I really need information for my book Can you help me pl

[Lyra]

So i started writing a book about vampires like along time ago and i picked it up again recently and i found i needed a little bit more information about vampires, so i started researching and i can't find much of anything.
Does anyone know anything about vampires? (Not Stephenie Meyers vampires please i already know about them)

Any information is gladly welcomed! thank you!

 

[MattyK]

Hi Lyra and welcome to the forums!

To be honest I'm not sure how you're having difficulty finding information about vampires. If you search Wikipedia (not the most reliable source of accurate information, I admit, but it's better than nothing) you get a very long article with folklore, ancient and modern beliefs, pathology and fictional references. After that, I'm sure typing "vampires" into Google would yield a wealth of useful knowledge.

If you want people to reply with more detailed answers you're going to have to ask more specific questions. Replies could be in great detail and at great length but not contain any information you would find at all useful. Spend a few hours poking around the internet and read everything you can and then read what you've written again and if you're still having trouble then, try posting a less general message about whatever it is you need to know.

Hope this helps a bit and welcome again!

 

[ctg]

55,500,000 hits for vampire - Google Search

Vampire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a bit silly task, when you could have done it yourself. I would recommend you to learn to use google, and then look into most common articles on Vampires. After that, I could read some of the classical pieces on vampirism and forget anything that involves clans or fights against the werecreatures. Also don't do a mistake and allow your vampires venture into the sunlight because those sort of stories are killing the legend.


PS. Double post with MattyK.

 

[Pyar]

This brought up a bunch of interesting books that you could use as well: vampires - Google Books

Just go to your local library, I'm sure there are tons of research books on vampires. You could read other novels around vampires as well. (Starting with Dracula of course )

Ooops Double post with CTG lol

 

[Nik]

How plausible do you want your Vampires ??

Several years ago, I was so exasperated by Hollywood's 'Transmogriflying' take on the genre, that I had a go at making a plausible version.

Homo Vamp, venomous bite, Glamour, very fast healing, astonishing athleticism, chronic porphyria so NightWalker. Potential longevity, but problems with anaphylactic shock...

No shapeshifting, creating new Vamps, flying, immortality, rising from dead etc etc.

You do get the Ban Sidhe, 'Underhill' etc for free, which I mentioned but did not explore...

If you're interested, I'll send links.

 

[Lyra]

I actually have spent the last two days going through google and wikipedia and every site i can think of and haven't really found very useful information on google it'smostly people who think they're vampires or fan sites and wickipedia is history. what i need is like how a coven works, and how vampires react with other vampires they're not farmiliar with and things like that.

Thank you for the help.
and trust me there are no lycans or fights like that in my story.
thank you!

 

[Lyra]

Re: How plausible do you want your Vampires ??

yeah i could defiantly use more links, or more specifically links that are helpful.

 

[Pyar]

You have to also remember that what you are writing is fiction and that most of the lore out there is fiction as well. There's really no point in finding out what other people think about how a coven works or how vampires interact with other vampires. It is up to you to decide since it is your story! You can make their relationship and interactions the way you want them to be. That being said, if you want to adhere to strict guideline of what people historically thought vampires' behaviors are then go ahead and do that, just remember that you aren't really creating a new original piece of work, just regurgitating the same old vampire stuff. Be creative!

 

[Sapheron]

A vampire is a fantasy creature. As Pyar is sugesting, make it up! You're a fantasy writer, not a journalist! Then again, they make stuff up too, so it isn't a very good comparison.

Anywho! Lie! Make it up!

 

[Ursa major]

On the other hand, it wouldn't be a bad idea to know something of the scope of what's already out there. (A bit like knowing the "rules" of writing so one knows when one is bending/breaking them and so can do it deliberately if required.)



(And all that research is useful for when you don't want to get down to writing; although coming here fits that bill for me....)

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

what i need is like how a coven works, and how vampires react with other vampires they're not farmiliar with and things like that.

You've obviously gotten the idea of covens from a modern source -- somebody else's book, or a movie, or a TV program -- because there is nothing like that in any of the traditional lore, which would explain why you can't find it.

If nothing else, the research you've done ought to have convinced you that there is no single vampire tradition. A vampire could be anything from an unappetizing corpse that wanders out of its grave just long enough to suck out the blood of the nearest villager and go back again (which wouldn't leave any time for social interactions or group activities with other vampires ), to the seductive modern vampires who tend to congregate in groups.

Since the type of details you seem to be looking for exist only in modern works of fiction, and it wouldn't be a very good idea to copy too closely from another writer's work, I suggest that you simply use your imagination.

 

[J-WO]

Have you tried The Vampire by Montague Summers? ISBN 1-85958-073-4. First published in 1928, its an exhaustive reference book detailing Bloodsuckers/Bloodsucking in every culture around the world throughout history.

