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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26557
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26557
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The audience that actually cares about worldbuilding is pretty small. Most people who read LOTR, for example, don't care a fig about the whole legendarium. They only care about the story.

Most stories with magic in them are very indefinite about how the magic works and what the limits of a character's magical abilities are. And, in fact, the same could be said of physical abilities. One sees this particularly with superheroes, whose abilities seem to be adjusted to the crisis of the moment rather than being consistent across a movie or series. But it is often true of ordinary human abilities in stories that depend on physical feats.

If this is true, why does it not all seem like cheating? Why is the suspension of disbelief (or, to use Tolkien's phrase, the reader's acceptance of the sub-created world) not violated by these inconsistencies and the general lack of definition of capabilities? Because, in the end, stories are moral. They are not about solving technical problems, they are about facing moral dilemmas, about seeing how much the protagonist is willing the bleed in pursuit of their goal. They are about moral transformation or moral revelation.

The question as the heart of every story, therefore, is not, how will they get out of this, but, what are they willing to give up to get out of this. We want to see the price paid. We do not feel cheated by the use of powers otherwise unsuspected or unexplained, as long as the moral order of the story is not violated.

But if new or unexplained powers are used to get the character out of a moral dilemma, that is a very different matter. That is a cheat. That is deus ex machina.

You don't have to explain things, therefore, unless they create a moral question in the story, and you don't have to worry about things that just happen as long as they do not violate the moral order of the story.

There may, of course, be other reason why you may want to explain them anyway, and they may or may not change the audience for your story, but your obligation is to the moral consistency of your story, not the mechanical consistency of your invented world.

Original score: 2