Magic, Hard, Soft, and Rooted
As you may know, Brandon Sanderson (author of the Mistborn series, among other great work)writes about hard magic, the kind with rules, and soft magic, the kind that’s unpredictable and mysterious. He prefers to write the former and argues that problems should only be solved by magic when the magic makes sense, so that the author doesn’t take the easy way out.
I think this phrasing reveals a lot about what rationalist authors think of romantic fantasy. And it’s at once both very intuitive, and if you think about it, utterly incomprehensible.
What the fuck does “take the easy way out” mean???
Sanderson means “I have set up a hard system so that the heroes have to think to figure out a solution that comes from those rules, instead of fiating a deus ex machina that took me no effort to puzzle out.” And that sure sounds like hard work by him, but how is the opposite easy?
If someone writes an unsatisfactory story where DeM magical solutions are used, and people dislike the ending and the entire set of characters and themes because of it, was that easy. I don’t think failing a math test counts as easy. If you wrote a bad story, that should be assessable from the story itself, and not only from how much effort the author used.
And if people do like the end? Is that a worse story than the hard systems? “What the hell she could have used her magic shoes to go home at any time? This whole ruby slippers and there’s no place like home is MAIL FRAUD.” Like, no, it’s still pretty good. There was real effort there by the hero (the emotional journey to reveal what you truly want) even if the system was metaphorical as hell.
I talked about this kind of issue a while ago, using a lot more words.
Moseman’s analysis is probably more helpful overall.