foreign there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to building a fantasy world or its specific components oh sure there are recommendations that'll help you avoid major mistakes but there are no real rules that you absolutely have to follow if you want to build a compelling setting or magic system for your world that may sound a little strange as the opening words to a video about sanderson's three laws but it really isn't these laws are guidelines to help you write a better more coherent magic system world and characters but you don't have to follow them that said I personally do follow these laws since I found them to be especially helpful in my own writing Journey but what are sanderson's three laws how do they work and how do you apply them in the most beneficial way to the story you're telling in this short video we'll explore those ideas and Concepts while going over the different laws one at a time so if you're interested in learning more about sanderson's three laws stick around as we delve deeper into the subject also before we jump in remember to please hit the like button engagement is the main metric YouTube uses to push out my video to new people and short of a comment the like button is the next best thing to tell YouTube that it should show this video to more people it's easy it's free and you'd be doing a massive service to this Channel and Community if you really like the channel then consider subscribing as well so that you don't miss my follow-up videos when they go live anyway let's Jump Right In sanderson's Three Laws pertain mostly to the development and creation of magic systems in fantasy stories it can be used for more than that but we'll come back to that later for now we'll stick to the definition of a set of laws that help you build satisfying and narratively effective magic systems according to Wikipedia the idea of hard magic and soft magic was popularized by Sanderson for World building and creating magic systems in fictional settings the terminology of hard and soft originate from hard and soft Sciences which gives us hard science fiction and soft science fiction both terms are approximate ways of characterizing two ends of a spectrum hard magic systems follow specific rules the magic is controlled and explained to the reader in the narrative detailing the mechanics behind the way the magic works and can be used for building settings that revolve around the magic system soft magic systems may not have clearly defined rules or limitations or provide limited Exposition regarding their workings and are used to create a sense of wonder to the reader the three laws are one an author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic two weaknesses limits and costs are more interesting than powers and three the author should expand on what's already a part of a magic system before something entirely new is added as this may otherwise entirely change how the magic system fits into the fictional world or more simply go deeper rather than wider we'll expand on each one in a moment but there's also another law that he calls his zeroth law always a on the side of what's awesome remember though that these laws apply to creating a hard magic system if you're creating a soft magic system then these probably wouldn't apply to you as much but when it comes to hard magic systems I highly recommend you try and incorporate sanderson's three laws now let's briefly go into each law to see what he means by it and how we can use it to improve our magic systems sanderson's first law states that an author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic so if you have your character in a tough situation and use the magic system in some way to overcome that problem you need to ensure that the reader understands the magic system if you use the magic system in a way that your reader is unfamiliar with it's going to feel like a deus ex machina basically it'll feel like cheating and your reader will criticize you for it you don't have to explain all the rules and laws of the magic system in painstaking detail but you do need to make sure that anything the magic does to fix a problem should make sense within the rules you've already explained Sanderson admits that he learned this law when he contravened it at the end of the first mistborn book I'll avoid spoilers but there's a scene near the end where a character uses a power that wasn't explained or hinted at earlier he does justify it in later books but new readers are taken aback when the super convenient new source of power presents itself just at the right moment so whenever you put your character in a tough situation you need to ensure that whatever they do with the magic makes sense based on the rules you've already established or hinted at [Music] sanderson's second law states that weaknesses limits and costs are more interesting than powers this law basically says that it's not the cool power that necessarily makes your reader invested in the magic system what almost always makes the magic system interesting is the limitations costs and weaknesses of the magic system this doesn't however mean that you should go overboard with limitation so let's take mistborn as an example again in the story you have characters that can push and pull on medals if they are born with the ability in order to access this power they need to consume a certain metal first the power is basically the same as Magneto has in the x-min but what makes it more interesting is the limitations costs and weaknesses you can't just control middle as you want to you can only push or pull on it from or toward your center of gravity so your directions and motions are severely limited you also need to consume a certain metal first meaning it has a cost on top of that if someone comes at you without wearing any metal your power becomes a lot less helpful and effective weakness the entire magic system is made a lot more interesting because there are rules in place so when constructing your magic system analyze it like it's a science ask yourself what it can and can't do ask yourself what it cost to do these things and ask yourself how you could try and bend the rules or exploit it in some way to make sure you don't miss anything unintentionally [Music] sanderson's third law states that the author should expand on what is already part of the magic system before something entirely new is added as this may otherwise entirely change how the magic system fits into the fictional World basically go deeper instead of wider when it comes to expanding your magic system when you've set up and established your magic system but want to expand in some way don't just add more powers or more forms of magic rather look at what you already have and see if you can go deeper become more granular in order to expand the reader will appreciate it more and your magic becomes more interesting and well developed as a result sticking with mistborn for examples let's go to era 2. in Era 2 the story takes place some hundred years after the original