"Adding Magic to Your Writing"

By Sally O’Reilly

Writing about magic means you can access the areas of your mind that you don’t normally use, freeing up imaginative ideas. But it only works if you impose constraints, and you need to decide how these are integrated into your story. 

Magic is multifaceted. In historical terms, high magic was practiced by scholars, and was often based on ancient texts and arcane knowledge. Whereas folk magic – including herbalism and fortune telling - was practised by women.

There are many ways of introducing magic into your story. You might create an entirely invented world, with its own rules, like Middle Earth or Earthsea. This is magic as fantasy. Related to this is the convention of a portal which leads to an invented world from this one.

Or you might make magic integral to the everyday world. For instance Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle is set in a world similar to late-twentieth-century America, but which encompasses witchcraft. A similar approach is to use surreal magic in a narrative, in which everything is "off" and weirdness is normal. An example is Leonora Carrington’s "The Debutante," a short story in which a debutante morphs into a hyena.  

Currently, there is a vogue for retelling folk and fairy tales and giving them contemporary resonance. Angela Carter is one of the most influential writers in this field. Dark folk traditions are also inspiring stories in which nature is sentient or sinister, and the past haunts the present through the landscape. 

So what are the tactics that you might use? Spreading your net as wide as possible at the start is essential. It’s important to read /watch / absorb anything that interests you and has magical resonance. For instance, I just saw Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, in which a man plays chess with Death, a haunting, unforgettable image.  

You might also visit potentially inspiring places, again, keeping an open mind. Go to old cities, museums, remote places in nature. Writers like Alan Garner and C.S. Lewis were deeply inspired by the natural world. 

Another tactic is to try to rediscover your childish belief in the possibility of magic. Try writing down everything you can remember about a time in your childhood when you were scared, or left alone, or lost. Write down as much as you can about your feelings then, and try to recall as much detail as possible. Magic works best in fiction when it is interwoven with the everyday – think of Harry Potter and the Dursleys. 

Familiarise yourself with folk tales and myths. Grimms’ Fairy Tales is a good place to start, but there are fairy tales and fables from all over the world, varied and colourful, often with similar themes and tropes. Old stories can be repurposed time and time again. 

Using magic in a story means embedding it into the narrative. So the rules that apply to story-telling generally apply here. Traditionally, stories are about characters who want or lack something, who seek a goal, are blocked or challenged in getting to that goal, and who eventually change, and if the story has a happy ending, get what it was they wanted, or something different but slightly better. 

Don’t let the magic in your story solve all the problems your characters face. If you want your story to be engaging, then you need to limit the access your characters have to magical power. Otherwise, everything is too easy, there are no challenges, and therefore no conflict.

Make the rules of your fictional world clear to the reader from the beginning. Be consistent once you have established those rules. If the magic is treated as a skill that must be learned, the stakes are higher. Create barriers and challenges. Impose limitations and rules – for example – a spell can only be cast in specific circumstances. 

Your characters must earn their rewards. Their achievements will only feel satisfying to the reader if the characters had to work for it. 

All writers are dealing with magic to an extent – it’s a proxy for pure imagination. If you can make your readers believe in the magic in your story, you can make them believe that all the events are real. 

About the author
Writer Sally O’Reilly grew up in Stoke-on-Trent and now lives in Sheffield. En route, she’s spent time in Brixton, Brighton, and Barcelona. Her short stories have been published in the UK, Australia, and South Africa, and she has been shortlisted for the Cosmopolitan short story prize and the Ian St James Awards. Her historical novel Dark Aemilia (Myriad Editions/Picador US) was nominated for the Kirkus Prize. She has worked as a senior Creative Writing lecturer at the Open University and her journalism has been published in The Guardian, The Sunday Times, and New Scientist. Her latest novel, Hagtale, is a reimagined origin story of Shakespeare's Macbeth and is shortlisted for the World of Books Sustainable Story Award 2026.

About Hagtale
A hagtale, a dark fable, a story told around winter’s fires and known to Shakespeare but never written down. Until now.