Even for a book written in the twenties its a bit dusty- not the sort of thing one reads cover to cover- but great to dip into or search for something in the index. I guarantee you you'll find at least something no one else has used. Summers really went to town with his research!
The copy I've got is a cheap n cheerful one printed by Senate. I'd go so far to recommend this to anyone writing SFF generally- I write SF and it still comes in handy.

 

[Theleb K]

If nothing else, the research you've done ought to have convinced you that there is no single vampire tradition.... I suggest that you simply use your imagination.

I'm very much in agreement. There's a huge amount of derivative drivel surrounding vampires. Use your imagination and do something different. Perhaps think about why they need to suck the blood of the living and start from there ...

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Lyra:

Well it's all very simple really. As you know the main ingredient. The "Raison D'être" is blood.

My mates and I prefer to get it fresh at source. The young humans are by far the best as unlike wine blood stored in an old casket is quite vile. Worse having to bite the neck of some old crone is pretty disgusting especially when there are nice young twenty year olds available.

Though even at that age nowadays they seem to have a bad taste to them from all the filth and disease they so easily pick up. It was better in the good old days when a man/woman would still be pretty fresh even up to the age of thirty, but now most people are riddled with stuff from the age of sixteen.

Still I digress. So my mates and I usually hang around drinking spots or night clubs. The problem here is once they've filled themselves with E or Coke it can take a long time to kick the habit so I prefer to look for the first timers. The ones that have never been to a the pub or club before. We do some serious research down at the local town hall checking up on birthdays and stuff.

They usually always go for the first legal drink on their eighteenth birthday and a bit of alcohol in the mix is quite nice. It can give you a headache though if they over do it before you can get your fangs in their necks.

The other advantage of the town hall is it's usually dark and the records are usually kept in the cellars so that kills two birds with one stone.

Now don't get me wrong, the older guys think ravaging and plundering the young is wrong. They say it gives us a bad name and will get us all killed one day. Well thats easy for them to say. They've already had more than their fair share of the good stuff and now when they're a bit past it they start on us. Well stuff them. They can go down to the farmyard and bite on cows and pigs, lying among the s**t and dung of the pens. There's nothing worse that sucking on some old cow, mouth full of matted hair and stinking of p**s. It's not for me I tell you. Not while I've got teeth in my head at least.

So I hope this little note gives you some idea of he problems we face. It's not all beer and skittles being a vampire but the work is varied and some body's got to do it.

 

[clippedwolf]

A coven might work like a cult, a terrorist cell, organized crime, or an Athenian_democracy.

 

[Toby Frost]

I have a feeling that Dracula could go into the sun, but had no special powers when he did. Does anyone know whether this is right?

But anyway, stories about vampires vary from I Am Legend, where they're two steps away from zombies, to the strong-but-mysterious-and-sad romantic stuff. The trick is probably pinning down the rules you want to use instead of finding any rules at all. Then you'll need to make them clear in the story without being too obtrusive, whilst treading carefully through a mindfield of cliches and mary-sueisms. Easy! (Hopefully).

 

[Sapheron]

A coven might work like a cult, a terrorist cell, organized crime, or an Athenian_democracy.

From what I've read and watched, most covens operate more like a group of melodramatic, awkward teenagers.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I have a feeling that Dracula could go into the sun, but had no special powers when he did. Does anyone know whether this is right?

I don't remember about Dracula, but Carmilla appears outside in many scenes of Le Fanu's classic story and a lot of other literary vampires from the nineteenth century walk abroad during the day. A lot of the characteristics that some people think they have to have are not there in many of the older stories. Even how they become vampires varies. A lot of people who think they are being "vampire purists" are simply stuck on one set of vampire characteristics.

 

[Susan Boulton]

, I suggest that you simply use your imagination.

I would echo Teresa.

Just read as much as you can about the subject. Read how other authors have dealt with the same idea, then create your own structure. Just keep with within your own guidelines throughout the novel. But if a really good plot line develops outside that structure. Change the guidelines! This is what writing is all about.

 

[mygoditsraining]

I guess the important question is, what are the vampires symbols of in your work? Vampirism has never really been just about monsters who drink blood. Normally, they are a type of antagonist (sometimes protagonist) that is strongly associated with sexual desire. Little wonder that the bastardised vampires of Twilight resonate strongly with its target demographic. All those girls, gripping their handbags tighter, drawn into the hear of what Larkin would call a "religious wounding".

In other works, they are feral (I Am Legend, the movie), or simply an adaptation of humanity (I Am Legend, the book - and we are the monsters). In Let the Right One In, Eli is a victim, and potentially an extension of Oskar's id.

On a side note, Neil Gaiman had this to say on vampires.

Neil Gaiman: Why vampires should go back underground | EW.com

I agree with the idea of using your imagination. Vampires aren't real (although there are plenty of people who hang around in clubs looking moody and reading out awful poetry: my soul is dark like a diner/all its light smashed, two a.m./you sit down/corner table/a waitress serves you/a dead one - I'm not sure you'd want to write about them) and they have proved malleable enough so far that you can do pretty much whatever you like with them.