Sanderson's Laws of Magic, From His Own Essays

Sanderson's laws of magic are three guidelines Brandon Sanderson wrote for building magic systems in fiction: magic can solve problems only as far as the reader understands it, a magic's limitations matter more than its powers, and an author should deepen the magic they have before adding more. Sanderson set them out in three essays on his own website: the First Law in February 2007, the Second Law in 2012 and the Third Law in September 2013.

He is clear that they are not laws in the strict sense. In the first essay: "Though I call them laws, they're nothing more than simple guidelines that have worked for me." In the third he repeats the warning: "Remember that in writing, nothing is absolute." Every quote below is from those essays, read on brandonsanderson.com, unless another source is named.

What Are Sanderson's Three Laws of Magic?

He also has an informal Zeroth Law, "Always err on the side of what's awesome", which is not in any of the three essays (see below).

What Is Sanderson's First Law?

The First Law reads, in full: "An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic." The capitals in his first statement of it ("DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL") are his.

The law came out of an argument. At his first Worldcon, on a panel about how magic should work, Sanderson opened with what he took as a given: "Obviously magic has to have rules." In his account, "every other person on the panel disagreed with me violently", on the grounds that rules kill wonder. The First Law was his answer. It does not demand rules. It says what a writer may do with magic the reader does not understand.

Sanderson later summed the First Law up as being about "the nature of foreshadowing as it relates to solving problems with magic". A magic that saves the day without being set up earlier is a deus ex machina, the same broken promise that Chekhov's gun warns against from the other side.

What Is the Difference Between Hard and Soft Magic?

Hard and soft magic are Sanderson's names for the two ends of the scale the First Law creates. He does not treat them as two boxes: "I see a continuum, or a scale, measuring how authors use their magic."

Soft magic is magic the reader does not understand. Its job is wonder and danger, and Sanderson puts Tolkien here: "you rarely understand the capabilities of Wizards and their ilk." The rule for soft magic follows from the law: "The really good writers of soft magic systems very, very rarely use their magic to solve problems in their books. Magic creates problems, then people solve those problems on their own without much magic." His example: "There is a reason that Gandalf doesn't just fly Frodo to Mount Doom with magic, then let him drop the ring in."

Hard magic is magic whose rules the reader knows, so the characters can use it to solve problems. Hard does not mean scientific. Sanderson: "by calling something 'Hard Magic' I'm not implying that it has to follow laws of science". He counts superheroes as hard magic, because we know exactly what Spider-Man can do, and Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics as a model of it.

The middle is where most books sit. Of the Harry Potter books he writes: "In specifics, her magic is hard. In the big picture, her magic is soft." Of his own: "I consider my own magic systems to be perhaps 80% hard, maybe a bit more."

His practical test for each side:

• Hard magic: "How could the characters use what they already have and know to solve this conflict?"
• Soft magic: "How can they solve this without magic?"

What Is Sanderson's Second Law?

The Second Law is a single line: "Limitations > Powers". A magic's limits, weaknesses and costs make it more interesting than what it can do.

His example is Superman. Flight and strength make him like many other heroes. Kryptonite and his moral code make him Superman, because they lead back to his lost home world and the people who raised him: "Superman is not his powers. Superman is his weaknesses."

Sanderson sorts limiting factors under three headings:

• Limitations: "the things that, for one reason or another, the magic simply cannot do." Superman cannot see through lead.
• Weaknesses: "things that enemies can exploit". Kryptonite is the obvious case, and Sanderson warns it has become a cliché.
• Costs: what using the magic takes from the user. In the Wheel of Time, "Men who use the magic go slowly insane." He warns against overdoing it: "if your cost is too drastic, it can lead to you never being able to use the magic."

Limits are also where originality comes from. Most powers have been done before; a new limit has not. In his words: "Without limitations, there is no innovation." And a limit does not have to be realistic: "having a rule-based magic system isn't about rationality, but consistency."

He closes the essay by widening it: "I see them as storytelling principles, illustrated through ways one can design better magic systems." What a character cannot do is more interesting than what they can.

What Is Sanderson's Third Law?

The Third Law: "Expand what you already have before you add something new." He shortens it at the end of the essay to "Expand, Don't Add."

The point is depth over breadth. A magic with a thousand powers is usually weaker than one with a few, followed through: how the magic shapes the society, the economy, the religion and the everyday lives of the people in the book. In Sanderson's words, "this law challenges me to create deep worldbuilding instead of just wide worldbuilding."

He names three ways to expand:

1. Extrapolate. Ask "what happens when" questions. What happens to warfare if magic can make food out of thin air, so armies can move faster?
2. Interconnect. Tie the powers to each other and to the book's themes. Every power in Mistborn's magic suits a crew of thieves, and each is named after a role in one.
3. Streamline. Combine where you can. Rather than ten kingdoms with ten magics, give the world one magic and let each culture use it differently.

The Third Law is also his cure for what he calls "worldbuilder's disease": years spent building a world with too little practice at the writing itself. A worldbuilding bible helps here, because recording only what the book has committed to keeps the magic from growing faster than the story needs. Where the magic sits among the other decisions of a fantasy book, from the map to the last revision, is set out in how to write a fantasy novel.

What Is Sanderson's Zeroth Law?

The Zeroth Law is "Always err on the side of what's awesome": start from an idea that excites you, then work out the rules that make it hold together. It is unofficial. It does not appear in any of the three essays, and comes from what Sanderson has said at signings and talks.

