Stories are magic. It’s as simple as that. At the very least, they’re a form of telepathy. Think about it, I write something, describe something as I see it in my head, and you take those words, and for a brief moment in time, see that image in your head. This magic works across space and time. As long as the words exist, they can be read days, months, years from when they were written and create a picture for you, the reader in your head.
Let’s try it. As I write this, it’s 12:16PM, August 18, 2026. Let me paint a picture for you.
Trevor stepped through the door of Hunters Guild office 171, the burlap sack held over his right shoulder dripping blood onto the gray tile floor. His sword in its scuffed scabbard bounced at his hip. The room was Spartan, the only accommodations a couple of sturdy plastic chairs that sat along the left wall. The walls themselves were a dingy yellow, the same color once white walls became in the home of a life-long smoker.
You can see it right? The stark room, the sickly yellow walls, the plain floor? These are the first few sentences of my current work in progress. They start to set the scene as our hero begins this tale.
That’s one kind of magic within a story, connecting the author and the reader across (sometimes) vast stretches of space and time and conjuring images for the other to see.
If we were playing Dungeons & Dragons, it would be like casting Minor Illusion, however, Minor Illusion doesn’t seem a strong enough title for the magic of stories.
There’s another kind of magic contained in a story, but this is a magic that is primarily for the author. It’s the magic of discovery within the story. It’s the moment, or moments, where something unexpected happens in the story. Some character steps out of the shadows, some event pops up out of nowhere, and all of a sudden, pieces of the story puzzle fall into place.
I had that happen today. I was working on my current novel, and I’ve been trying to figure out what the antagonist is doing, what are they after. This is a common problem for me in the writing process, and probably the subject of a future post. Anywho, I was writing a scene, in the back of my mind not sure where this was going or what it would do for the story, and then this character stepped out of the dark and announced themselves. The character will never actually be seen on the page, they’ll probably get no more than a paragraph or two of space in the whole book, but as soon as that happened, it felt like a bunch of puzzle pieces fell into place. The whole picture didn’t form. There are still a jumble of parts in a box on the table. Someone has messed up the lid, so I can’t make the whole picture out yet, but another chunk of the middle is there. It’s an exhilarating feeling.
Here I’m about to go into a bit of a rant tangent. I don’t understand why people would want to hand over this experience to generative AI. The process of finding something cool in your own story, some little detail that brings the story together, really sets my writer brain on fire. Why hand that over to a machine? But that’s a whole other kettle of fish, something that I’ll get to later.
This magic of story discovery can also be a frustrating feeling. As a fledgling author, I have a regular day job that I have to attend to. Some days I’m able to carve out 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there to do some writing. I was able to do that this morning. Then I had this little epiphany aaannnnd had to go back to work. I wanted/want nothing more than to go back to the story and explore more of what I’ve uncovered, but it will have to wait until after work, after kids are driven around, after dinner is made. I’ll get back to it, and I’ll steal every minute I can to work on it tonight. I can’t wait to see where the story takes me.
Until then, happy reading,
Matt