Writing A Magic Academy

[Valhalla Erikson]

I consider this a second installment of How To Make This Stand Out. This topic goes to those who have either written a story that has a magic school or is planning on writing a magic school. How do you go about it in a manner that makes the school unique and doesn't look like it's mimicking Harry Potter?

In Shepard Mysteries, Shepard Academy is a prestigious school where beings of both magical and supernatural (vampires, demons, etc) attend. The one thing that makes it stand out is it doesn't have a housing system. Instead, you'd have a wing for the male students and a wing for the female students and another for students who aren't defined by gender.

[saintofm]

Overly Sarcastic productions just did a Trope Talk on this. I find something that makes it unique. Owlhouse, X-Men, and Percy Jackson have schools based on training people with special abilities, but aall have different focuses.



Even focusing on just magic, you have the Potter, Owl House, Disk World, and the Misfit of Demon King Academy handle it all differently of focus on different areas.

What are areas you want to focus on? Will this be like X-Men or Vampire Academy where this focuses on harnessing their powers and integrating into society, all while having the hormones of teenagers? Will it be on dealing with the potential dangers? What are those dangers? Do normal people know about them, and if they do how do they react? How do the magical react.

How is it structured? Do vampires burn up in the sun, or does it just annoy them, or they eventually have some resistance to it but until then their friends have to have a thick blanket or marshmallows on a stick ready.

[Alatariel]

May 27, 2024 16:13:24 GMT -6 Valhalla Erikson said:

I consider this a second installment of How To Make This Stand Out. This topic goes to those who have either written a story that has a magic school or is planning on writing a magic school. How do you go about it in a manner that makes the school unique and doesn't look like it's mimicking Harry Potter?

In Shepard Mysteries, Shepard Academy is a prestigious school where beings of both magical and supernatural (vampires, demons, etc) attend. The one thing that makes it stand out is it doesn't have a housing system. Instead, you'd have a wing for the male students and a wing for the female students and another for students who aren't defined by gender.

I have a WIP with a school for folks with magic but my world is very different from HP. It's our world, but everyone is born with magic and at birth are given a quick blood test to determine their strength. There's a ranking system 1-10 magnitude and anyone ranking 1-4 are basically just general citizens with normal jobs with very little government oversight. Rankings 5-10 are put on a registry and required to attend magic schools starting at the age of 15 and ending at 21. So it's for older kids to young adults and takes the place of high school and college, then they are conscripted by the government into certain highly skilled jobs for 5 years (they are required to sign a contract for at least 5 years because these are vital jobs only those with high levels of magic can do).

Also my magic system is extremely different. It's based on subquantum mechanics and the tapping into the energy that exists at the quantum level. They're basically scientists but at a super high level of being able to manipulate actual atoms and particles to create the effect we call "magic". There at 8 affinities all with subcategories under each affinity. 

So with all that....the school is going to naturally be different. There are dorms like in college but they are separated by gender identity and year. There's a large common room and then private rooms, a large kitchen and several bathrooms on one dorm floor. My main characters (two cismales) share a dorm floor but not a room. The rest of their friends live in different dorms. The campus is also closer to what any college layout would be and it's based in North America. 

When I was coming up with a magic school, I wanted to erase Hogwarts from my head and just start fresh. I built up the world and then the school was made in reflection of that instead of the other way around. It helped to do it that way. The magic system is purposefully different from HP and other magic school books. It's not just *some* people who have access to magic, it's everyone, and its based in scientific principles.

[Valhalla Erikson]

The science fiction approach with the magic system is an interesting concept.

[pelwrath]

The fantasy stories I’ve written have established characters who do use magic, yet having a school was never part of the story. Will have to think on this.