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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46813
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46813
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

> Is there any possible way to do it right, without foreshadowing it so hard that the twist is moot?

I would say ... No. But you can write the story, without letting your MC **_agree_** to call it magic.

This is the way it is done in many stories; an MC is searching for something "scientific" and discovers it and calls it "new technology", even though it is scientifically impossible and really just some form of magic. Teleportation, FTL travel, cloning with an identical mind, instant healing, all the X-Men powers or powers from the series Heroes, telepathy, telekinesis, mind-reading, lightning bolts from the hands, time-travel, all of Superman's powers, Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth, unlimited (or insanely efficient) power generation, etc. They just never **call it** magic!

You do this by setting up in the first Act a mystery the MC cannot solve, and don't make any existing explanation _plausible,_ have your MC argue the case against that. Make your MC an actually competent investigator or scientist.

The reader is set up for some weird explanation of all this, and identifies with the MC you make "the smart one", the Sherlock that will find the answer.

When the answer turns out to be Magic, he refuses to call it that, even if other people are. It is a force, or machine, or something he doesn't understand, but as a scientist (I am one) that is as far as he goes. It is a **_technology_** or **_discovery_** he will learn to exploit, just like we learned to exploit fire and coal to make steel, and learned to exploit electricity, and magnetism, all of which other people at the time considered "magic".

If you bring a laser to the middle ages, or even a flashlight, it will seem like magic to them. Arthur C. Clarke famously said, _"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."_

So your twist is the same, minus the word "magic". Like electricity and magnetism IRL, your MC can learn to use this new force without exactly understanding it.

Original score: 5