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How to Make Magic Fight Scenes More Engaging

Blankmarks
5 min readApr 18, 2022

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Magic Fights from myconfinedspace.com

I’ve read and watched many stories with magic fights. Many of them boil down to multi-colored blasts of static noise.

That’s fine though, not every fight has to be super technical. But, those fights that aim to be more than spectacle are more engaging to me.

Today, I want to tackle the question of how to write an engaging magical fight scene.

One I would get invested in as a magic fan instead of a general fight lover.

First, the basic problem with many magical fights.

Real Consequences for Spells

I don’t mean giving your magic system costs but the spells themselves consequences.

The biggest offender of this is Elemental Magic. I think we all have seen one story downplay the effects of fire or large boulders.

Not every story needs to go into extreme detail on the effects but it’s fire, not an energy ball.

No matter what the story is, it needs to burn something. Otherwise, it’s not fire.

This applies to poison not being lethal or meteor doing no environmental damage. That’s another big problem, most spells have little to no effect on the environment.

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Blankmarks
Blankmarks

Written by Blankmarks

I’m Blankmarks and I love magic in fiction. I’ll write about the various magic types and concepts not only for fun but to help writers create new magical worlds

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