At DragonCon in September 2016 he named it outright: "Sanderson's Zeroth Law is 'Always err on the side of what's awesome'." At the Firefight release party in January 2015, using the shorter form, he explained what it does not mean: when he says "Err on the side of awesome" he does not mean "Write your stories in such a way that they don't make sense". Instead, "I start with something cool and extrapolate backward." Both are fan transcripts kept in the Words of Brandon archive.

Who Really Said It? Common Misattributions

"Magic must have rules" is older than Sanderson. He says he took the idea from Orson Scott Card's writing book, and recommends its chapter on magic. Card, in How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (1990): "In a fantasy, if magic has no limitations, the characters are omnipotent gods; anything can happen, and so there's no story." Sanderson's First Law is not that rule. It allows magic with no rules at all, so long as that magic does not solve the plot.

The Zeroth Law is not in the essays. Pages that list four laws side by side are mixing three written essays with a phrase from his talks. Even the wording varies: "Err on the side of awesome" is the short form most pages quote, while his fullest naming of it is "Always err on the side of what's awesome".

The Second Law is dated 2011 as often as 2012. Both are right in a way. The essay is signed April 2011 and, by its own note, first appeared in issue 61 of Leading Edge. It went up on his website in February 2012.

Hard magic is not science magic. The First Law is about what the reader understands, not about how realistic the magic is. Sanderson says so directly, and counts Spider-Man as hard magic.

A Worked Example

Ines is a tidebinder in a harbour town. We set the rules first, and we write them down.

• What it can do: move seawater, with a hand in the sea.
• Limits: only salt water, and only while she touches the sea.
• Cost: binding draws the heat out of her body. Hold it too long and she freezes.

Then the outline:

1. The harbour. Ines holds a wave off her father's boat, one hand in the sea. Her fingers go white with cold. (The reader learns what it does, and the cost.)
2. The mill fire. The mill inland is burning. Ines reaches for the millpond, and fresh water does not answer her. (The reader learns a limit, and the town saves the mill without her.)
3. The breach. A storm breaks the sea wall, and the sea pours into the lower town.
4. The wall. Ines wades into the breach, hand in the sea, and holds the water back while the men close the wall. They carry her out half frozen. (The magic solves the problem, by rules the reader already knows, at the price the reader already saw.)

The First Law is met: scene 4 uses nothing scenes 1 and 2 did not show. The Second Law does the work in scene 2 and in the cost of scene 4. The Third Law is what to do next. Instead of giving Ines a second magic for fire, follow the one she has: inland towns have no tidebinders, so salt is worth more than silver there, and a binder who leaves the coast leaves her power behind.

How Do You Build a Magic System in Deckle?

Deckle is a novel-writing app. Its Codex holds the rules of the magic beside the manuscript, and its Outliner is a board of cards, one for every document in the book, each with a synopsis.

1. Open the Codex from its button in the menu bar. In Custom / Lore, click the + (New entry) and choose Blank. Name the entry after the magic.
2. Write one line in the summary under the name: what the magic is.
3. Click Add fields. Give the group a name such as "The rules", name the field "What it can do", choose Multi-line, and click Add. Use the + on that group to add "Limits" and "Cost" the same way. Fill in all three.
4. Open the Outliner on the Draft and add a card for each scene with Add › Scene. In each synopsis, write what the magic does in that scene.
5. Make two labels, "Rule shown" and "Rule used" (the pencil beside Status in the Inspector's Properties opens Edit labels & statuses), and give them different colours.
6. Set "Rule shown" on every scene that teaches the reader a rule, and "Rule used" on every scene where the magic solves a problem. Switch the Outliner to its list and read down: every "Rule used" should have a "Rule shown" above it that covers it.

To reuse the shape for a second magic, click Save as Template on the entry. The same Codex holds the rest of your setting, from places to factions, and what to include in a story bible covers the rest of it. If the list shows a payoff with no set-up above it, the Outliner is where you move a scene earlier or add the one that teaches the rule.

Common Mistakes

• Solving the climax with a rule the reader never saw. That breaks the First Law. Show the rule earlier, ideally in a scene where it costs something.
• A soft magic that saves the day. If the reader does not know what the magic can do, it should cause problems, not solve them.
• Powers without costs. Readers expect a price. Without one, there is no tension when the magic comes out.
• A cost too heavy to pay. If every use is ruinous, the magic can never appear on the page.
• Adding a new power for every new problem. Sanderson's advice: "Don't give the heroes a new power whenever they need one".
• Treating the laws as rules for magic only. Sanderson calls them storytelling principles. They apply to technology, politics and characters too.

Sources

Retrieved 25 October 2026.

• Brandon Sanderson, Sanderson's First Law, February 2007.
• Brandon Sanderson, Sanderson's Second Law, signed April 2011, first published in Leading Edge issue 61; posted February 2012.
• Brandon Sanderson, Sanderson's Third Law of Magic, September 2013.
• Brandon Sanderson FAQ, What Are Sanderson's Laws of Magic?, for the three laws as he states them.
• Words of Brandon archive, Firefight release party, 5 January 2015, and DragonCon 2016, September 2016. Fan transcripts.
• Orson Scott Card, How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (Writer's Digest Books, 1990), on "the price of magic" (archive.org).