Names for spells that are descriptive words

Okay, I've got magic in my world, and the spells (called disciplines) are such that they are involve the channeling or tapping of certain kinds of energy. They're usually referred to by what they do, more or less.

Obfuscation encourages people in the vicinity of the caster to look elsewhere or to simply see what they expect to see.

Conmutation temporarily alters the caster's superficial appearance.

Invigoration temporarily strengthens the caster

Racking converts vital energy (vitality) to dark or umbral energy.

And so on...

The thing that's bugging me is whether or not I should capitalize these words when they're used to refer to the disciplines (for that matter, should Discipline be capitalized).

My critiquers seem evenly divided, with some suggesting I capitalize when I don't, and some striking the capitalization out when I do. I go back and forth, as I sometimes wonder if it's clear enough to a naive reader that these words refer to spells or disciplines. But when I capitalize them, they look goofy to me.

Argh. I seem to remember some older fantasy writers capitalizing magic effects or spells, but I don't know if it's really the done thing anymore or not. Any thoughts on this fantasy readers?

Once! said:

Mind you, here's another thought. If I had a book that dealt with different classes of magic, I wouldn't want it to spend too long talking about those classes. That could seem a bit computer gamey or too rooted in D&D.

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I completely agree here (shudder). They only get mentioned in a very few places. Probably a handful of times in the entire novel.

Once! said:

Instead, I'd like to see the chat about the different classes sprinkled into the story judiciously. A little sprinkle here and there. Then I probably wouldn't mind the odd capital.

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I'm a big fan of sprinkles, and not just on ice cream and doughnuts
Seriously, I advocate of world building stuff being inserted in small snippets, not info dumps.

Once! said:

Maybe experts in one class are sniffy about other classes? Perhaps they have derogatory nicknames (not capitalised) for the classes that they really didn't like?

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Well, the story centers around the "corruption" of vital/life magic into umbral or shadow magic (I don't capitalize those). There's definitely a lot of dislike for and fear of umbral magic (since it involves a significant amount of pain, and it's addictive as all the hells). My protagonist is one of these "broken" life magi, and no one is more down on his talent than he is.

There are other kinds of magic in the world (physical talent, which was once thought of as elemental), and there's a secondary character who has this ability, though very little time is spent on it.

Hadn't really thought about whether there should be derogatory nicknames between the life/vital magi and the physical magi.

I tried to use the term "vitamagus" as an old-fashioned term for life mage, until a reader pointed out that it sounded rather like the name for a delicious smoothie drink with kale and fruit (it's always good when a crit can make you start giggling).

Wildlit said:

I bet you'll be safe if you pick one way and keep it consistent throughout your book. From what I've seen, capitalization in fantasy doesn't really follow a clear set of rules between books/authors!

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Mr Flibble said:

Pick one way. Stick with it.

Because this : comes down to house style in the end. Each imprint has its own rules.

So just be consistent, you'll be fine.

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Maybe I'll just leave it uncapitalized, then. If someone wants to publish the thing, they can tell me what to do.

SamCoulson said:

You could also go a middle ground and use italics instead if you want to visually set the words apart. A lot of fantasy stories capitalize spell-languages (because most are in foreign languages), but I don't see why you couldn't just italicize the spell-words as long as your consistent.

But yeah, i agree with the go un-capitalized.

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I've considered that, though I use italics for mindspeech. I don't think it would usually be confusing, due to context, though. Easy enough to do a global search and replace if I need to. It's not like I use the words conmutation, obfuscation, and invigoration more than a handful of times in the manuscript in any context.

VeryBigBeard said:

I really like this idea, though. It would add a lot of colour, I think.

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Well, I have a scene where one of my main character's (who is a healer) best friends (who has physical talent) is ribbing her about how creepy it must be to be able to feel other people's emotions. None of the pov characters are highly ranked within their magical hierarchies, so to speak, so they possibly aren't as invested in the internal politics. An interesting idea, though, even if I can just have one of the senior healer or mage characters make an offhand comment about "those other guys" who don't get how hard it is for us.

It certainly would be a lot like the ribbing that went on between the ecological side of my graduate bio department and the physiology side. And here I was, stuck in the middle as an integrative biologist.

Thanks all!

I wish I was Special, so ****ing Special...

Seriously, I remember reading a book a while back where a group of gifted people were known as Specials (may have been Cyteen, but it all blurs). It because invisible after a while, but it was noticeable at first.