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I'm interested in writing a novel about a group of bums who turn out to be the defenders of the world against a dark secret threat. The thing is I'm not sure where to start with all this when it comes to the world.

I was thinking of things I should resarch like:

• 1) Improvised weaponry
  2) Surviving in an urban environment

That's all I could think of, off the top of my head. Anyone have any suggestions? Any input would be welcome.

Make your characters believable. I literally start pulling my hair out when I have to read a story that is otherwise awesome but has characters roughly as interesting as a slab of concrete.

What tends to work best is drawing from or combining the personalities of people you know - the latter can be intriguing for the reader and really fun for you.

remember, magic is not automatically better than technology. A gun kills someone just as throughly as a spell does.

Hawkwings wrote:remember, magic is not automatically better than technology. A gun kills someone just as throughly as a spell does.

Better, in most cases. Guns tend to fire faster, with less fuss.

Also - remember that the Dark Evil Forces aren't going to familiar with the world they are invading.

If you are setting it in a bad part of town then prepare for your villains to be wailed upon by pissed of gangs if they feel threatened.

Do you know where I can get some gun vocabulary? You know, cartridges, sighting, uh ... squeezing triggers. That kind of thing.

The Netbook of Modern Firearms


Close enough for jazz, dude. The idea sounds great, let me know if you need test readers or colaborators on this project.

Dude. Max Popenker is your friend.

I don't know what you're doing for this 'dark secret threat'; I admit, I am curious. Are you doing something like Buffy, or something else.

Here's my advice, anyhow...

Make sure you lay out the guidelines for the mystic mojo in your universe. This is to ensure that you story remains consistant. Here's a few questions you can ask yourself.

- How will you incorporate magic in your setting? What can it do, and can it not do? Who can use it, how, and what price? Are they a group of mystics who guard it's secret.

- What monsters run rampant in your world? How many are there, and how strong are they? If you have creatures that are truly stronger than humans in every way, then how come they haven't overthrow the earth yet?

- Is there a demon dimension, or some other place where the secret threat comes from. If there is, then how does that plane of exsistance interact with ours.

- What makes these group of bums the defenders of the world. Is it ordained by a prophecy, or will be they recruited by the secret mystic police?

Bums are perfect if you think about it. Makes it easy to move around freely. If they're in one place, and gone the next, no one will miss them. If they're talking to a ghost or something that no one can see, people won't expect anything unusual, unless they can see them too.
As long as they aren't asking for money, people are happy to ignore them.
If you need to maintain a disguise that is both universal and inconspicuous, it's great. After all, haven't there been kidnapping attempts against Bruce Wayne? But who would bother holding a bum ransom?

Thanks for all the help. The idea it self just started as my musings about Aragorn from LotR, and how he would be, by mondern standards, just another transient. Then while I was walking around my home I saw a lot of bums and I wondered what it would be like if they were secretly waging a war for everyone and no one even knew it.

Crom wrote:The idea it self just started as my musings about Aragorn from LotR, and how he would be, by mondern standards, just another transient.

Well, that's kinda how the people of the Shire area saw him and his kind too. They were a bit bothered when the rangers went south, and the things the rangers had been supressing became a problem (if only temporarily) in the end, which was kind of amusing.

I thought that the Dark Forces might be here to take our cheap wine and malt liquor. That would be ample reason for the bums to take up arms.