Describing ESP

So I've been writing a urban fantasy story, and I've figured out the magic system I want to use, but I'm stuck on it's depiction.

The basic premise is that the world we can see and interact with is only one part of the big picture. A mage can do magic because their anima is open-aspected, they can see and interact with the underlying forces and dimensions of the universe by literally flinging bits of their soul around. The most obvious manifestation of this ability is their keen observational skills, which are the result of being able to sense the underlying structure of the universe. Now I'm having some real trouble figuring out how to describe the world as they would see it. Does anyone know any other books or stories that have done something similar?

The first chapter or so of the Bartimaeus Trilogy does this wonderfully IMHO, and it sounds similar to what you're trying to do. When I first read it (the book) I was confused, but after a few lines I started to wrap my head around the idea.

Visually, I think the effects for the army of the dead from return of the king could be useful. When certain emotions show, the underlying skull would become more prominent, (sort of ) like a glamour failure. Something similar would be Ghost Rider with the demons. I hope that helps!

You really havnt described your universe precisely enough. What do you mean by "the underlying forces and dimensions of the universe"? How does this help them manifest magical effects?

As Fry would say, "What smells like blue?"

That is, try mixing up the senses or grab some inspiration from things people can't sense in real life, but are still detectable through machinery... and enchanting to listen to.

Describe color to a blind man. Once you feel you've succeeded, try that.

Relevant video whose You Tube channel might actually be of some help here, in that it talks about the perspective of a blind man.

whymia, thanks for the heads up, I've completely forgotten about that part of the Bartimaeus Trilogy. I'll go look that up.

To further describe the universe, I'm going to post some excerpts from my files on anima:

"...but they have it all backwards. Your body of flesh and blood, that’s the illusion. A shadow cast on space time by bodies moving in the twisted dimensions below and above the visible universe. Somewhere deep inside you know this. In your dreams you brush up against the truth, when your defenses are down for maintenance, that’s when pieces of this secret world slip through. Your world is an island of ignorance in the midst of an ocean of mystery, and we’re about to dunk your head under the water."

"Reach out now and let the world sands run through the fingers of your soul. Taste history in parts per million. Listen to the harmonics of chaos theory. See the truths of creation in the patterns etched by rivers and civilizations. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is the universe’s nervous fidgeting."

“Humans aren’t meant to sense the Immaterial. We took a path that’s by and large blinded us to it for the advantage of being more or less immune to its dangers. The process that creates externally expressed souls remains one of the most poorly understood of modern arcana. We may be a bridge between the planes of existence, but we were born of the Material and will always be at a disadvantage when navigating the Immaterial when compared to its denizens. When we reach out to feel it, we perceive the Immaterial symbolically, through the lens of experience linking the nature of what we are observing to concepts that we understand. Gaining those experiences and learning how to interpret them in combination makes up the bulk of your magical education. That’s why an artificer can’t just pick up a lemon plant and make it grow cherries the way a biomancer can.”

And this last snippet is one I'm not sure about. I hit on the idea of expressing the Immaterial as a dimension/plane where information and patterns are in a sense, tangible:

“The Immaterial is an abstract realm. It is the world of dreams, emotions and thoughts. Imagine the Material aspect of a person to be like a tuning fork, when we strike it, it produces a single clear note. Hate, fear, wonder, love. If we place this tuning fork into a chamber of exact dimensions, we get resonance, amplification. The sound loops back on itself and builds in strength until from a barely ringing sound we get a sound that can cause the table to shake. The Immaterial is that resonance chamber. When you look into the Immaterial you see a distilled, exaggerated image of what you’re observing. When a person lies to you in the Material, they’re calm, collected, the picture of innocence. In the Immaterial, they’re a stuttering, mischievous looking villain. Every young mage will show off by making coins land on their side and light cigarettes with a thought, but as you get older you’ll come to realise that it’s seeing into the truth of something is your greatest gift.”

Out of all of those descriptions, the last one made the most sense. I could actually picture it a bit. Quite a trippy concept you have there.

I like it!

"Material" and "Immaterial" terms are confusing.

'Material' refers to the visible universe, the everyday stuff like matter and energy. The 'Immaterial' refers to the stuff ordinary people can't see, things like patterns and thoughts and connections of the world made manifest.

I wasn't terribly happy with the description, it felt too contrived. I'm going to try an experiment here: I'll write one or more snippets and post them. You guys and gals let me know which one you like best, and I generate a new set based on it. I'll repeat the exercise until I have something that's satisfying.

"...When a person lies to you, they’re calm, collected, the picture of innocence.Then you start to notice anomalies. The time between their words and their smile seems to stretch. They seem to turn away from you without moving. Their tone and cadence seem to shift depending on what they talk about. You’re not going crazy. This is your mind trying to make sense of what you feel through your anima. It’s making subtle cues more obvious, showing you the relative importance of things, taking the inputs from a whole new sense and interpreting the best way it knows. As you get older, the cues you get from your anima will become more abstract and difficult to describe to someone who hasn't had as long to acclimatise to perceiving the world through the same lens. That’s why high level grimoires will read like gibberish to you right now: you just don’t have the context to understand what the lexicon is referring to."

I once read a story where it was described as 'like a chain yanking on the back of his head'.