In eleventh-century Scotland, feral wolf-child Wulva is brought up by witches and then sent to live at a Scottish castle, where she falls under the spell of cruel, ambitious Lord Macbeth.

Three hundred years later, gentle Brother Rowan goes on a strange and perilous journey to a remote and ancient monastery to write a history of the Scottish king-line.

Misfits in their own time, seekers after truth, Wulva and Rowan are deeply connected despite the centuries that separate them.

Hagtale explores the power of stories lost and found, their transformative potential, and who gets to be the owner of the tale.

You can read more about Hagtale on the publisher's website here. 

Heidi James, "The Sound Mirror"

 

Heidi James is the author of critically acclaimed novels Wounding, So the Doves (a Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) and The Sound Mirror. She won The Saboteur Award for her novella, The Mesmerist’s Daughter, and was a finalist in The Cinnamon Poetry Collection Prize. Her short stories, poetry and essays have been published various anthologies and magazines including, among others, We’ll Never Have Paris, Somesuch, Dazed and Confused and Galley Beggar Press. She hosts a podcast, First Graft, where she discusses the writing process with other writers. Her website is here.

About The Sound Mirror

Tamara is going to kill her mother, but she isn’t a monster. She just has to finish what began at birth and put an end to the damage encoded in her blood.

Quitting her job in Communications, Tamara dresses carefully and hires a car to visit her mother for the last time. Accompanied by a chorus of ancestors, she is harried by voices from the past and the future that reveal the secrets of these women’s lives that continue to echo through her own.

Is Tamara fated to make the same mistakes as her ancestors or can she break the cycle and lead her own life, and on her terms too?

The Sound Mirror is a haunting novel that avoids classification. Spanning three generations from British Occupied India to Southern England, Heidi James has crafted a moving examination of class, war, violence and shame from the rich details of ordinary lives.

From The Sound Mirror, by Heidi James

TAMARA

She is going to kill her mother today. But she’s no monster. She’s not the villain. It’s a beautiful day for it, winter sharp, the sky an unfussy blue. She’s taken two days holiday from work and hired a fancy car, a Mercedes, essential for this journey, where appearances and a quick getaway are everything. The man gave her a discount when she told him where she was going. The two-hundred-mile round trip will be a breeze. She’s dressed carefully too; just jeans and a shirt, but they are expensive, well-cut. Understated, but a signal to those in the know. So here we are, driving down to be face to face with her for the last time. Of course, we’re along for the ride, how could we not?

It’s been a long time coming, and our fault, we should say. Funny that, speaking with one voice now, agreeing with each other. But yes, our fault, and all the others, tangled up with poisons and infections and rottenness. Our mothers and mother’s mothers containing us, we, in their bellies, seeds of each in the cells and the breath. Before the splitting in two, the doubling like an atomic bomb and now she holds us all, a rabble of ancestors, pressing up from inside against her skin, and too, she contains the next generation, if she wanted. If she can bear to, bear it, bear a child. Who could blame her if not? But for now, she’s the sum of all us women, the total. She is what’s left.  

You imagine history trails you like clanging tin cans on a wedding car, but you’re wrong. History is a halter that leads, we’re beasts of burden with a ring through our nose. You go where we lead. We are not whole, we are fragments, ununified, unstable entities colliding under the swirling universe. Overflowing with memories and feelings not our own; archives of those who came before. It’s almost romantic, imagining we’re individuals, cut off from the rest, making ourselves feel special. What we are is the story she is made of. Then of course, there’s free will, if you believe in that, which she does. It’s a nice idea anyway. That we are free to choose our actions, and the consequences. 

Passive, she drifts where she’s pushed, lifted and dropped. Caught in tides she can’t fathom, impulses and currents she can’t navigate. 

Isabel Costello, "Scent"

Isabel Costello’s debut novel Paris Mon Amour was published in 2016, followed by Scent in 2021 (Muswell Press). Her short fiction has appeared in many anthologies and magazines. She has run the Literary Sofa blog for ten years and is a keen supporter of independent publishing. Isabel is a writing mentor, tutor and book doctor and co-founder of Resilience for Writers. Originally from Wiltshire, she has lived in London for 30 years and has lifelong connections with France, where both of her novels are set.

