What are soft magic and hard magic?
Hard magic is magic whose rules and limits are shown to the reader, who knows what it can and can't do. Soft magic keeps its rules from the reader and its mystery intact. The two terms aren't boxes; they're the ends of a scale, and most stories sit somewhere between them. The distinction isn't about how much detail the author has worked out. It's about how much the reader understands.
Where do the terms come from?
The distinction was popularized by fantasy author Brandon Sanderson. In his essay 'Sanderson's First Law', dated February 2007, he describes a scale that measures how authors use their magic, and states the law: 'An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.' The naming echoes the hard and soft split in science fiction.
Hard magic: the reader knows the rules
At the hard end, the reader is shown in advance what the magic can do, what it costs and where it stops. When a character then solves a problem with it, that reads as a clever use of the rules, not a cheat. To describe this end Sanderson reaches for an example with no magic in it at all: Isaac Asimov's robot stories, built on three laws that are never broken or added to. He places his own Mistborn at about 80 percent hard.
One subtlety matters: hard doesn't mean scientifically explained. In Sanderson's terms the measure is the reader's understanding of what the magic can do, not an account of how it works.
Soft magic: the mystery stays
At the soft end, magic is there for wonder and atmosphere. What makes it soft is what the reader is told: the characters may know the rules, but the reader isn't given them. Sanderson's examples are J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, where readers are rarely told what a wizard is capable of. In stories like these, magic tends to create problems, and people solve them largely without it. When unexplained magic saves the day at the last minute, readers call it a deus ex machina.
A scale, not two boxes
Most works sit between the ends. Sanderson's example of the middle is Harry Potter: in specifics the magic is hard, since each spell does a known thing, while in the big picture it is soft, since the limits of magic as a whole are never drawn. Both ends can also live in one world: the heroes' magic rule-bound, the ancient powers mysterious. So the useful question isn't 'which one is mine' but 'what does the reader know, and what don't they?'
Building a magic system step by step, with its cost, its limits and its place in society, is a separate job; our guide on how to build a magic system covers it.
Write your choice down
Once you know where you sit on the scale, record it, because over a series it's easy to pin a soft magic down by accident or to bend a hard rule. In yazar.io you can keep individual spells in the Spells section, and the rules you want readers to learn, along with the secrets only you know, in Lore or Notes; see the magic system software page.
Is hard magic better than soft magic?
No. They do different jobs: hard magic serves clever solutions, soft magic serves wonder and mystery. Sanderson's law isn't a ranking either; it only says that if magic is going to solve a problem, the reader has to understand that magic first.
With soft magic, should the author not know the rules either?
No. Softness is about what the reader knows. An author can know the rules in detail and choose not to show them, which also helps the magic behave consistently through the story.
Can one story use both?
Yes, and many do. Individual spells can follow rules while the source of magic or the ancient powers stay mysterious. What matters is that the magic that solves problems stays on the side the reader understands.
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