Misplaced Marbles

You may remember that I recently was singing the praises of Brandon Sanderson. I'd like to revisit said singing for a moment, as a convenient segue into tonight's post. Sanderson is the sort of author whose work makes me excited about my own work- because his is so well done that it makes me want to go make mine as well done. Plus when you poke around on his blog you really get the idea that he's a cool guy, and very enthusiastic about the craft of writing. Like all good teachers, he can't help but actively rub that enthusiasm off all over you.

(How's that for a thrilling mental image...)

But anyway, I was reading some of his annotations for Elantris today (yeah, that's right- he puts annotations for his books on his website. He's just that awesome.) and I got squirmy with the desire to work on my book- specifically to take some time to hammer out the magic system of single (living) magic user in my universe. A furious fit of typing followed, which I will summarize and then expound upon here.

My character was blessed by the gods at birth with extraordinary strength, speed, and dexterity- all with the idea of making her a devastating warrior, a one-woman army, as it were. But none of that is magical per se- everyone starts with a base potential for athleticism, some people higher than others. She just happens to have a base level about twice as high as normal- but it's not really that much of an advantage if she doesn't work to keep her body in peak condition. Had she opted to spend her entire life lounging about it's perfectly reasonable to expect that a person with a "normal" base and a lifetime of training could kick her ass on the battlefield. So her physical gifts are not really that supernatural- she has to work for them.

Ah, but she also has a healing gift, and that is supernatural, is "magic". The way things currently stand in my book, it's your run-of-the-mill, faintly-glowing, tires-her-out, could-kill-her-if-she-over-does-it sort of healing power. Which, frankly, has kind of been done to death, and is sort of boring, to boot. Oh, there is one other limitation; she can't use it on herself- only others (okay, so that's a little less run-of-the-mill, which mollifies me somewhat).

When she first manifests it she has no conscious control over it- her vital energy is almost liek water, flowing downhill. If she touches someone who needs it, it goes. As she gets older she learns to turn the tap on or off, and as she learns more about meditation and self-awareness (and non-magical doctoring) she begins to be able to direct it to specific parts of the body, to heal specific injuries while leaving others to heal on their own.

But I want to lay out a set of logical rules for all of this- give it a better system. Especially because, while she is currently the only living person with this power (and is having to keep it hidden), it was more prevalent in the past.

After a lot of dithering about with various energy conduit concepts, I finally had this thought- what if it's more like she's a conductor? Like copper for vital energy rather than electricity. She completes a circuit, allowing it to transfer. Sort of. Only it's more of a conservation thing, a balancing thing. See, people naturally build up vital energy, but we can only use so much of it at a time. Imagine a chinese checker board with a dome over it, if you will. There are a finite number of divots on that board for marbles to lay in (121, according to our friend the interwebs), and each divot can hold only one marble. But say that you have 150 marbles- what happens to the others? Well, if we didn't have a dome over the board, they might just fall off and roll away, with the divots none the wiser (why should they care? They're full!). But we do have the dome over the board, so the excess marbles can't go anywhere- they just sort of build up, doing nothing. Well, when my character touches a person, it's like she puts a little pathway between that person's board and hers, and all the excess marbles go rolling over. All the marbles needed to fill the divots stay where they are: in the divots. And actually the board (person) will continue to manifest and build up marbles (energy) (okay this is getting weird- are you still with me?) but it's not like they will make the board (person) extra-healthy or anything. They just hang out doing nothing. But if my character were to come across a board with empty divots (a sick or injured person) and touches them, she creates a little pathway that lets her roll the extra marbles she's collected into that person, until they have the full complement of 121. But if she runs out of the excess marbles (energy) she's collected from other people, she can begin to take away from her own divot-filling collection (which she cannot do with others) and move them over to fill someone else's dearth. Which is how the healing can result in her becoming weak, herself. Of course, everyone replenishes/builds up vital energy at different rates, some people taking more time, some people less, and fortunately my character (and her eventual love interest) are two of the quick-builders. She especially so (it ties in somehow to her physical abilities, I'm sure).

So now you've read a long, weird, probably very confusing-if-you're-not-in-my-brain example of how I hammer things like this out. Thoughts on the logic? Suggestions? I'm wide open...

Also, Nathan took a highly flattering photo of me this evening. The rogue.

(Certified Flattering)