Characters struggling to figure out how their powers work in Literature.
- Henry of 100 Cupboards develops Green Man powers which he gets the hang of pretty quickly...except for a tendency for dandelions to spring up in any nearby soil. This isn't helpful when he's trying to stay hidden, or when the plants are thick enough to trap him in place.
- In Animorphs, the kids got the general hang of morphing easily. Focus on an animal while touching it to acquire its DNA, then focus on it hard and for a sustained period to painlessly if gruesomely transform into it. Handle the animal instincts that come with the morph and make it possible to move and act easily in a very different body. Become human again by focusing on their own human bodies. It does take them time to get as skilled at it as they become, though. Because morphing takes a lot of energy and is very alarming to watch at first, in the first few books they tend to pause and rest after demorphing rather than immediately morphing something else, and they struggled more with the animal instincts at the start. Either the animal mind wrested control from them for longer, or they didn't work with it smoothly and, as birds for example, flapped clumsily.
- In Children of the Black Sun, Sympaths almost always have this, if they even try. They have the ability to generate vast amounts of magic from their surroundings, but seldom know how to do anything notable with it, and are more often used as accumulators of magic for other mages. Sierra, the protagonist, was originally intended to be this (much against her will), but becomes very dangerous when she escapes and starts learning how to use the magic she gathers.
- Covenant in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant spends a remarkable number of pages not having a real hang of his own Wild Magic. Most of it is pure instinct, even without his knowledge early on (towards the end of the first trilogy, he even says that he still doesn't know how to use it, but he's figured out how to trigger it... which basically amounts to putting himself in mortal danger and relying on the wild magic itself and/or his own subconscious to save him). It's not until the second trilogy that we see him directing it toward definite purposes, complete with a training regimen... he uses his wild magic to shave, precisely to teach himself control over it. Technically, he still doesn't know how to turn it on. Instead, he had to learn to keep it under control due to Lord Foul's venom acting as a permanent trigger.
- In the Codex Alera series, we see the Academy is where most Alerans go through this learning process. However, when Tavi becomes aware of furies, the person goes through a Training from Hell for months, which we see briefly in the second to last book.
- In Dinoverse, kids are sent back in time and possess the bodies of dinosaurs. Most of them get used to their new abilities quickly, but Janine, in the body of a Quetzalcoatlus, has to struggle and work to learn Flight.
- Dragaera: Vladimir Taltos has no freaking clue what he's doing with his new Empathic Weapon, Godslayer and has gotten himself in a lot of trouble with such screw-ups as accidentally destroying a sorceress's soul in the process of blocking something nasty she threw at him.
- In the Drenai saga, Decado, a former Badass Normal, experiences this on his first astral travel as there is nobody around to teach him the subtleties of it. Whereas his friends' spirit forms appear clothed in silver armour and carrying swords of light, he has to fight the forces of evil naked and with his bare hands. Not that this slows him down too much.
- In Galaxy of Fear, young Tash Arranda is an untrained Force-Sensitive. The Force is a fantastic power... but she really doesn't know anything about using it beyond what a sympathetic Luke Skywalker told her in the first book: that she should trust her feelings. When she fails at Jedi anything in The Nightmare Machine, her memory of this failure sabotages her repeatedly in Ghost of the Jedi.For a while, I thought I might be — or could be — a Jedi. But now I think that was just a fluke. When we were on Hologram Fun World, I didn't know what was happening even though we were in danger. Now I just feel like I'm going crazy. That's the opposite of what a Jedi is.
- Most of the mutants in Gone suffer from this, particularly Sam. Strangely, Caine and Diana have already figured out how to use their powers because Evil Is Cool and Good Is Dumb. Diana and Caine spent a while practicing their powers before coming down to Perdido Beach. It was said in the first book they'd had their powers for a couple months.
- Harry Potter builds this trope right into the setting. You've got magical powers? Great! You still have to go to school for seven years to learn how to use them. Both young Harry and Tom Riddle are able to occasionally "will" something to happen, but the effects are haphazard without training.
- All young witches and wizards can use magic during times of stress or when feeling extreme emotions, though the effects are notoriously unpredictable (though they'll often reflect the emotion the kid's feeling; for instance, when Harry wanted to escape from Dudley and his friends, he apparated on top of the school chimney). It's shown that they can gain some control over it on their own, like Lily did as a kid, but to do anything functional and avoid losing control of their powers, they need schooling.
