On Writing: Casting Spells and Making Magic

Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

When Dorothy crash lands in Oz, she answers Glinda’s baffling question about relative witchiness by protesting, I’m not a witch at all. I’m Dorothy. After a long and trying journey, the girl from Kansas, who describes herself as “small and meek,” learns she already possesses the power and agency that will send her home.

Witches have richly imagined lives outside of children’s fiction and Harry Potter. The Wyrd Sisters in Macbeth, Circe in The Odyssey, and Morgan le Fay of Camelot cast spells and made mischief. Although more often reviled than celebrated, powerful enchantresses make for memorable characters. It’s easy to understand their appeal. They break rules, lead independent lives, and disdain conformity. Their gifts enable them to transcend the limitations of mere humans, and they evoke terror and [for this reader] envy. When so much is beyond our control, who wouldn’t wish for a potion or spell with which we could bend rebellious forces to our will?

Writing speculative or paranormal fiction isn’t the only option for authors who want to delve into witchy territory. Like Dorothy, many an amateur sleuth presents as meek and mild but, when tested, finds untapped gifts that need a challenge to emerge. Often, the best way to imbue characters with real magic is to turn their apparent weaknesses into strengths. There’s plenty of real-life precedent for that strategy. Historically, women exiled from the town square found their place and their power among the herbs and plants of the forest.

As writers, we can do the same. Consider Miss Marple, who’s spent her entire life in the tiny village of St. Mary Mead. Her narrow existence appears to preclude success as an amateur detective. She, however, through minute and thorough observations of her fellow villagers, is able to offer insights that more worldly investigators miss.  Crime fiction invites us into a world of unexpected possibilities and opportunities. It makes unlikely and sometimes unlikeable heroines both plausible and compelling.

On October 24, 1929, in A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf wrote, “when one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils…I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet.”

On October 31, 2024, let’s celebrate them.

Lori Robbins

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Lori Robbins is the Amazon bestselling author of the On Pointe and Master Class mystery series and a contributor to The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers Cookbook. She won two Silver Falchions, the Indie Award for Best Mystery, and second place in the Daphne du Maurier Award for Mystery and Suspense. Her short stories include “Leading Ladies” which received an Honorable Mention in the 2022 Best American Mystery and Suspense anthology. A former dancer, Lori performed with Ballet Hispanico and the St. Louis Ballet, but it was her commercial work, for Pavlova Perfume and Macy’s, that paid the bills. After ten very lean years onstage she became an English teacher and now writes full-time. Lori is a co-president of the New York/ Tristate Sisters in Crime and an active member of MWA.
Her experiences as a dancer, teacher, writer, and mother of six have made her an expert in the homicidal tendencies everyday life inspires.

You can find her at lorirobbins.com

5 comments

  1. Loved this blog. All the writers I know have a streak of something special in their character. The fact that they’ve endured the struggle of getting published — all were published pre digital — and are supporting themselves with the stories that they have conjured out of their imaginations makes them very special. And maybe just a bit witchy!

  2. There’s more truth to this post than meets the eye. A lot can be done with one’s mind, and writers have a very well-exercised imagination/concentration muscle.

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