Magic in Fiction: How to make yours stand out

I want to start right now by saying that I am not an expert in the subject of making magic your own. Everyone has their own way of doing it. This is just the way I've done it, and you are welcome to try it, and tweak to suit your needs in your stories.

So, this past Friday we had the first part of our discussion on Magic in Fiction, where we discussed for the most part, Types of Magic. We all had a great time.

Tomorrow night, I am running part 2 of the discussion, "How to Make Your Magic Stand Out". The first thing someone said to me on Friday was: Is there a such thing as original anymore? Probably not, but you can individualize it in many ways.

One of the ways I found that works for me is to mix it up! I'll give you an example from my vampire novel, Protected One.

This novel in no certain terms was inspired by Twilight Saga. That series jump started me in a way that I will never forget. What I wanted to be care of is that my vampires didn't come off being Twi-clones. So what I did was took SOME of what Meyer did, and twisted it just enough that it was mine. For example. All of my vampire can walk around in day light without consequence. I was worried about this because of the whole sunlight issue, until I met with Innana Arthen at ConBust, and found out that original vampires were able to do this. So I left it as an homage to old vampires everywhere.

Another thing I did with these guys is gave them all the ability to communicate by telepathy amongst each other, and read the minds of whomever they chose. Some of these guys even have mixed up talents such as strength, empathy and a few others that I won't divulge here.

The point I am making is that, are these original talents that my guys have? No. But they are individualize,d, and I think in writing, which most of the magic fiction we have out there, it is best to at least invidualize it in the best way possible.