The Big Idea: William C. Tracy

Let’s get physical – about a type of fantasy activity that generally not thought to be physical at all. But as William C. Tracy explains in this Big Idea for Physical Magic, incorporating the physical into the magical opens up new worlds possibilities.

WILLIAM C. TRACY:

I’ve been practicing martial arts for over twenty years and teaching it for most of that time. I’ve written plenty of fight scenes and physical descriptions in my books, but there was one aspect I had never quite gotten the hang of until now.

Martial arts-based magic.

Why is this difficult, you ask? Try this: explain to someone else exactly how you move your arm to pick up a cup of water. What do you do first? Do your fingers, your arm muscles, or your shoulders start the process? Now think about describing complex physical motions using your whole body to summon the power of a god. First, it takes a long time to do and second, it’s not very interesting. Fight scenes that tell you precisely who moved what where, moment by moment, are boring. As would be describing a martial arts sequence to do magic.

But I still wanted to write the book. Martial arts is something I practice several times a week, and I love the idea of a perfectly executed form being able to summon power. There’s a certain warm glow you get when you perform a kata just right and it feels good. There’s a power inherent, even if it unfortunately can’t give you magic powers here.

So, I wrote a book where it does. It’s called Physical Magic.

To get around the blow-by-blow issue with describing physical motion, I co-opted a bit of one of my favorite features of the Wheel of Time series. Robert Jordan was familiar with military tactics and operations, which shows in his writing, but he also had a beautiful way of describing the sword forms in the book, such as “The Boar Rushes Down the Mountain,” “Reaping the Barley,” and “The Moon Rises Over Water.” They’re very poetic, but also give you a mental nudge as to what a person might do with a sword. I tried to make my own set of martial arts moves, combining Jordan’s type of naming system, along with the types of names you see in Tai Chi…

Physical Magic: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s

Author Socials: Web site|Bluesky|Threads|Mastodon