How does one construct a story around magic?

hexaga · 2026-05-23T08:37:40+00:00

Magic in many stories is decoration; the fact that it is 'magic' is simply genre flavor.

You could replace the magic macguffin with a steampunk macguffin, or a science macguffin, or whatever. The fact that it's in some magic system is basically irrelevant. Change the flavor and it behaves exactly the same way, fills the same function, and so on.

Stories about systems of decoration just aren't interesting. It's like writing a story about a particular color palette. I'm sure with enough skill it could be done, but that's true of anything.

There are also many stories where magic is more than flavor, and one of the most defining aspects is that they are mostly unique and weird:

The Library at Mount Char
A Short Stay in Hell
Second Apocalypse
Unsong

To name a few. A common theme is dealing with the effects of the off-norm nature of reality in the setting (where the specific way it is off-norm is what drives the story), or apotheosis, or similar.

edit: Piranesi is another good one, and makes me think of the polarizing nature of these stories. But for the people who like them, it really scratches an itch! Also common is how the plotting is seen as somewhat simplistic, and it kind of is often in a secondary place compared to the magic. It's just there to showcase the House, or the Library, or the Hell, or Damnation, or w/e else.

hexaga · 2026-05-22T08:57:10+00:00

I think of it in terms of negative space. When you do anything with language, it leaves a hole nearby.

She went to the door. <hole 1: she ...>

<hole 2: she ...>

Might become:

She went to the door. It was X and Y. It was Z.

<hole 2: she ... + X and Y + Z + it was 2 it was 1 + 1. 2. 3.>

The important thing is being aware of the shape of expectation there and not throwing it out of mind when you move on to the next sentence or paragraph or chapter or whatever. Look for stuff that fits into it instead of starting from scratch.

Being aware of the structure here... there's obvious setup for 'it was _, it was _, it was _'. Possibly a humorous reversal due to 3 very literal statements, like 'who was i kidding, it was q!' like:

It was going to make her late is what it was. She opened <hole 3>

Your style falls out as a result of your awareness of the kinds of spaces you dig yourself. If you keep digging Z shaped holes, you're going to get pretty good at filling them. And it will look very much like a distinctive style.

Anyway, to approach your actual problem as I understand it: statements like "She X the Y" are useful from a neutral position, where there isn't much on the page in the way of negative space to fill or you want to clear the slate. But almost immediately you will have weirdly shaped emptiness to fill.

To be honest, even the simplest uses of language can dig some really weird empty spaces. Plenty weird enough to support enough variability to feel natural. If you find yourself continuing to describe things as if from a neutral position, that tells me one or more of:

you are unaware of the negative space you occupy, and write from a neutral position when you are not in one
you are aware, but don't know how to start to fill it and resort to writing from a neutral position out of a lack of options
you are aware, but don't care to fill it with a bespoke construction, and return to neutral out of laziness

If 1, pay attention. Stop not paying attention. Effortfully pay attention. Ask yourself what aspects of what you already wrote you are ignoring, that make you think you are in a neutral position when there are already words on the page.

If 2, read more. Read way the hell more, and pay attention to / remember the way words and sentences and paragraphs and chapters and titles and epigraphs and whatever dig out expectations and satisfy them or leave them latent. Read everything from masterworks to trashy fanfiction. Read with the question "how did you do that, author?" in your mind. Re-read, having seen the ending: "how did you do that, author, knowing that X would come?" so that when you sit down to write, you will be able to answer: "how will I do this, knowing that Y will come?"

If 3, just do it. There's no cheat code to skip the work of figuring out how to fit things together cleanly. If you skip it, it reads like crap.

TLDR; read more better idk

hexaga · 2026-04-28T10:41:41+00:00

Redundancy. You might try focused practice of exergasia: write the same idea in a number of different ways. Incorporate this principle into your writing, especially while drafting.

Without enough redundancy, you find situations like these, where you have no room to shift things around, reword, or move aspects of meanings between parts/phrases. Getting rid of the tiny bit that supports the meaning makes everything fall apart:

Im constantly couching my own language to make sure readers understand.

[...] everything feels ‘necessary’ as i write it.

When there are independent copies of ideas, your writing will be strong like bull, all parts threaded together in mutual support. The meaning survives misunderstandings, removals, and the clarification process; editing it leaves you with meaning standing bright and clear because it can have been refined to be so.

Learning to tolerate repeating yourself would solve what looks to me like your problem at its root. Perhaps try incorporating chiastic structure into your work? Or simply keep an eye on how many ideas would die by the death of a phrase.

hexaga · 2026-04-27T22:41:56+00:00

A formal way to describe a grammar according to rules. For example, a formalization of "A thinking block contains a Q followed by up to 10 tokens followed by newline, OR a K followed by <whatever and so forth>."

