I guess I'm going to call this setting development? The MC is fleshed out as far as magic, but I've got side characters... Hoping for a little brainstorming help here. My WiP is a modern urban fantasy, set in our real-life world. A vanishingly small set of people have different sorts of real supernatural powers, and no one really knows about them. It's got to fit into the modern real world, in other words, but I want "real" reasons that those people have powers. My MC is easy, he can see dead people because he was clinically dead for between 3-7 minutes after being electrocuted. However, most dead people just move on, so his abilities aren't on display all the time or terribly useful. There's another character who has an identical twin who died in the womb that she's still in connection with who has some limited remote viewing ability (her twin can see out of any mirror that the living girl has ever looked into and report back). I've got at least four other "character classes" that I need explanations for, if only for myself. I've got someone for whom feng shui is a real talent, once they've been hired as your decorator your life really will get better if they organize your living room. I've got a person whom "the cards like" who can beat any card game and do a bit of tarot on the side. I've got a mild mind-reader, and I've got a healer (who works for a mega-church in a professional capacity). Seeing dead people because he's been dead: natural progression. Ditto with mirror twin girl. I'm thinking one of the others is going to be the seventh son of a seventh son. That's a classic for magical ability, not sure which character I'll connect it to. Deals with the devil are out as the Devil is real and doesn't do that sort of thing (she's a character later on). Any suggestion on "real" life causes that are very rare (yeah, lots of people have been brought back from death by paramedics. The amount of time MC was dead may have bearing, or there could also be a natural component that combined with the circumstance. Not every tall person is a good basketball player, but very few short ones are). Some people might have magical abilities that they just aren't aware of, so magic may be more prevalent than we believe (like the dude who won a second lottery while reenacting his lottery-winning ticket purchase for the news cameras. Can't tell me that was natural). So, causes for the above powers, especially ones that have some sort of thematic connection? Any ideas would be appreciated greatly as I've got to get this thing going again.
Mind reader - they've survived a massive electrocution, meaning their brain picks up the electromagnetic fields of other people's brains. Or is that too scientific?
I think there are quite a bit of every-day occurring abnormalities that can be exaggerated into magical abilities. For example, Synesthesia (Hearing colors, tasting certain tastes when hearing a sound, for example). What if that was the explanation for those who sense/see auras or can sense malicious intent? Déjà vu for premonitions/ people who can see the future Meditation for out-of-body experiences In your magical world... is magic inherited or can it be learned by people with magical capabilities? Because, in the case of learning.... what if, say, someone who's great-great-great-great aunt died in a witch trial. Their great-x3 granddaughter ends up losing her sight/taste/hearing/whatever. Another sense is gained to replace the one she lost because magic was dormant in her lineage. People who inherit it is pretty self explanatory, "you have this magical ability because your father had it and he will teach you how to control it" There was a Korean comedy called Strong Girl Bong Soon (recently made s spin-off of that series, Strong Girl Nam Soon). Anyways, this women in the family have super strength. Its passed down from daughter to daughter as has been like that for generations. I cant remember exactly how it developed... something about the woman needing to be strong in the face of conflict and then being granted the strength she needed to protect her family (like the story of the mother lifting the car off of her kids, type of thing). Anyways, the series takes place in today's time Korea, and her super strength is kept amongst the family. I thought this little side note was applicable to what you're creating
Playing off of J.T.'s comment. We have all heard of cases of super strength when loved ones are in jeopardy. What if your side character lifted a car of off their kin in order to save them, but then the strength persisted? Could also have someone who took an overdose of magic mushrooms, almost died, but when brought back could now see glimpses of truth and the future. Another that was bitten by a white deer, was maybe given the ability to tell what animals need based on their vocalisations?
