Wordplay: Unfinished Definitions

Friday, 1 October 2010

Unfinished Definitions

'Pinch, punch, first day of the month' and all that.

I just spent the last hour or so hunched over a cup of tea, with Sherlock in the background, trying to define magic in my story. It is much more intense than I first anticipated and now I regret ever beginning the immense task. Now I've started it, I have to finish otherwise it will annoy me.

I've managed to narrow the definition into four blocks; Source, Technique, Range and Cost. Each category is about a page long. Then I split down the areas of magic; Healing, Destructive, Constructive, Offensive, Defensive, etc, which I am currently splitting up into hopefully around three or four main subject 'majors'.

If finishing this gets me nowhere, I am going to be severely frustrated.

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Quote

"Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When the rock is liften the earth is lighter, the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends. The wind and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale's sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat's flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole. But we, in so far as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the lead and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility. Who am I - though I have the power to do it - to punish and reward, play with men's destinies?" SPARROWHAWK, "THE EARTHSEA TRILOGY: THE FARTHEST SHORE"