trilogy instead of adding more magic systems to the world Brandon actually added more limitations and became more granular in the details instead of going wider he went deeper basically people with different abilities began to interbreed this means that people could be born with two different abilities that already existed but that now interacted in interesting ways at the same time people who once had the ability to use all the powers now no longer exist so he found a way to limit the Magic in interesting ways but in that limitation you also found ways to combine different abilities in the same individual this allowed him to dig deeper on what people could actually do with the magic so for example one character has the ability to push on metal as well as store their physical weight in metal so they can now push themselves into the air with a lower weight in order to ascend faster they can then tap their weight back and crash down with extreme force or they could prevent falling to their deaths by radically reducing their weight so you have two seemingly unrelated and fairly mundane abilities pushing on metal and soaring or drawing on their physical weight but put together you can begin to dig pretty deep into how these two abilities interact by going deeper instead of wider you adhere to sanderson's Third Law and also make your magic system a lot more compelling sanderson's Zero's law states that you should always err on the side of what's awesome basically it's the small caveat added to the other laws that says there may be times when you have to contravene one of the laws when constructing a magic system and you have a great idea but it would contravene one of the laws this is when the Zero's law should be implemented if you've looked into it and have considered the costs and benefits of contravening a law but are happy with it even if it might contravene one of these laws then totally go for it we are writers we're drawn in by great ideas we get energized and excited by the things that are awesome and for a lot of us if we don't have that cool Factor we generally lose interest in pursuing it further if it's a choice between doing what's awesome or what's the most technically sound go with what's awesome if it causes problems later on you can always go back and fix it or you can work around it the idea is to just prevent you from crippling yourself with limitations costs or any of the other things we've discussed like a bonsai tree you must trim and prune when necessary to keep the tree in shape but don't let yourself go overboard and trim it down to a stub conversely understand that sometimes you want a really big Bonsai or a really small one and you should go with what excites you I would caution not to be too liberal with applying the xero's law though there's a reason it's technically separate from the other three laws the three laws are your Guiding Light and the Zero's law is the fine print that says there may be times where you have to side with the cool Factor over the other laws if however you only go with the zeroth law you run the risk of having your magic system be too soft and thus it might not work as well as you want it to the bonsai tree example is not the Perfect Analogy but I hope it makes it clear at the end of the day we like what's awesome we like what's cool and if you find yourself getting bored because you've gone overboard and killed the cool Factor take a step back and ER on the side of what's awesome sanderson's three laws are primarily used for constructing a magic system but it's actually more than that you can use it as a narrative tool for a lot of other things from character plot World building Etc for example let's look at character and how you could theoretically apply these three laws the first law talks about making it more interesting to your reader if you solve issues when they understand more so if there's a character problem that you want to resolve make sure that your reader understands all the characters involved well enough for this resolution to make sense if you don't you run the risk of making a character's actions and motivation seem Out Of Tune and will result in confusion and frustration the second law talks more about limitations costs and weaknesses making things more interesting your characters will be more interesting not because they're awesome but because they are flaws weaknesses and limitations that they must overcome or work around it's in dealing with these roadblocks that your reader becomes invested in your characters and their Journey if you ignore this law you run the risk of writing a total Mary Sue character the third law talks about going deeper instead of wider so instead of adding more characters or instead of adding more aspects to an already established character in order to make things more interesting consider going deeper consider exploring what we already know about this character can we dig deeper into their past or their feelings can we dig deeper with the existing cost instead of adding new people can we find ways to make things more interesting by putting certain parts of a character against each other perhaps put their hatred of their father against their love of their mother as an example going deeper instead of wider will generally work out better when executed correctly and finally the Zero's law says to ER on the side of what's awesome so sometimes you just want to go with what's cool maybe it would work to put the character's hatred of their father against their love for their mother but maybe it's just cooler if they punch their dad in the face if that's cooler and still makes sense for the character then ER on the side of what's cool remember you can always fix it later but make this Choice consciously and not as a result of ignorance of the three Lords these laws can be applied to things like World building or even plot the video could be an hour long and we could still not make it through all the different ways you can apply the laws I just wanted to get the idea across that you can use the laws for more than just magic systems and while they are called laws they act more as guidelines instead of odd rules that you can never break but remember you should only break rules because you know and understand the rules if you break the rules out of ignorance that's when you run the risk of failure if you break them deliberately to achieve a certain outcome that's when you know you can be relatively safe from the pitfalls that would otherwise befall you I hope you enjoyed the video and that it at least gave you some things to think about when crafting magic systems or basically anything else for your own fictional worlds thank you very much for watching I sincerely appreciate all your time and attention if you enjoyed the video please consider leaving a like since that's one of the biggest metrics that YouTube looks at when recommending it and if you'd like to see more please hit that subscribe button so that you can be notified of future videos take care and we'll talk again very soon