Have you read up on varieties of real-world magic, past and present? There are loads of explanations for how it's supposed to work (or how to even define it). A couple of big ones that come to mind, which are found in a lot of different cultures, and often coexist within the same worldview: The Wounded Healer The term is from Jung but it's pretty widespread. You kind of have this one covered- someone who comes back from a near-death experience, whether from illness, combat wounds, or other events, might be gifted with some special ability to communicate with spirits or the other world. This offers the most straightforward reason why a certain type of magician/ holy person is rare. Goetia You ruled out deals with the Devil but I assume there are other spirits, why wouldn't they want to make deals? This is a pretty classic magical paradigm- the magician forms some kind of bond with spirits, whether the nature of that bond be quid pro quo, affinity, worship, or compulsion. For instance a Daoist priest (which is sometimes a hereditary profession) is given command over certain spirits depending on his rank and lineage. The "Solomonic" tradition of western magick involves compelling fallen angels to work on one's behalf through use of incantations, sigils, etc. Magical Technician This magician assumes that unseen forces work in a fairly predictable, maybe even mechanical, way and that anyone who learns the principles and knows the right formulae, rituals, etc. can make them work for them. You say that someone has feng shui as a "real talent" but the efficacy of feng shui is generally held to lie in the structure and placement of landforms, architecture, objects, etc., and the energies flowing through them, not any power inherent to the feng shui expert, any more than chemists have some peculiar command over matter. Of course feng shui is a complex discipline requiring a lot of study which most people don't have time or aptitude for. Siddha This is the person who has gained powers like flight, clairvoyance, etc by means of long meditative absorption and asceticism, like certain Hindu or Buddhist gurus or Christian saints. Possessed This person has certain powers as long as they were indwelled or controlled by a spirit. The spirit may be very picky and require the vessel to have certain qualifications or dispositions to be suitable. And of course all of these can be combined in some way- for instance, a Buddhist magician might be a highly accomplished meditation master and siddha, and also perform more technical/ ritualistic magic.
Frankly, I'm not sure if you need any cogent explanations at all. Magic just is. These people just are. You can say whatever you like, and nobody will fault you. If we were really concerned with logic in our origin stories, Bruce Banner and Carol Danvers would be dead from gamma radiation. The Marvel people played it safer with the "X-Man" series, deciding not to give explanatory origin stories at all (except for Wolverine, for some reason... and even then, they never explained where Adamantium was placed on the atomic chart). It's interesting that your characters "super strength" is inbred. It reminds me of Heinlein's Methuselah's Children" where extended life spans are the result of genetic inbreeding.
I like to use potential and multiverse for magic sometimes. An easy example would be a miracle like the one in the Bible where thousands are fed with only a few fishes and some bread. In each reality of the multiverse, only one person was fed, and a reality exists for each individual in the crowd where they only are fed. Someone that is able to 'phase' through these realities can exist in a place where all of them were fed. Someone who is not dimensionally anchored can not only experience different possibilities of an event spacially, but also forward or back as it relates to time. In this view magic is not causal, but a case of loose dimensional anchoring. For example: In the multiverse there is a me who wrote this reply, and one that hasn't. If someone is not anchored to one reality, they may experience this post differently. They may read it but be unable to understand, like it is a foreign language. They may remember reading it but be unable to recall when. They may feel convinced that they have read this before, exactly the way it is happening now (deja vu), including this sentence about deja vu. They may be aware of it before actually reading it. One version may not read it at all. Another reads it standing up, another sitting down etc. These people that are not anchored, and can phase cognitively through versions of themselves usually feel out of place, disconnected or out of phase with reality and others. To make it more practical for 'powers', let's take something like super speed. If I run down the road, there is a version of me that started one second earlier and is a little further down the road. There is another that started two seconds earlier, another three and so on. Since the me that just started running and the me that started five minutes ago and is already a mile away are both 'me', if I am cognitively loosely anchored in this reality I can shift and anchor to the me a mile down the road. The five minutes would feel like lost time. It could look like super speed or teleportation, or just being a bit faster than others depending on how much I can move my anchor at a time. The same can be done for information. There is a you that has already read this post, and they are also you. Sigh, I guess it's a bit more complicated than I anticipated. At this point I wish I was the version of me that decided to never write all this at all haha.
This reminds me of a parable. Lord Krishna is walking along a riverbank and comes across an ascetic. The ascetic tells him, "I have spent thirty years practising asceticism, and have gained the ability to levitate across the river!" Lord Krishna responds, "Why didn't you just use the bridge?"
