and interject that sort of thing into the world as the writing progresses.
In the mean time, I got one of the new eggs!
Not quite an essay rant thingy.
A friend of mine,
obadiah gave me some critic on the three chapters of the novel that I'm going to send out to the Tor editor. One of the things that he mentioned in the critic was how the magic of the world felt "humdrum". It was an every day thing that everyone had and everyone used. He wanted to have the magic more magical and fantastic. For it to be more mysterious. He felt it would make it more exciting. For me though, I want the magic to be purely a "background" thing taken for granted. That way the threat of having the magic taken away and not being able to do things like turn on lights would be more acute. And besides the non-wizarding lands aren't so magic reliant. But it got me thinking. If in a technology heavy world magic is seen as amazing, wouldn't it be the same the other way around? If magic were everyday then technology would be a novel thing. In my world technological growth has been seriously stunted by the fey. The fey fear that technology will lead to greater iron usage which would prevent them from manipulating and existing in the "human" world.
Which now that I think about it is rather opposite of what other fey and elves do where instead they generally allow themselves to fade away and be trapped in Fairie because of the iron that men make. My fey actively cause technology to not be worthwhile to keep their hold on the human realms. Basically if anyone starts making a big production with iron the fey send them a warning of stop. If that doesn't work BOOOOOOM. After all if the fey are so powerful, why would they just let themselves go and fade away? I mean humans wouldn't do it. It's rather suicidal of the fey/elves to do such things. (My elves are different?)
Anyway, I digress. So I think I will try and make technology the sort of magic that a magic user would find magical and novel. Alec's older brother, Greywolf, is already fascinated by technology and is a tinker. Which will likely lead into trouble. But he's one of those people who want to know how things work. So, I'm going to try and interject that sort of thing into the world as the writing progresses.
In the mean time, I got one of the new eggs!
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Date: 2009-08-25 08:16 pm (UTC)As for the rest I should tell you that I once wrote a story set in a magic rich world, several actually but... one of the consistent criticisms I got was that the magic felt humdrum. Specifically they told me that my characters discussed finding a treasure map to a magical castle as if they talked about going to buy some milk. I gave pretty much the same answer as you would: to the characters magic is perfectly ordinary, though exciting there's nothing particularly [i]mysterious[/i] about the events.
However I have to tell you that this criticism is one you will encounter repeatedly, it seems fairly common in fact. Even if it makes sense in your story world you still need to change things a bit so as to prevent similar objections from future readers. Like say literary agents.