About Scent

The cracks in Clémentine and Édouard’s marriage are becoming impossible to ignore. Her work as a perfumer is no longer providing solace and her sense of self is withering. Life tilts irreversibly when, decades after the disturbing end of a bisexual love triangle, Clémentine’s former lover Racha resurfaces. What does she want, if not revenge? Set in Paris and Provence, this is a beautifully written, intimate portrait of a woman navigating conflicting desires whilst dreaming of a fulfilling future.

You can read a review by Jon Wilkins of Scent on Everybody's Reviewing here. Below, you can read a sample from the opening of the novel. 

From Scent

At times like this, I take comfort in the fact I’ve never loved Édouard. I knew it all along but have never been one to dwell on uncomfortable truths. Frankly, I don’t know what I’ve been thinking for most of our time together. More than half my life. My husband chose me like an item on display, fresh but far from innocent. In fairness, I was willing. I’d seen where love could lead and I never wanted to go there again.

When today’s magazine interview comes out, thousands of people will see inside our home and my perfume shop. They’ll look at my clothes, the pictures on our walls, maybe squint at the spines of our books. They’ll think they know about my life, and they’ll be wrong.

I keep fiddling with my hair, debating whether to wear it up or down for the photos. For once Édouard is looking at me. Before I can even attempt to decode his expression, he says, ‘You know, in your line of work certain things could be seen as an investment.’ Our eyes meet and part in the mirror but I don’t release my grip; if anything, it tightens. Without intending to, I’ve been pulling my hair so hard that my face has lost most of its lines, my eyes wide and bright against the unfamiliar smoothness of my skin. It takes years off, just like that. If Édouard had never found me beautiful we wouldn’t be here, but what can you do?

Not what he was suggesting, that much I know.

His tone offends me more than anything: studiously uncritical, bordering on sympathetic, as if he thinks I’m seeking his blessing. And so fucking euphemistic – if we’re talking about taking a knife to my face, he should have the balls to say so.

I don’t react but the laser-like quality of the moment lets me see myself, the two of us, as never before. It’s been ten years since I looked like that, five since Édouard and I stopped touching beyond the minimum expected by friends and relatives. Which is to say, five years since my husband stopped touching me. I’m not looking for a consolation prize, but I am looking for something. More than this.

With an exaggerated gesture, I let my hair fall with a rush of relief as the blood returns to my cheeks. Édouard starts to make encouraging noises but it’s like trying to blow up a tyre he’s just slashed. He can think I’m doing this interview for him, if he wants. I’ve never made much effort with publicity and wouldn’t be now if Delphine hadn’t been so persistent, mentioning the idea every time our paths crossed. It’s all the same to me that she’s just married a powerful man Édouard wants in his corner with a crisis looming, but I am impressed by her determination to be her own woman, the only way to embark on marriage to a man with big ambitions. It took me a while to figure that out, but the way they look at each other tells me they have more than time on their side. Every day in Paris carries proof that love exists, in the air, on the streets and behind closed doors. Just not mine.

Featured Author: Louisa Treger

Louisa Treger is a classical violinist who turned to literature, earning a Ph.D in English at University College London, where she focused on early-twentieth-century women's writing and was awarded the Rosa Morison Scholarship 'for distinguished work in the study of English Language and Literature.' Louisa's first novel, The Lodger, was published by Macmillan in 2014. The Dragon Lady is her second novel (Bloomsbury, 2019). She lives in London. Her website is http://louisatreger.com/

About The Dragon Lady 

Opening with the shooting of Lady Virginia 'Ginie' Courtauld in her tranquil garden in 1950s Rhodesia, The Dragon Lady tells Ginie's extraordinary story, so called for the exotic tattoo snaking up her leg. From the glamorous Italian Riviera before the Great War to the Art Deco glory of Eltham Palace in the thirties, and from the secluded Scottish Highlands to segregated Rhodesia in the fifties, the narrative spans enormous cultural and social change. Lady Virginia Courtauld was a boundary-breaking, colourful and unconventional person who rejected the submissive role women were expected to play. 

