McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Making it real
Farmerbob1:
Well, if you want to add spice to the world, make the 'hiding' from the humans something that must be agreed to by all the major supernatural factions. Say that they have to work together to maintain some sort of world-wide spell that helps people simply write off weirdness with the most plausible non-magical explanation.
Now, the factions might not like one another, but they have to work together, or else their secrecy goes away. This can lead to all sorts of fun conflict! Merlin, Dracula, Teen Wolf, and Elric all working together to keep the supernatural world safe from non-magical humanity.
groinkick:
Great stuff guys, thanks.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Griffyn612 on March 12, 2015, 10:36:25 PM ---I don't read much urban fantasy other than the Dresden Files. How is it handled in other series?
--- End quote ---
A lot just flat-out ignores that problem; I gather Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville books do something with supernaturals starting to come out and the problems that occasions, but I've not read them. The Felix Castor series has supernaturals always having been around but very very rare, and suddenly becoming much more common due to events which are the big mystery of the series and will hopefully be explained whenever the sixth one comes out.
(There's also the approach DD Barent takes in the Bloodhound Files; there are a million humans left in the world and everyone else is either a vampire, a werewolf or a golem.)
Griffyn612:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on March 17, 2015, 04:42:07 PM ---A lot just flat-out ignores that problem; I gather Carrie Vaughn's Kitty Norville books do something with supernaturals starting to come out and the problems that occasions, but I've not read them. The Felix Castor series has supernaturals always having been around but very very rare, and suddenly becoming much more common due to events which are the big mystery of the series and will hopefully be explained whenever the sixth one comes out.
(There's also the approach DD Barent takes in the Bloodhound Files; there are a million humans left in the world and everyone else is either a vampire, a werewolf or a golem.)
--- End quote ---
Interesting. I was thinking about working on a supernatural series a while back, and was going to take a route that tried to explain the decrease in magic across the globe. Sounds like the Castor series might have something similar. I tried reading it, but couldn't get past the first couple of chapters. I don't know why, but something just bugged me about it.
meg_evonne:
Quantus and others have great input.
I will correct you though. I think all the paranormals that feature magic hidden from humans do explain it. It gets whittled down to a short paragraph after the first book or two.
Once you have your reason, use an example of the rule happening. Keeps from an info dump. Think MIB starting with the memory wipe out flash.
Good luck with it.
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