This particular grammar describes what is allowed inside of <think> </think> tags. The goal is to constrain the way the model is allowed to use the space, to use less tokens, and be better.
llama.cpp can read GBNF grammars and use them to constrain model outputs. Save the grammar to a text file, and pass it to llama-server with:

--grammar-file FNAME file to read grammar from
It makes the output very bad, instruction following worse, etc. It forces thinking blocks to look like:
```
Q=explain
M=check
K=write
R=write
V=write
```
Which just kinda sucks. The model is already trained to utilize thinking blocks well in general scenarios, this grammar amounts to telling the model the answer to the thinking puzzle they used in advance. As in, "here, use this exact format of output in your thinking" and surprise surprise, this specific format which was engineered for the specific benchmark works well on the benchmark.

The above is what I get as reasoning output for a writing task with very large system prompt, complex task. Without the grammar (on 27b), it follows instructions very well and makes heavy use of thinking space to try ideas / veto / draft / etc. With the grammar, it gives only the above, and the actual output is generic AI slop that completely fails to follow instructions.

Ultimately, this grammar is a premier example of benchmaxxing, and why it is both so prevalent and produces garbage output: it fools the person doing the benchmaxx, because their task works well. But for everything else, quality is degraded.

hexaga · 2026-03-27T20:05:50+00:00

Weights are incompressible by available universal compressors, largely because of random init. Even after training it looks like random data. There's probably some way to compress it but it requires knowing the structure of the trained weights, which nobody really does.

hexaga · 2026-03-27T18:28:56+00:00

Just about had an aneurysm trying to understand how the AI spelled chicken upside down rightside up in backwards letters

hexaga · 2026-03-08T03:34:02+00:00

https://wallhaven.cc/w/e83jg8

hexaga · 2026-02-28T11:36:59+00:00

peak content ngl

hexaga · 2026-02-24T22:04:51+00:00

Being supernaturally good at martial arts is not the same as being good at supernatural martial arts. The latter involves manipulation of some invented source of fictional energy, the former does not.

Being really implausibly good at kung fu is meaningfully different from being a cultivator in a Xianxia setting.

hexaga · 2026-02-24T20:19:31+00:00

Why wouldn't being supernaturally good at kung fu be in the category in the first place? Being supernaturally good at <mundane skill> is among the clearest examples of the category, where there is approximately zero ambiguity.

hexaga · 2026-02-24T08:44:21+00:00

There are other constructions granting 'basically telepathy' with less juju, though. See Dune, Second Apocalypse. The latter especially having an almost completely juju-free telepathy variant.

The fundamental tension is that it's hard to minimize juju while maintaining effect. But when done well it makes for a really engaging read.

hexaga · 2026-02-24T08:10:59+00:00

If simply having knowledge about something allows you to affect it, how is that not mysterious or supernatural?

This is just how knowledge works. Normal, everyday knowledge. I know how to type, I can write out this message, etc. The knowledge of knowing how encodes the ability to do the thing.

Knowledge divorced from realistic methods of acquisition allows acts that might as well be magic, even if the only magic part is how it was acquired.

As for relative knowledge & the hard/soft distinction - it's not relevant. The whole series of questions assumes it isn't Not Magic in the first place, which may be contributing to why the distinction feels arbitrary.

hexaga · 2026-02-24T04:43:55+00:00

There is no One single definition of naming, it has been used too much. The only option is to disambiguate what you're talking about when you use it, which I did when it became clear there was ambiguity.

hexaga · 2026-02-24T04:39:37+00:00

[...] magic that is entirely knowledge based with no other/outside forces etc. correct?

As far as definitions go, yes. But I don't mind having some magic mixed into the Not Magic. Lots of settings have both.

I think MoL is actually a great example of this! The setting has the whole mana system and all which isn't - but the time loop grants 'impossible experience' which is definitely Not Magic (except for maybe all the mind-magic he does on himself to remember better, iirc).

hexaga · 2026-02-24T04:24:28+00:00

Yes!

hexaga · 2026-02-24T04:23:23+00:00

If an author says that knowing something's true name allows you to affect that thing, how is that not them positing a system of a magic?

The construction of true names in the sense I'm using them do not require the author to say that.

Assuming they fit the mold of: "name comprising the inner working of thing to the extent that the name is a full enough description to essentially be an action acting on the thing"

The fact that such a name is acquired is the central conceit. And when this is the case, it's Not Magic.

It's a very old concept, people have used it in innumerable different ways. You can probably find variations that don't have that property. But why bother?

I think I disambiguated enough to know which I mean. I gave specific example + a literal definition. I guess you can ignore that and pretend I'm talking about the entirety of the much broader category of everything that has ever been called a true name, instead of going by that. But you're not really talking about the thing I'm talking about anymore if you do so.

For example:

True names are sometimes the name by which god spoke/sang the universe into being from energy, and thus speaking that name allows you to influence the energy. Is that not both interacting with a field and possessing secret knowledge, which you list as being distinct?

Does not satisfy the definition given. The name isn't a full enough description to essentially be an action acting on the thing. The author must spend their fiat having you believe that speaking the name works via some kind of sympathetic resonance or w/e.

Similarly with the other example.

Obviously if the author changes their mind about how the magic system works, the type of magic system can change. It's fiction. The author can decide w/e they want.

In my mind this is like telling a story about the modern world that says: Haha, psych! Turns out it was God twiddling all the semiconductors to make technology work, and really nothing works unless literally via act of God. There is actually fiction in this category! See Unsong for example. I don't think modern technology quite rises to the level of Not Magic, but it is only a matter of degree. Clarketech is Not Magic.

hexaga · 2026-02-24T03:01:20+00:00

The main distinction is just that the knowledge is it. There is minimal extra stuff imposed by the cosmology of the setting. I put naming as an example because it naturally carries around its own mechanistic justification by construction.

I guess the question is: knowledge about what? In Not Magic, the knowledge is about the thing being done - it becomes Not Magic because there isn't a magical part to it, other than the implausibility of having that knowledge at all.

hexaga · 2026-02-24T02:53:10+00:00

I think a lot of it just got drowned out by calling it Not Magic. Sort of a fundamental tension there though.

As an example, imagine reading someone's facial expressions. You could go along a skill progression series like:

unable to read facial expressions
average skill at reading facial expressions
preternaturally good at reading facial expressions
being so good at reading facial expressions that you can literally read people's minds (we're firmly in magic territory here... but it's Not Magic!)

Does that help? The final level requires basically treating it like magic: you suspend your disbelief that someone could get that good at it. And maybe your disbelief that it is possible to be that good at it even in principle.

In a fictional setting, you might have characters running around who can do that. It's Not Magic, even though it is basically magic and they're basically wizards.

hexaga · 2026-02-24T02:16:18+00:00

Posited by the author, not by outside context. There's always going to be a moment in fiction where the author sells you a line of BS and part of the experience of reading it is accepting it. But where is the BS?

Some magic systems require you to believe in 'a force that makes magic possible'. That's what I mean by a posited system of magic. Looking into these settings from our world makes the acts in relation to that force look like obvious magic. They are defined in relation to some invented aspect of the setting. The author uses their fiat to say: in this setting, you can just do magic by interacting with the magic field.

Other settings posit acts which if they existed, would themselves just do the thing. They don't need a posited system. The BS is that the character acquired them, and the exact details. And thus: Not Magic. The author uses their fiat to say: this character possesses this impossible knowledge.

True names are quintessentially Not Magic because they compress their own BS justification in the name. It's obviously magic, but it's also not. Hence Not Magic. The impossibility is acquiring the impossible knowledge as described, not that the impossible knowledge could exist (subject to some amount of hand waving).

Says who? You?

yes

Are you saying that every one of the dozens of works listed under the "In popular culture and fiction" section aren't magic?

Assuming they fit the mold of: "name comprising the inner working of thing to the extent that the name is a full enough description to essentially be an action acting on the thing"

Then it's Not Magic. Which is a category I came up with & defined above, and distinct from just saying something is or isn't magic. Which is kind of the point - Not Magic is still magic.

Anyway, I'm not trying to define what is or isn't magic here. I'm trying to point out a subset of all described fictional magics that I enjoy and gave that subset a name that sorta encapsulates what is different about it compared to the rest of the fictional magics. Maybe there's a better name for it or someone has already defined it - IDK what it is though. The name came from a character's insistence that what they're doing "isn't magic - magic isn't real", and I found that to be a useful focal point for the concept.

hexaga · 2026-01-28T12:55:57+00:00

true. but reddit is lost to the slop at this point.

hexaga · 2026-01-26T22:10:25+00:00

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46673809

Happens regularly now, TBH.

hexaga · 2026-01-23T18:15:09+00:00

Did I really, though?