Ostracised by society for being a foreign divorcée at the time of Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson, Ginie and her second husband ,Stephen Courtauld, leave the confines of post-war Britain to forge a new life in Rhodesia, only to find that being progressive liberals during segregation proves mortally dangerous. Many people had reason to dislike Ginie, but who had reason enough to pull the trigger?

Deeply evocative of time and place, The Dragon Lady subtly blends fact and fiction to paint the portrait of an extraordinary woman in an era of great social and cultural change.

You can see more details about The Dragon Lady on the publisher's website here, you can read a review of the novel on Everybody's Reviewing here, and below you can read an excerpt from the opening chapter. 

From The Dragon Lady

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

CATHERINE, 1990s

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to forget, yet the smallest thing takes me back to the time the Dragon Lady was shot. I was thirteen years old and living on a forest reserve near the Mozambique border. My father, a naturalist and forestry consultant, visited her regularly, but it was the first time he had taken me.

Her house was long and low and painted white, with a turret on one side. It was like a castle in a storybook, unexpected and incongruous in a remote Rhodesian valley. The interior was all hushed, cool spaces and we had to wait a long time for the Dragon Lady to see us.
At one point her husband, Stephen, came to talk to us. He had a stern face, but there was a glint in his eyes while he spoke to Dad about the new trees he had planted. I had a boys’ comic tucked under my arm and he wanted to know why.

‘Cathy doesn’t like girls’ things,’ Dad told him. ‘She plays with tin soldiers and a train set.’

My father’s words caused a pang. I’d grown out of trains and soldiers a long time ago, but he hadn’t noticed. I was about to retort that I was too big for toys, but I saw Stephen was smiling; he found it funny. He left, saying that he had a meeting in town, but that his wife wouldn’t be much longer.

We sat in silence. It was hard not to fidget, and soon Dad suggested I go outside and have a look around. I walked onto the veranda and down a flight of steps, and found myself in a never-ending garden.   

It was beautiful and eerie, not like a garden at all to me. My school friends had gardens with mowed lawns and tidy hedges. This was wilderness with paths and deep shade, dense with trees, ferns and flowering creepers. Under the spreading branches of an old cypress tree, I stumbled against a protruding object and nearly fell. Righting myself, I looked down and saw a moss-encrusted grave so small it could only have belonged to a young child. There was no headstone or inscription. The only decoration was a posy of white roses made out of porcelain. 

A cloud slid across the sun, shrouding everything in a gloomy light. The wind came up, making the tree branches writhe back and forth. The dry rustling of their leaves was like a whispered warning and a chill snaked up my spine. Turning away, I hurried back to the house in time to see Dad and the Dragon Lady exiting the back door.

I stopped at the edge of the lawn to watch them. Her real name was Lady Virginia Courtauld; Dad called her Ginie. She was gesturing and calling to a gardener to show him something. Tall and thin, she wore a long-sleeved blue dress; her face was in shadow under a large hat. 

Beneath the swish of her dress I could make out the famous tattoo. It was this that had earned her the nickname Dragon Lady, though the creature on her ankle was in fact a snake: a savage thing, heavily inked in black, its head rearing up, jaws open, ready to strike. People whispered that it went from her ankle right the way up her thigh and no one but Stephen knew where it ended.

I had a vague impression that she was agitated or anxious, fidgeting and walking up and down; her voice was vivacious, fractured. I was used to observing my own mother’s unhappiness and I saw something there that reminded me of her.

The monkeys in the treetops started up a tremendous disturbance: shrieking and chattering; flinging down gourds from the oyster nut vines that split open as they smacked the ground, scattering seeds over the grass. 

‘What’s bothering them?’ asked the Dragon Lady, shading her eyes with her hand as she looked towards the trees. 