- Most Psychic Powers in Heralds of Valdemar are fairly instinctual to use but a Traumatic Superpower Awakening means the onset comes on fast and controlling or being precise with their powers is a challenge for a lot of characters. Training the Gift of Magic usually ensues if they're Chosen. Warrl gives Kerowyn one on one lessons in Telepathy. Lavan's Firestarting is powerful on an unprecedented and rather alarming level to the point where he has very little conscious control without Kalira to act as a limiter, so teaching him meant getting creative.
- Deliberately invoked in The Immortals when Emperor Ozorne turns himself into a Stormwing to avoid punishment. As the Stormwing queen Barzha tells him, he just lost all his mortal magic in exchange for immortal magic, which he has no idea how to control. Sadly, he gets a grip on it pretty fast.Ozorne: I still have magic! I have Stormwing magic!
Barzha: That's sweet, dearie. Do you know how to use it? - In each of the Incarnations of Immortality books, the protagonists have to get the hang of being the Incarnations of Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature, Evil, Good, and Night, respectively.
- InCryptid:
- Ghostly Mary Dunlavy is only just learning how to be a ghost. Fran knows more about it than she does.
Fran: You're a goddamn ghost! Do I need to get you an instruction book? Walk through the door!- Sorcerers like Antimony and James often have to figure out their powers by trial and error, since sorcerers are few and far between, largely due to persecution by the Covenant.
- After Sarah becomes a Johrlac Queen, she takes a while to figure out her vastly expanded new powers, partially because she doesn't want to accidentally hurt anyone with them.
- Not knowing how to properly control magic in the Inheritance Cycle will likely kill you from either a rebound of magical energy or, more likely, draining your life force away before you can cancel the spell. It's also been said repeatedly in-universe that truly mastering the art of magic takes decades of practice and diligence. For the first book and a half, Eragon's progress follows this trend, as he slowly progresses from struggling to lift a rock with his mind to effortlessly casting fire-based spells. Of course, then he undergoes a crash course in magic with the elves and then becomes half-elf during the Blood-Oath Ceremony, completely eliminating the need for a slow progression.
- He's still learning clear through to the last book, but after the Blood-Oath Ceremony, it's less about how to use magic, and more about learning what he can accomplish with it.
- Legacy of the Aldenata: The Posleen inherited all of their technology from their Neglectful Precursors, and they have no idea how most of it works. This can lead to some humorous bits, such as when a computer helpfully informs one Posleen about incoming artillery fire and he just stares at it like a moron.
- The better part of a chapter of Life The Universe and Everything is devoted to Arthur Dent learning to fly. By accident. To put it simply, he was falling, and got so distracted that he missed the ground. He does eventually become adept enough to teach another person to fly, and they end up having sex in midair.
- Mathias Martel in Magik Online spends most of the story's first arc testing out the limits of his spells through trial and errors. He eventually figures out how to combine two spells into one.
- Malazan Book of the Fallen: After becoming the Master of the Deck of Dragons, Ganoes Paran spends quite a while not knowing what his abilities (or responsibilities) actually are, let alone how to use them. By The Crippled God he has become a full-blown Space Master capable of opening portals between or within dimensions and can go to or summon to himself anyone represented by the Deck. Since he is also commanding a Badass Army this is terrifyingly effective in terms of logistics and maneuvers.
- Matilda spends a substantial amount of time trying to figure out the ins and outs of her "push-stuff-around-with-her-eyes" (telekinesis) power.
- In Minecraft: The Island, a major part of the early chapters is the protagonist learning how Minecraft works and what they can and can't do, especially what foods they can and can't eat.
- In Mistborn: The first book has several amusing scenes of Kelsier teaching Vin about Allomancy and being a Mistborn. In particular, after he teaches her the basics of steel and iron (blue lines that connect to sources of metal), but says he'll explain the rest later, Vin's suspicious nature gets the better of her. She experimentally "tugs" on one of the blue lines, and yips and ducks as a loose nail shoots at her chest. Kelsier simply muses "I should have expected you to do that," then proceeds to explain Ironpulling and Steelpushing to her. Still takes her a bit to figure it out, though.