The mind reader could have grown up in an extremely hostile environment where he either had to learn to read his caretaker's (someone unpredictable: borderline or narcissist) intentions or die. Possibly all his siblings died where he just barely managed to thrive. For healing I keep coming back to cancer. It seems like the healer should have a prominent, benign (or is it?) tumour. The 'reason' for the ability could be the tumour is able to manifest tissue healing through resonance—basically thanks to cancer he accidentally ended up with a weird proto super organ. I picture him being a born-again middle aged man for whom a tumour and at one point terminal diagnosis was the most noteworthy thing that happened in his whole midwestern life. For the card person, this might actually be cause for digging into some superstitious numerology, which, if you've observed any grifters (the established historians don't want you to know that x / y + z is a processional number) you'll see it's actually pretty easy to come up with. Everything about him should tie back to some number significance, possibly in ways he's constantly discovering. It will start with something like his birthdate, but while shaving he'll count his moles and discover yet another connection. The 'actual' reason could be that he believes in his card luck more than any living person, so it's a matter of manifest... quantum... mind stuff. A personal crisis might be if he learns his birthdate was actually one day different from what he thought, making him crumble until he can work the numbers back into some form of significance.
I wrote up my own take on that story, which doesn't require anything miraculous. https://jayeltee.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-parable-of-loaves-and-fishes.html That bit in Acts where the Apostles were speaking to a crowd that spoke many languages but was understood by all of them in their native tongues... I haven't figured that one out yet.
Thanks to everyone for the ideas! I've been wrapped up in other stuff for a few days and didn't get around to more than glancing at these, so I'll pretend I'm giving a replay to each bit as we go along Which I am really, just all at once. Not a bad idea at all, but massive electrocution and death is how my MC sees ghosts and I want different explanations for different abilities. Ooh, I like that! Synethesia is rare enough as it is that it could be explained that the people we know of who experience it just have a very weak version of it, while somebody who [handwaves] got the full super deluxe version can [I'll pick an ability later but feng shui might fit]. Excellent! Nope, absolutely can't be learned. This is our real world, and the fact that magical ability is either inborn or inflicted by some vanishingly rare event is why no one knows it's real. There's some exposition in the story explaining that the smartest person in the world, with all the information accurately relayed to them, could no more commit a single act of magic than a dog could play a flute. Interesting idea, I like it. Didn't plan for super-strength, but I might work it in. Thanks! Only since my MC got his powers from dying am I trying to avoid dying as a trigger. Dude... white deer, red heifers, two-headed kittens... yeah, there's some good space to work there, thank you! Yup, exactly. New term learned! Yeah, it's attractive but I'm looking for things that cannot be replicated, or are at least insanely difficult to replicate. Studying hard isn't common, but even [insert generation below your own] people have been known to do it from time to time Possession is something I haven't really thought about, but it is in Matthew (8:28-34), so I might be able to work with that. Satan would be very upset if she caught any of her imps up to that sort of shit though. Still, something to consider. I don't know that I'll explain all of it to the audience, but somewhere or other someone said that the writer should know everything and then decide what to tell the reader. I didn't lay it out in my initial post, but I'm working in a semi-Christian theological framework. It's not a religious book, but the supernatural that the characters will interact with is roughly (very roughly, my knowledgeable Christian friend who is advising me from time to time keeps telling me "No, you can't do that, X verse contradicts it!" She's very patient) Judeo-Christian and the multiverse would add another direction to the story. DUUUUDE!!!!!!!!!! If I ever finish this thing, remind me to ask you what name you'd like to be listed as in the acknowldgements/author's notes. In the movie Arrival, they posit that linear time is a function of the Sapir/Worf hypothesis, to which I sez Bullshit! Did you know that cats can't speak French? But, however comma (,) what if the aliens had a third (or fifth) or whatever lobe to their brains? Cats don't have the bit of their brains (nor lips, nor whatevers) to be able to produce language. Trills, meows, stuff like that, but not full language, just like humans don't have the necessary biological apparati necessary to peek around the veil of time. But if a character grew some odd apparatus and didn't end up with some pesky neurosurgeon hacking it out, she might be able to conduct healings. Duuuuude! Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, you've been a big help!
