Are wands in any sort of book going to be too much like Harry Potter?
I am trying to write a magical system, and I love the way that wands are like gunfire and how you flick and attack and it's instant. No weird hand movements or long unwieldy staffs or canes to use.
But I'm stuck at the Harry Potter series, as I fear that at this point wands have pretty much been copyrighted (not literally) by the Harry Potter books. And I am finding it hard to find a solution which is a good substitute with a wand which has the same effect.
My plan is to use a wand in the broader sense, but add and find unique and different ways of using them and making them more different from just wands like in the Harry Potter series.
Like adding more of a Jedi ritual to making the Wand or something else than just a magical stick with stuff inside which chooses the wizard. Just something that gives it something different to the Harry Potter books.
Do you think this is still too much like Harry Potter, or that it might work?
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The Oxford English Dictionary (subscription needed) says that "wand" has meant "A magic rod; the staff used in enchantments by a fairy or a magician" for more than 600 years:
- a1400–50 [The] Wars [of] Alex[ander] 57 On hiȝt in his a hand haldis a wand And kenely be coniurisons callis to him spritis.
- ?a1505 R. Henryson Test[ament] Cresseid [...] This duleful sentence Saturne tuik on hand,..And on hir heid he laid ane frostie wand.
[...]- 1798 Wordsworth Peter Bell Prol[ogue]. 146 A potent wand doth Sorrow wield.
- 1853 Dickens Bleak House xxxvi. 353 If a good fairy had built the house for me with a wave of her wand..I could not have been more considered in it.
As long as your wands don't specifically copy parts of Harry Potter, there is no problem at all with your characters having magical sticks that they wave to cast spells.
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The concept of the 'Magic Wand' predates Harry Potter by at least a handful of millennia. Consider the 'Rod of Circe' in Homer's Odyssey which is used to magically transform Odysseus's men into pigs.
A wand appears again in C. S. Lewis' 'The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe', where it is the eponymous Witch's most powerful weapon.
Wands are a common idea in magic, and have been since time immemorial. No one in their right mind would accuse you of lifting the idea from Harry Potter.
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Harry Potter was not the first book series to have wand-wielding magicians, and it won't be the last. The best thing to do is just give your own world's wands an identity.
My own world has wands/staffs essentially being the same device, but with different firepower/augmentation of abilities. Mages can perform magic without them (and indeed, a living mage is required for a wand/staff to be of any use at all), but wands act as conduits and enhancers of existing magic.
They are treated like technology, having 'nodes' that, depending on the material, can enhance different sorts of magic (Nasite enhances 'chaotic' magic like pyromancy and Norvite enhances 'orderly' magic like cryomancy).
Basically, you need to analyse the tone of your fantasy 'verse, and make the wands fit accordingly, fear of Harry Potter be damned.
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Wands have been a feature of magic for decades and perhaps much much longer. Tinkerbell in Disney's version of Peter Pan (1953) has a short wand that works with a flick of the wrist.
I could come up with 100 more examples if I wanted to take the time. But I'll leave that to you.
Wands are part and parcel of the magical universe. Not everyone uses them to do magic. Even in Harry Potter they have some magic done with wands and some that isn't. Many stories don't use them at all. But they're common enough that anyone who is well read in fantasy (or who has seen fantasy movies) has seen them multiple times.
Your proposed wand effect is standard. Just don't copy explanations and descriptions.
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