- An unusually grand variant of this trope is what resulted in the world becoming an ash-blanketed wasteland a thousand years ago. The Lord Ruler received cosmic levels of power for a very limited amount of time and tried to stop the mists that were destroying civilisation. The power came with instinctive knowledge of how to use it to, say, move the planet closer to the sun to burn off the mists, but gave no information about the consequences of doing so or where the best place to put it would be. The Lord Ruler couldn't get the position right, and with limited time decided to move it too close to the sun, and then introduce a permanent nuclear winter to stop it overheating too much. He then realised plants and animals couldn't survive such a world, and frantically tried to adjust their biology to fit the new environment, with each change causing more problems until his power ran out.
- In Just Another Judgement Day, there's a humorous scene at the Adventurer's Club when a wannabe supervillain with no clue how his (stolen) magic rings work accidentally teleports himself into the midst of a huge crowd of Nightside heroes, rather than into the neighboring club he'd intended to rob.
- In The Reader, Sefia experiences this while trying to figure out her Sight abilities, mainly because she's not formally trained. Quite often it fizzles out, and when it does work she's exhausted.
- Shonsu in The Seventh Sword trilogy, by Dave Duncan, spends all three books learning to use the abilities given to him by a goddess. When he is first granted the abilities and knowledge to be the world's greatest swordsman, he has no idea. As the story progresses, he learns more and more about his capabilities, usually as the situations arise. This even applies to textbook-type knowledge, which actually works really well in the story.
- Daylen experiences this in Shadow of the Conqueror with his newfound Lightbinding magic. He's able to rapidly figure out the basics within two chapters of even getting the ability, but it's a slow trickle from there on out, due to him not being able to get a mentor until late in the book. Even then, there's a lot of information about Lightbinding magic that won't be revealed until future installments.
- In Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, a major part of the first half of the novel is learning to use the powered armor "suits" of the Mobile Infantry.
- Various Surgebinders in The Stormlight Archive suffer from this. Kaladin takes something like a book and a half to really get a handle on things.
- Sword of Truth:
- Richard from never learns how to use the vast majority of his abilities... except, of course, the ones that are absolutely necessary to allow him to save the day. Richard's magic appears to be keyed to strong emotion; a big deal was made of whether or not he could actually use his anger in the first book, as opposed to simply keeping it locked inside himself.
- Subverted in the case of swordplay — which is, let's face it, the first thing to master when trying to use any magic sword's first and foremost super power. Getting magic swords that can cut anything is great — for knights and swordmasters. For anyone else, it's a health risk. Richard's a woodsman, the most experience he'd have with blades would be limited to a machette and a skinning knife. He'd have to learn swordplay like any other, right? No. The Sword of Truth can share the collective combat experience of all previous users with the Seeker; Richard of course learns this while, and promptly uses it during, a fight with 30 — that's thirty — Baka Ban Mana blademasters. They're guys who spend most of their lives training swordplay, each day, all day, dawn till dusk. Right. He actually lampshades it right before that fight, thinking that against one man he is virtually unstoppable — but only because the sword cannot be parried, and so he can count on getting one strike through.
- There is a villainous case in book 4, where Jagang takes over the mind of a wizard. He can use simple telekinesis and throw fireballs, but never uses more advanced powers like Deflector Shields or tranfiguration.
- Played for Drama and/or Wangst in The Twilight Saga. Becoming a vampire in this 'verse grants you Super-Strength and Nigh-Invulnerability, but you have to spend a long time relearning your fine-motor skills and accidentally break stuff a lot. Edward's still got a fair way to go on this issue a hundred years after being turned.
- The werewolves also get hit with this, as not only do they get Super-Strength, but they also can take up to several weeks to get the hang of their Voluntary Shapeshifting.
- Say what you will about the Doorstopper length of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, but it does allow the channeling characters a realistic period of time to get a grasp on controlling and developing their powers. Notably, none of the characters become Instant Experts, but have a learning curve of three or four books before they gain consistent control. Nyneave takes a full seven books to overcome her block. Learning to use saidin without a teacher is so difficult that Rand finally has to trap a Forsaken to keep from getting himself killed. Later, Nynaeve and Elayne hold another one hostage in order to learn lost techniques that have stayed lost for a good three millennia. Eventually, the Asha'man (a corps of male Channelers) are created when it was realized this trope could come into play. They develop a Training from Hell regimen (similar to Covenant's above in that recruits learn by using the Power for everything in order to get the hang of it quickly) to deal with this.