At that instant, a loud noise splintered the air. I only realised it was a gunshot when I saw the Dragon Lady’s body jolt violently and the garden boy screamed. She seemed to bow down and one hand went out as if she was reaching for something. She toppled over with a choked cry and I saw the wound in her side. Her body tensed and convulsed, her limbs sprawled gracelessly, blood spilled onto the ground. 

For a few moments, there was an unearthly stillness. Then things moved quickly: my father was bending over her, his ear by her chest. He stripped his shirt off and pressed it to the wound, tying to staunch the bleeding. Blood poured out regardless, soaking through the fabric: a scarlet rosette blossoming grotesquely on khaki. 

‘We must get her to the hospital – quickly!’

A servant came running with blankets and they lifted her, a limp shape wrapped in soiled blue wool, and hurried her away. Moments later, I heard the cough and rattle of our truck start up and speed off.

I leaned against the rough bark of a tree and watched a pair of bright red and green lizards darting through the grass. High above, a company of hawks circled in a flawless blue sky. With my teeth, I took hold of a ragged piece of skin at the edge of my thumbnail and pulled. It came away in a long strip. A drop of bright blood welled up in the cuticle and ran down my thumb, though I felt no pain. 

I waited for my dad, but he did not come back. The light deepened and spread, staining the trees gold and casting stripes on the grass where it slipped between them. The glow lingered on the treetops, while the shadows of dusk began to creep over their lower branches. A bird called and crickets started up a low, persistent creaking. Two poodles appeared and made their way towards the house, agitated. They paused by the rust-coloured stain the Dragon Lady had left on the grass, sniffed at it and started to lick it. I realised that they were as forgotten as I was.

"Werner Krauss": Extract from Novel by Gareth Watts

Gareth Watts is Head of Creative Arts at Gateway College. He has written for radio, published poetry, written short stories and reviews for Fiction Uncovered. He writes for Leftlion and has a regular football column for Forza Garibaldi. His first novel Werner Krauss (Sussex Academic) was published in 2017.

The novel is a fictional account of the life of German film and theatre actor Werner Krauss,  star of the classic silent film The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. Upon gaining worldwide recognition in this film, Krauss was co-opted into the Nazi hate campaign of the 1930s and 1940s. He featured in the vicious propaganda film Jud Suss, and he was complicit in giving anti-Semitic performances onstage, most notably as Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. The novel focuses on three distinct eras in Krauss's life: the struggling, exuberant actor of the 1920s; the philandering pragmatist of the 1930s; and the elderly, neurotic outcast of the 1940s. Despite his honourable intentions, Krauss was all-too-often undermined by his inability to say 'no' to women, alcohol and the egregious Joseph Goebbels. In this fictional re-imagining of his life, Krauss's motives and decisions are explored in an attempt to discover why he collaborated with the Nazis in the way that he did, as well as demonstrating the personal and political consequences of his actions. Krauss's story is part of the wider story of the role of the arts and media in Nazi Germany. Extensively researched, including contemporary news stories, archived film material, critical essays on Krauss and translated passages from his autobiography, Das Schauspiel Meines Lebens, this fictional reconstruction of Krauss's life and career is preceded by a substantive Introduction by the author, setting the novel in the context of the genre of Holocaust fiction, emulating and reminiscent of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin and Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark. 

Extract from the novel, Werner Krauss

Prologue

But how to communicate with the future?

Lifting the collar of his overcoat, Werner Krauss ducked his head and walked quickly. Each step seemed to mimic the pace of his heart. Why was he doing this? He was a free man, after all.

On waking that morning, he’d ambled into the kitchen of his Stuttgart residence and taken a bottle of Asbach Uralt from the cupboard. Grabbing a dirty wine glass from the draining-board, he poured carelessly, overflowing the stemmed glass. Preparing himself for a shock, he gulped it down. Tears rolled from his eyes, but he resisted the urge to vomit. He took a cigarette from the box which had been to bed with him, and, with an unsteady hand, placed it in his mouth. Sinking to his knees, he lit it using the gas flame of the oven hob, which had been burning all night. He stole an hour of sleep, there on the kitchen floor, with the cigarette butt still in his mouth. Waking with a start, he dressed thoughtlessly, and, realising he was too late to arrange a ride, headed for the court on foot.

