Behind the Scenes of “When Magic Died”

Happy new year, all! I’m excited to announce that my latest flash fiction story “When Magic Died” has just been published on the new Havok Publishing website. If you’ve already finished it, read on to learn a little about how the story came together. If not, go check it out now — because it’s only available to read for free today (January 2nd)!

Like previous stories submitted to Havok (when it was an imprint of Splickety), I wrote “When Magic Died” specifically for the theme. But this time was a little different. The theme for the whole month of January is rebirth, but I also needed to decide which genre/day to submit to (mystery, sci-fi, humor, thriller, or fantasy). I sat on this decision *for a while*. Then, in late October, I saw them put out a call for submissions for the humor genre. I took that as a sign, and started brainstorming.

Taking the theme very literally, I figured that something would need to die at the beginning of the story. Since fantasy is my preferred genre, I thought about what kinds of things would die in a fantasy story — and pretty quickly thought of chosen heroes’ quests to do something like save the world. I figured the humor part would come from the hero failing their quest right at the beginning, then doing just as bad a job when they’re invited to be part of the rebirth.

I considered having the hero fail a quest to save the world, but I felt that I wouldn’t be able to describe a world-rebuilding scene without ripping off The Neverending Story. The idea of magic dying struck me as a good replacement, so I ran with that. It seemed like it would be fun to write about an adventurer who’s supposed to help rewrite the laws of magic, but ends up doing so in a very unconventional way.

In terms of writing the story, that was the only outline I worked with. Most of my other flash fiction stories are a little more plotted-out before I start writing. But I figured I’d do better at being funny if I took more of a discovery-writing approach. That way, things would feel more natural instead of being forced in a particular direction.

So when I started writing, some things came more easily than others. I wanted to get to a joke as quickly as possible so I could readers’ expectations from the beginning. The set-up “magic was dying … had the nerve to do just that” was an idea that stuck from early on, and (especially in the first draft), it gave me some space to be not-as-funny in describing the opening scene in more detail.

Which felt like a mini-saga of its own. Since I knew most of this piece would be driven by dialogue, I originally wanted to cram so much information right in the first couple paragraphs to make sure readers understood the point of the quest, show how magic died, establish the dragons in the story, etc.

It was all pretty superfluous, which is a recurring theme in most of the early paragraphs of my flash fiction. Thanks to some incisive editing, the final version gets to the meat of things much quicker — and lets me reference the enormous collections of random objects collected by questers (especially in video games). If this story hadn’t already been so close to 1000 words, you can bet that list would’ve been a lot longer and weirder.

As I wrote, I figured a lot of the humor was going to be juxtaposing traditional, almost regal, high fantasy elements with more modern and banal bits. I’m not well-versed enough in comedy theory to understand why, but I just think it’s funny to have a fantasy world where dragons say things like “Missed it by that much,” and “A magic system. You’re supposed to come up with a magic system.”

I was happy with the way Dave (so named because I thought a non-fantasy-sounding name would be funnier) came together as I wrote. My initial thought was that his character would be just shy of competent. Which is funny, but can also become moderately annoying. Fortunately, when I settled on snark and sarcasm being the basis for magic at the end, I realized it would need to be part of his character during the story (instead of just thrown in at the very end). I feel like that gives him some agency earlier on, especially when the dragons are suggesting different magic systems.

Which leads back to the conversation between Dave and the dragons. As mentioned earlier, I tried exercising my discovery-writing (and comedic) muscles with this story. I enjoyed the challenge of balancing things that just seemed funny with beats that would push the story forward. This made it nice to have five different characters playing off one another — no matter who inserted a wry comment or made a joke, there was always someone to steer things back on track. Five characters in a flash fiction story really is madness, but I was fortunate that this one could revel in it.

And, in case the topic comes up, I take zero issue with developed magic systems, haha. It just seemed like a fun thing to play with in the event of one being entirely erased.

Of course, I can’t talk about what went on behind the scenes without mentioning editors Lauren Hildebrand, Gen Gavel, and Andrew Winch. The story is much stronger than the first draft thanks in no small part to their help and insight, and I’m super honored that they selected it as Havok’s inaugural Wacky Wednesday story! Thanks all 🙂

Have any questions or comments about “When Magic Died” — the story itself or how it came together? Feel free to post below or under the story on Havok’s website. And make sure you keep following them on social media or become a member for even more awesome flash fiction stories!

Impressions of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Just to be clear up front, yes, I’m going to take this opportunity to write about a game that came out five years ago. That game is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. I’d been playing it on and off for three years and finally completed the final quest recently — and enjoyed nearly every moment of it. And as this blog is still in its early stages, I’m going to take a break from my writing journey to talk about this.

I remember first learning about this game when they were talking about the creative leads on it: Ken Rolston (game designer), R.A. Salvatore (author), and Todd McFarlane (artist), all well respected in their fields. While I don’t recall a ton about the marketing, I remember downloading the demo as soon as it became available, and seeing a rather expensive limited edition pre-order with a map, deck of game-relevant cards, and a small statue.

It got decent reviews, but didn’t seem to make a big splash in the gaming landscape (that is, until its lack of a big splash effectively put its developer out of business, at which point it made a big splash in the news). I think that’s a shame because it does some cool things like requiring you to read inventory descriptions to progress in quests, leaving surprises for exploring the entire map, or allowing non-social-interaction skills to be usable in conversations. I really enjoyed how this encouraged me to try new things as a player and discover what else the game could be hiding.

The story of the game begins your character coming back to life after dying in battle. In the world of the game, this means that you’re no longer bound by fate, but have the ability to shape your own destiny — and therefore the destiny of everyone/thing else, too. With this new power, it falls on you to turn the tide of war as dark elves invade your land. Of course, this is just your main quest. The game has 250+ (!) side and faction quests, with a variety of lengths. It’s enormous.

Even though the story itself is pretty linear, the game uses its emphasis on destiny to acknowledge your choices at key points. The coolest part of this is in a feature called “Twists of Fate” which mechanically give you different skills, but also serve as a record of the feats you accomplished and the choices you made. These, coupled with the “Destinies” you unlock (by leveling up and assigning points into Might, Finesse, and Sorcery abilities) help make your character feel very unique. And they all have really cool artwork.

There were a few issues like the occasionally uncooperative camera, irregularly occurring glitch, or a criminally small inventory for a game that throws so much loot at you, but overall I had a really fun time playing the game. Nowadays I imagine you can get it (and a couple DLCs) for pretty cheap on PC and the last generation of consoles. And if you like fun, somewhat experimental open-world RPGs (and don’t mind spreading a game over a long period of playtime), I recommend that you do.

Those are my main thoughts as a player, but as a writer/creator (to bring this back for a moment), what did I think? I still really liked it. Small things like granting experience points for finding new locations or interacting with bits of lore drove home the idea that this game is about more than combat. And that’s what I’d like to capture with any (interactive) fiction I create. I wouldn’t want to just reward the action, but the experience of exploring and discovering the world in a variety of ways. Easy to say, difficult to accomplish. But I think KoA:R offers a good example of how it can be done.