How to Make an Unique Magic System

I think that hundreds of people try to make good and expansive magic systems now a days. I mean if you look at some older fantasy books, you'll notice that magic is just a thing that can do stuff with no real explanation at all. However that's just not the case anymore, magic is something that has to be boiled down to nearly a science. So, seeing as how I actually like making magic systems more than worlds, I'm going to help other amateur writers make fun magic systems.

So the first thing you want to ask yourself is: Where does your magic come from? Now that sounds like a stupid question, magic comes from magic...Right? Well that's not entirely true, if you want your magic to do something it has to come from somewhere. As such you may want to question where your magic came from. A good example is if you have a people that can use their blood as a magic source, but they must understand the rune system and write it down. If you run out of blood then it is impossible for people to use magic. See?

Of course if the magic comes from a source that isn't so easy to exhaust, like the atmosphere or something like that, then you may want the people who use it have consequences. Having consequences when a person uses their magic always puts a person at stake, making those scenes with spells far more interesting. Often times I see the cop out: you'll run out of energy if you use spells. That's great and wonderful, but that's not really saying something when you want to show just how hard or realistic it is to be a mage/wizard/witch/magical snowball. In the end you're making them no different than warriors, the end of their sword wielding time comes when they're tired. Not very exciting huh? But if we go back to our blood mages, what if their big issue is that the wounds they inflict on themselves don't heal easily? On top of that we already have the issue in that they are using their blood as magic. Double whammy!

Now that we know what our magic is made of and what the consequences are the question is...Who can use it? Well, this really depends on the plot of your story. If your story is about evil knights trying to take over the world and your good guy is just a poor farmer boy, as cliche as that sounds, then can only the wealthy use magic? If so does that mean your farmer boy must steal the ability to use magic since he isn't rich? Maybe only those who join a religion can use magic? So then the boy must convert to that religion in order to use magic to defeat the evil knights. For the sake of our blood mages, and the example, let's just say that only people who are born under the 'blood moon' can use magic.

Now that you've decided where magic comes from, what the consequences are, and who can use it...Time for the fun part, what can your magic do?! This really depends on the three factors above, because if the magic is nature magic I highly doubt you can turn a flame into a stool. So figure out exactly what you can do with your magic and what you can't do. For the sake of example, and our mages, I'll make a quick break down of what the blood magic can do.

1. Can bring people back to life with the use of heart's blood. Is very lethal and can kill a person if the incision is not made properly and not quickly stitched and bathed. A person must have the complete corpse of the person or it will not work. Expect the person to be zombie like and constantly feeding them your heart's blood.

2. Blood magic can take on the traits of the elements given the correct runes.

3. Blood can not be used to make large explosions no matter what Michael Bay tells us.

4. This is just an example, please use your imagination for the next rule.

Okay, so you have your rules of magic, but how can you gain more power? Is it a leveling up system like in Final Fantasy or are you just stuck at that power level such as in a wide variety of fantasy books? Once again this depends on your plot. For the sake of our blood mages, let's just say that in order to move on one must go on a trip of 'enlightenment' and bathe in the blood of an ever weeping statue called Yamaris that has magical properties.

And there you go you have a magic system! Now don't be discouraged if you think your stuff isn't 'new', it's hard to make anything new since fantasy has been around since time began, but you can always tweak things to make it more interesting. So I hope this helped you all and if you have any questions or anything to add let me know.

Now I'm gonna go play  Final Fantasy 12...