For months he had been preparing for this day – memorising anecdotes about a compassionate, sensitive man. But these monologues now seemed to be slipping away, and all he could think of was his sore ankle.

As the State Court building came into view, so too did the sizeable and angry crowd.

‘There he is – traitor, TRAITOR!’

The noise grew, and individual insults rang out.

‘Fascist …’

‘Hitler’s friend, he was Hitler’s friend!’ – a Jew, unmistakably.

‘Murderer!’

That last one echoed in his ear. His cheeks burned. As the crowd got closer, Werner noticed there was no sign of the special security that he had requested. His name obviously didn’t carry the same weight in Stuttgart as it had before. He swallowed hard, and started to run, or rather, limp, at the crowd, head-on. He fought his way through, almost reaching the court door, and relative safety. Then, a placard bearing the words NAZI COWARD crashed down on his forehead. He fell to the ground amid kicks, punches and insults.

Sat now in the corridor outside the courtroom, he gazed at a grey wall for some time, trying to piece together the speech in his mind, and forget the morning’s unexpected nightmare. He reached into his jacket for a notebook and pen. Wanting to commit words to the page, he would remind himself of his humanity:

Somewhere, there is salvation. A place to feel alive even when they line the streets, calling for your death …

Werner knew he was exaggerating, but for a moment at least he enjoyed the melodrama and continued to dwell on the ‘tragedy’ of his situation:

… I am not a murderer and yet they try me like one. They want me dead as an example to all. In the pages of the pauper-press I am demonised for doing my duty, performing my tasks, being true and being artistic. Hath a Jew not eyes?

He smiled as he scrawled that last question mark. For a moment he considered incorporating these notes in his memoirs. ‘It could be included in the prologue,’ he thought.

He tore the page from his notebook and put it into his pocket. He must be careful not to allow his sense of humour to be used against him. Fear started to grip the face of the man who had worn so  many masks. Being nervous was natural though, he decided, and the court must not suspect a performance – they must see a human - a man, not an actor. He should talk only of circumstance, of coincidence. He could talk about Maria. He could talk about his son.

With those thoughts in mind, Werner was led into the courtroom and asked to confirm his name. The presiding officer was a young, slither of a man who hid behind a pair of spectacles. This infuriated Werner. ‘Where were you in the Weimar years?’ he wanted to shout. He fantasised about smashing this man’s spectacles into his face, using a nearby chair. At least then, he thought, he could have a reason for remorse, a reason to be tried. 

Werner let out a quiet, though not inaudible, belch. The brandy was rising from his stomach and he felt sick. But he could not leave the courtroom and attract more attention. He swallowed hard, and tried to concentrate on the question the presiding officer had begun to ask: 'Herr Krauss, how would you define your role in Hitler’s Reich?'

Masterclass with Kerry Young

By Nakisha Towers 

On Monday 30th April, novelist Kerry Young came to give a writing masterclass on Memory and Fiction as part of the Creative Writing MA. The masterclass was also open to other students and the public. 

Young, writer of three novels, Pao, Gloria and Show Me A Mountain, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Chinese father and a mother of mixed Chinese-African heritage. She has used her childhood and upbringing as inspiration for her novels. In the masterclass, she spoke about her ‘half-remembered’ memories as a child, and the process of reshaping these experiences as an adult and constructing a work of fiction around them.

Kerry read out an extract from Pao, and  she did so in the distinctive Jamaican accent in which it is intended to be read – it was captivating! Although this was primarily a workshop, Kerry has a wealth of experience and advice that left me feeling inspired and informed. In particular she spoke of the importance of pin-pointing what it is that drives us as writers, our core values; because once we understand what it is that is driving us, we’ll understand what it is that we are writing – and become better writers for it.

A truly remarkable woman. Admittedly, I hadn’t read any of Kerry’s novels, but after the workshop, I immediately bought all three!

Nakisha Towers is a student on the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester.