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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10574
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

This is one of those instances where understanding the history of things matters. If you're building a science-fantasy world with the equivalent of modern chemistry, have some fictional elements with distinct properties, and have any concern at all for the periodic table, you really only have four choices:

1. Make the new element something strange and apart, so it doesn't have to fit into the categorization at all. 

2. Make the new "element" really an isotope of an existing element.

3. Pick a spot on the periodic table and slap the new element there. Anything above 54 with a name you don't recognize is fair game to be replaced, especially if you're going to substitute "magic" for "radiation."

4. Abandon the periodic table. If there were elements that simply did not fit into the framework when it was being devised, it would never have been adopted. 

* * *

The same practice is true for any aspect of world-building in which you deviate from the modern day. In a draft awhile back I realized that I couldn't use the world "commute" to describe a daily journey to and from work without some historic installation of public transportation, since said usage derives from the "commuted" fair offered those who bought train-tickets in bulk.

You don't need go to overboard of course, but a significant part of high fantasy or non-terrestrial sci fi is very much the world-buliding, and it's worth spending some time thinking about how to get it right.

Original score: 6