The Price of Power
Here’s a thought experiment for you.
Create a hero.
One who can fly, lift mountain ranges with his little finger, recover instantly from any wound, and teleport himself without raising a sweat.
Now write a scene where he’s in terrible danger.
Hard, isn’t it?
Power without cost means a story without tension
Tension can keep your readers turning the pages at night, even when they’re due at work the next day.
This is the challenge; the test all writers of speculative fiction must pass. Give a character power, whether it’s magic, technology, psionics, or whatever, and you must work out the limits of that power and the costs of using it.
The right limits will bring your story to life.
Danger acts like a spice. Will your hero survive? Will they succeed? A superhero with no limits and unlimited power will drain everything from your work.
Three reasons to embrace limits
A well-designed limit does three jobs.
- The limit creates stakes. If power costs the hero, the reader will keep checking the hero’s account balance. They might worry about them going into the red.
- Limits can show what our hero is truly like. Limits can force them to make hard choices. If they’re running low on spells, do they protect themselves, or put themselves in danger?
- Restrictions can also drive the plot. The bill falls due, and the reader may well read on to see if their hero survives (and if so, how).
Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series shows the way. His ‘Allomantic’ magic is powered by metal. Swallow the wrong metal, or use it too quickly, and you’ll get sick. Run out, and you’ll become vulnerable.
Each fight needs resource management. Readers can count which metals are consumed by which character; this links characters to the action and raises the peril.
Different types of cost
Limitations look and act differently. Choose the right one, and your story will benefit.
- Physical Cost. The power exhausts the body or the mind. The mage collapses, the pilot can’t breathe, or the psychic gets a neuron-churning migraine. This type of limit works well in speculative fiction. It’s believable, but make sure the consequences are more than cosmetic. Will your hero suffer lasting damage, or could it change their appearance?
- Moral Cost. The power can make ugly demands. In Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea, a mage raises the dead and tears a hole in the world to let something dreadful in. This causes more pain than any physical injury. And what could we say about anyone who uses that power to enrich themselves, or uses it flippantly?
- Social Cost. A power can isolate. The gifted can be feared, regulated, enslaved, or exiled. In N. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, characters called orogenes can calm earthquakes. They’re despised for this power, they’re turned into weapons, and even murdered. Anyone admitting this strength faces a world of hurt.
- Practical Cost. Spells or technologies may require preparation time or exotic materials. Does a device need a rare mineral that’s guarded by something that wants the hero dead? Might a spell only work if spoken at dawn, and does our hero find trouble at dusk?
Constraints like these can make the most fantastic element believable; readers can wonder if the power will work.
Putting this into practice
Embed the right limits into your work, and you’ll captivate your readers.
Avoid saying:
“Norsa raised her hand, and the fire died. She pushed back the guards, shattered the lock, and slipped through the door before anyone could stop her”.
I can’t see any tension here. Norsa might as well be running on rails; her victory seems certain, and the reader is a passive observer.
Instead say:
“Norsa raised her hand, and the fire died. The chill swept through her body instantly; it always did, rushing in to fill the void left by the heat. She had one spell left. Maybe two. She looked at the guards and the door behind them. What could she manage?”
Norsa is counting spells, and the reader is counting with her. The constraint turns what was a dull display of power into a high-stakes decision. The situation hasn’t changed, but the ceiling is closing in.
Will Norsa survive? If we’re on her side, we’ll be on the edge of our seats. And we’ll have to keep reading.
A question to ask
Take your magic system or your technology. Ask yourself what it can’t do.
Next, ask what will happen if a character tries to do that impossible thing.
If you answer ‘Well, they’ll just succeed really’, think again. Your system needs a limit.
If you answer ‘They might succeed, but at an appalling cost’, you’re on your way.
If your power system doesn’t have limits, add some.
Power is fascinating. And the price of power is where the story lives.
Until next time.
Kevin Elliott
