My fantasy novel's magic system broke itself on page 47

I spent like 3 months building this whole rule set for how magic works in my story. Last Tuesday I was writing a scene where my main character casts a protection spell and realized the rules I made would actually let her do something way more powerful. It totally broke the conflict I had planned for the next 5 chapters. I had to go back and rewrite the magic system with a hard limit on how much energy a person can pull at once. Has anyone else had a plot hole or rule in their world building just collapse on them mid story?

3 comments

3 Comments

charles83613d ago

You had to go back and rewrite the magic system" yep, been there. I was working on a sci-fi story where my FTL drive was supposed to just skip between systems, but I realized the rules I set let the ship basically time travel if they pushed it right. Had to slap a hard cap on the energy source like you did, made it so the drive burns out if you push it past a certain point. That ended up making the escape scenes way more tense since they had to watch that limit during a chase.

walker.julia13d ago

Oh man, I gotta disagree a bit here, those hard limits can feel so forced and fake.

violag8013d ago

3 months of work and the magic system decided to pull a plot twist on you instead of the characters. That's rough buddy, but honestly your FTL drive burnout limit sounds way better than what you had before, tension is good.