It worked like this:
Prior to wizards, magic had no well-defined form and was beyond the reach of mortals. The first scholars of magic developed techniques to encapsulate it into discrete spells. This defined spells throughout the cosmic expanse, allowing other powers to access them through various means.
Sorcerers have a connection to the mystic beyond through their bloodline. Prior to the work done to codify magic, all they could do was use their raw powers (which are pretty weak).
Think of it like this: Wizards are open source programmers. Anything they create gets added to the global pool. Sorcerers are end users. They have access to the pool, but couldn't do anything with an empty pool.
And this is why sorcerers in my world know magic in discrete, defined segments rather than some generic font of energy they're often (erroneously) described as.
What about divine spells or spell-like abilities of various monsters, some of which are identical to arcane spells?
Did those only exist after wizards coalesced spells into existence as well? If so, how do divine spells which are not on the wizard's spellbook work?
They didn't get them until the gods started copying what the wizards were doing. This was fairly early on, since the first sapient god used to be a wizard. There are plenty of mindless gods, which picked up on spell-granting afterward when people started expecting gods to grant spells.
This took place in the infancy of the world.
Addendum: Being a wizard was not a prerequisite to inventing spells. It just happens to be much more useful to be a wizard if you're doing so. It's like rocket scientists that never go near the actual assembly of rockets. They can know what they are doing quite expertly even if they never build rockets themselves.
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They didn't get them until the gods started copying what the wizards were doing.......
Gods copying mortals? And one specific class? A lot of wizard love there. Their history is the greatest of all the classes. By far. This reminds me of a dm who introduced certain npc clerics and paladins, then proceeded to portray them as untouchable by everyone and everything.
The word of the day is "fanwankery". Thank you Kthulhu.
Lazar, in a world that is magic poor, the isolated sorcerers/witches of rural areas may be the only spellcasters left in any decent numbers. Imagine a post-kill all the clerics and come down on the city based spellcasters setting. Centres of power always have limits to their reach.
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re: Wizards came first.
I can understand that on a metaphysical level, though it's not my cup of tea.
Think of it as a wizard experiments and discovers methane is flammable. He produces methane through chemestry and sets it on fire.
once the gassy sorcerer sees it done, he then lights his own farts on fire. :P
More seriously, I think the key is that, among mortals, wizards codify magic, trying to understand it, while sorcerers/bards/etc 'just do it.' It's like pool, given time and effort, someone can break it down to physics and geometry. But the pool shark just 'knows' how to put the 5 ball in the side pocket.
Sport before sport science then.