Guest Post: Playing Fair with Readers in Urban Fantasy by S.A. Archer (Blog Tour)

Let me introduce S.A. Archer once again. He is the fabulous author of Cursed (click for review), book 1 of the urban fantasy series Touched. For the Cursed blog tour, he has supplied us with a fascinating guest post that anyone who loves urban fantasy must read. And don't forget to check out my interview with him where he reveals how he came up with the idea for his many books in the The Sidhe world. And especially don't forget to enter the giveaway where one winner will receive all 5 books of the Touched series. 

Playing Fair with Readers in Urban Fantasy

by S.A. Archer

Back before I started writing stories in the world of The Sidhe, my partner S. Ravynheart and I role played these characters. When you role play, you need to have certain rules so all the players are on the same page. For our game we determined that all fey characters could use teleportation and Glamour, which could disguise one’s appearance. The Sidhe would be the only type of fey to possess the magic of the Touch, and it required skin contact. And then lastly, each Sidhe would possess a single focus of magic. So Rico, who appears in Cursed, has ‘storm’ as his aspect of magic. Not only can he cause rain to start and stop at his command, but any possible aspect of a storm would potentially be within his domain. So he could also produce lightning or hurricane force winds.

Even with such nicely defined rules clearly stated on the game page, occasionally we had players who wrote scenes where their character did something beyond their defined capabilities. I had a hard time explaining this to one player in particular. Her character was a Sidhe whose aspect of magic was healing. In her scene she wrote that her character manifested a fireball and threw it at an enemy. As the moderator, I paused the game and reminded the player that she could only use teleportation, Glamour, the Touch, or her healing power. If she could not explain how her character created a fireball from one of those abilities, she was going to have to re-write her scene. She argued that her character used magic to create it, because the Sidhe were magical creatures. She thought her character could do anything she had a notion to do, and simply state magic was how it was accomplished. On her second attempt, her character levitated an object. Once more, I called her aside and explained that her character could only do the clearly defined magic that was within her capabilities. Third time was a charm. She realized she couldn’t use any of her magic defensively in the situation. Instead, she had the character grab a pistol from a fallen enemy and shoot at her approaching attackers. Bull’s-eye. It was a wonderful scene with a creative solution to the problem and it stayed within the rules of the game.

While having rules to govern magic makes sense in a role playing game, you need to have the same rules when writing any sort of fantasy world. Just like you want to play fair with other players in a game, you have to play fair with the readers. Even if you don’t spell out all of the rules in your magic system, as a writer you need to know them and understand how they work. In a story an author might be tempted to use ‘cheater magic’ and just have their character cast a fireball at the villain, but if their character is not a fire-wielder then they just cheated their readers. How much more exciting to find your character facing a situation that their magic can’t get them out of, and then think outside the box and come up with a creative solution? The readers will be thrilled by the story twist and the impact of the action will be far more intense.

London presented a wonderful challenge in Cursed. As a human among the fey, she is at a disadvantage. It’s easy to give in to temptation and have her go all ninja on the fey who attack her, but she is not an expert in ninjutsu. Beyond some simply street fighting and her average ability to fire a bullet in the general direction she intended, she has to rely on her wit and determination. And occasionally on the belated good sense to just get the heck out of Dodge. It makes her more real and the story more believable. It also heightens the tension and excitement for the reader.