: Re: Magic or No Magic? I have the majority of the story for my first novel worked out. My only problem is that I feel like I'm trying to find a way to force magic into it. There is only

@Kevin153

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The main trade-off for the reader is between the pleasurable escapism of a fantasy novel and the compelling believability of a realistic novel. In some sense, you can get the best of both worlds by exploiting a bit of ambiguity --which is to say, to leave the reader guessing as to whether the magic actually exists or not.

In my opinion, this was done effectively in Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore where there was doubt right up until the end whether the events in the book would have supernatural or realist explanations (with some characters within the book believing one way, and some the other).

Ambiguity can be a problem, however, if the audience believes through a major portion of the book that they are reading one kind of book and it turns out to be the other --unless that is the entire point. That can be extremely effective if done well, but if done poorly, the audience will just feel cheated.

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