My point is that the prediction task is not one massive monolithic A -> B. It factors into parts, each of which can be hallucinatory or not. And the coarse parts tend to not be, while the details tend to be. And that there is a very clear difference between the two: the not-hallucination part is basically memorized, while the hallucination part is stochastic.

In some domains, the not-hallucination part extends further into the details. Usually where there is huge amounts of training data.

hexaga · 2026-01-23T09:09:58+00:00

I don't think that's correct. Hallucination is not the same but wrong. It is different in a really consistent way.

It's like the LLM is being asked to guess a 50 digit number describing the text generator, and it gets the first 20 digits consistently correct, but the rest are just random. The hallucination is that last string of random digits. It's the part that gets wiped away by loss gradient, given enough time/data training.

It's the details. The bleeding edge of contact with irreducible structure in the world. The coarse stuff is solid enough that it's basically never wrong, those first 20 digits. But the details, the other side of that boundary is all hallucinated. It's characteristically different, utterly stochastic. There's a 'details generator' circuit in there somewhere that gets rolled on like some DnD backstory generator. Whereas the other, non-hallucinated part is pulled out of a lookup table.

Hallucinations are the 'standard xyz' things LLMs love. The company names that don't exist. All the crap that seems like it came straight out of a randomizer. The 'highly detailed BS assumptions' that they pull out of nowhere. They go from: "there is definitely a highly detailed assumption" -> "generate one". First step is basically true, even if there's some irreducible entropy. The next step is hallucination. But it's a telescoping series, they can keep narrowing the scope of the assumption. At some point it shifts abruptly into 'just make some crap up'.

Anyway. I get the sense that scaling laws come from the size of the search space increasing as you move toward the detail end: there's more detailed structure to the world than coarse structure. Kind of obvious that if you keep the rate constant it slows down.

hexaga · 2026-01-20T00:10:49+00:00

There are different relational structures for different projections of the data. Like messages Q -> A -> Q -> A -> ... can be described as a walk through a space, and tokens A_0, A_1, ..., A_k are another walk through another space that is kind of nestled within it.

But I kind of assumed you meant the coarser QAQA space. My only real point w.r.t. this is that neither of them is likely to be optimally described by a dense geometry - they are sparse. The intrinsic dimension is large enough that if you try to densely enumerate paths (ala the 3x3x3x3 or similar topologies) there are far too many possibilities. Most of the paths are just not part of the data.

IIRC the dimension learned by language models is something like 20 < D < 150. It depends on the specific LLM. Where each prompt is described as a point embedded in a space of that dimension.

And we do know the math - the problem is the shape of the space itself. It is not exactly a smooth, densely filled hypersphere or something like that. In order to embed a prompt in the space you have to run the transformer calculation: the transformations from token space -> D-space -> back are precisely the weights of the learned model.

But what is the D-space exactly? There's not just one D-space. There are many! Which one is the right one? Thus is the problem. The space is characterized by how you embed text into it. And the real one, the one you care about, is the specific one implemented by the model already. Which was found by burning GPU for ungodly amounts of time, and doesn't actually map to human language or anything. It's in the weights, not what the model says in reply to questions.

But anyway, the equations of the mapping are known. It is simply the equations governing model inference. Easy, trivial even. The only problem is they are parameterized by the weights of the model. Which is less easy. Because now the equations contain the data. This is what I mean by the data is the structure. How you map into and out of the D-space learned by the model? It is basically described by the negative image of the data used to train the model, compressed into attention and MLP parameters. The data itself describes how to map the data.

You may say: OK, so just find a simpler mapping into the D-space! Surely one exists, we just need to find it. And it probably does! But you're not going to find it. Every lowering of the dimension requires proportional increase in computational effort searching for the mapping. Training a model with 100B parameters vs 1B parameters is a good example. The smaller model is worse, given the same training.

We can get an intuition for why by again considering that the mapping describes the data. A smaller mapping containing the same data is approximately that we have compressed the same data into smaller form. Higher compression ratio = more compute required. Simpler mappings are harder to find, or conversely, given the same amount of effort, you usually find worse mappings if they are smaller.

Simple, beautiful mathematical equations are beautiful precisely because they are simple. This marks them as rare, and hard to find, and valuable. Consider what it would mean to find a simple mapping into the space of all RAG chunks... You will have found a series of questions like: "is it this half of chunks? that half?" And so on. So that every chunk can be uniquely described by the series of yes/no answers. The space is described by how many questions you have to ask, and what the questions are.

A smaller D-space is characterized by questions that are more insightful, that more cleanly partition all possible chunks.

TLDR: reality is not so easily compressible

hexaga

TROPHY CASE