: Re: Should I use made-up words for spells? I put work into making up my own names for spells. However, I feel like they come across as childish when I read over my writing This was also my

@Heady158

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You can totally do it.

But you need to establish the rules that allow the readers to accept it.

So in your story, maybe a Japanese wizard would cast the same spells as a Western wizard using Japanese incantations rather than Latin or Greek based words.

And then maybe you can explain that the words themselves have no power, the power comes from the mind of the caster.

This is by the way totally canon, per western literary tradition. It is a well established fact that a spell spoken by a no-magic person does nothing. Hence sounds made by human is not the source of magic. It is also an established fact that many wizards can cast spell without speaking.

Therefore, it is likely all that casting with words does is to help a wizard conjure up the idea of what he / she wants to do. So if a wizard wants light, all he has to do is to say "lumos", "light", "å…‰" or anything that helps conjure up the notion of light in the mind, and the magic within creates that light.

If you do that, you can choose whatever words you need for your spells.

"pew pew pew" and bursts of wizard laser shoot out of his wand...

and let me tell you, for wizard laser, if i were a wizard, i would totally pick "pew pew pew" And I am a grown man.

Easy to say, fast to cast. Exactly what you need in wizard laser blasts.

This also means, another wizard can say "undam levis tandem singulari" to cast a burst of light of a single wavelength light (which is really laser).

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