Storyworld Building: Types of Magic

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy (Blood of Kings trilogy), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website.

This post now part of the book Storyworld First: Creating A Unique Fantasy World For Your Novel by Jill Williamson.

No, I'm not referring to stage magic here, where the magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat or makes his lovely assistant disappear. I'm talking about different types of fantasy magic or abilities that have become popular through ancient stories, novels, comic books, movies, or games. I'm no expert here. I've cobbled this list together through various sources, including my own movie shelf and my husband's brainstorming help.

The idea in giving you this list is not for you to pluck a magic from the list and use it as it's been used before. My hope is that this list might inspire you toward something fresh in your own books. For example, the magic in my Blood of Kings books is basically telepathy. But I took that that generic ability, combined it with my storyworld's "Veil" (a spiritual realm of sorts), and brainstormed ways that soldiers might use the magic to fight during times of war, and the magic took on a life of its own.

So take a look at this list and see what you think. I tried to organize it, but it's still pretty complex. Let me know in the comments if I missed something major.

Alchemy - The ability to change chemical elements from one substance to another, usually changing something of little value to one of great value.

Animation - The ability to bring inanimate objects to life.

Conjuror - A person who conjures spirits.

Disintegration - The ability to disintegrate matter.

Elemental - The ability to control or manipulate the elements of nature (water, fire, wind, earth.)

ENERGY - The following are abilities that have to do with energy.
       Absorption - The ability to absorb energy and convert into something else, like physical strength.
       Augmentation - The ability to enhance or weaken someone else's powers.
       Bestowal - The ability to bestow powers on another or to bring one's latent powers to life.
       Conversion - Ability to absorb one form of energy and convert it into another form of energy.
       Electrical transportation - The ability to travel through electrical conduits such as: cell phones, computers, power lines, telephone lines, television sets, etc.
       Energy manipulation - The ability to manipulate another person's powers into something else.

       Force field generation - Ability to project powerful fields of manipulated energy that often act as shields.       

       Negation- The ability to mute the powers of another person.
       Sensing - The ability to sense or recognize magical powers.
       Sourcing - The ability to draw power from energy sources.

Flight - The ability to to fly.

Healing - The ability to heal from any injury.

Illusion - The ability to create illusions.

Immortality - The ability to live forever.

INTELLIGENCE - The following are abilities that have to do with intelligence.
       Intelligence - Being a genius, sometimes having the ability to learn new things quickly.
       Linguist, polyglot - The ability to understand any language.
       Probability - The ability to predict future possibilities, or to alter or change future outcomes.

Invisibility - The ability to make oneself invisible.

Invulnerability - To be invincible or immune to injury.

Mage, magician, sorcerer, wizard - a person who is skilled in magic.

MANIPULATION - The following are abilities that have to do with manipulating physical things.
       Biology, Metamorphosis - The ability to manipulate any aspect of biology: limbs, bones, hair, gender. One could change their size, make their bones stab out like spears, stretch their body, or change arms into legs.
       Duplication - The ability to create physical duplicates of oneself.
       Gravity - The ability to manipulate gravity.
       Light - The ability to create, manipulate, or absorb particles of light.
       Magnetism - The ability to generate, control, or manipulate metal or magnetic fields.
       Mass - The ability to increase or decrease mass in an object or person.
       Merge - The ability to merge two beings into one.
       Quantum tunneling - The ability to travel through solid matter without harm, walking through a wall, for example.
       Regeneration - The ability to regenerate.

       Shapeshifting - The ability to assume a different physical form. There are many different types of shapeshifting. One could take on the form of an animal or plant, turn to liquid or gas, or turn into the substance they are touching.
       Technopath - The ability to manipulate technology.

Matter ingestion - The ability to consume any sort of matter without harm.

Medium - The ability to see and communicate with the dead.

Mimicry - The ability to mimic, absorb, or steal the abilities of people, plants, or animals and even another person's powers.

Necromancer - One who can bring the dead to life and control them.

Omnipresent - The ability to be present everywhere at the same time.

Omniscient - The ability to have unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding.

Poison - The ability to poison another.

Possession - The ability to occupy, dominate, or control another person from within.

PSIONIC - The following abilities involve communication or perception beyond the five physical senses.
       Abuse - The ability to enter another mind and cause pain, loss of consciousness, and eventually death.
       Empathy - The ability to read or sense another person's emotions and/or control another person's emotions or feelings.
       Foresight - The ability to look into the past, present, or future.
       Memory manipulation - The ability to erase or change the memories of another person.
       Mind control - The ability to control another person's actions or reasoning.
       Psychic, Precognition, Clairvoyance "clear seeing" Clairaudience "clear hearing" - The ability to perceive the future. This could happen in dreams during sleep or visions while awake.
       Psychometry - The ability to gain foresight by touching objects.
       Telekinesis - The ability to control, manipulate, or move objects with the mind.
       Telepathy - The ability to read another person's thoughts or communicate with another person's mind.

Scrying - The ability to use a magical item to view future events.

Self-detonation - The ability to explode one's body and reform.

Shamans - An intermediary between the natural and supernatural world. One who uses magic to cure illness, tell the future, control spiritual forces by using bones, totems, and sometimes by sharing an animal's senses.

SOUND - The following abilities involve sound.
       Sonar sense - The ability to use sound waves to locate items.
       Sonic scream - The ability to make sounds that are in higher amplitudes than the human voice.
       Sound manipulation - The ability to manipulate sound waves.

Summoning - The ability to call for the presence of another, message them, or signal them by command. Most often involves demons or spirits from other realms

SUPERHUMAN - The following abilities involve amplification of normal human abilities.
       Durability - The ability to have a higher resistance to injury than a normal person.
       Reflexes - The ability to react faster than a normal person.
       Senses - Having magnified abilities to see, hear, feel, smell, and/or taste.
       Speed - The ability to move faster than a normal person.
       Strength - The ability to have more strength that a normal person.
       Vision - The ability to have power though one's vision, which could include heat vision, magnified vision, night vision, and/or x-ray vision.

TIME - The following abilities involve manipulation of time.
       Time mages - The ability to slow, accelerate, reverse, and/or stop time.
       Time travel - The ability to travel back and forth through time or to manipulate time.

TRANSPORTATION - The following abilities involve transportation.
       Dimensional transportation - The ability to create portals or wormholes between places.
       Teleportation - The ability to move from one place to another instantly without actually traveling over the space between.

Wall climbing- The ability to climb any surface, even vertical ones just like Spiderman.

Water breathing - Ability to breathe under water.

Witch or Warlock - A person who practices magic, especially black magic or black arts.