Yeah i know the simple answer is rape, pillage, blackmail, and kill but like i was something a bit more concrete? Detailed? The thing is, i'm making this story about a child who's forced to join a bandit gang to earn money for his family. What i don't know is what bandits do on a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis, and so on and so forth. Like they can't possibly be doing evil deeds every day, and if they are, what are those daily and so evils?
They drink, dine, party and have fun, enjoy their leisure, hatch nefarious plans, fortify their fortresses, reinforce their ramparts, enjoy their spoils and spoil their captives, maybe? IDK. Maybe there's some book out there titled The Secret Life of Bandits which can help.
It depends on the type of "bandits" they are. The trash kind? They laze around if not committing crimes for pleasure like rape, blackmail and maybe murder for money/food/fun, basically what you get when there is no law to keep trash in line. Then there is a "bandits to survive" kind where they are usually farmers or "normal people" until they are forced to rob due to things like a bad harvest or rebelling against heavy taxes etc. These people still have a bottom line they are not often willing to cross though I have to point out that the bottom line can be subjective, e.g they might not shy from murdering the people they rob to "keep their secret" but they might not go so low as to commit rape while murdering, hence why I say that their bottom line is subjective. Then there is the "defeated army" or "rebel army" kind of bandits. Of course, the morals of this kind of bandits also heavily depends on if there is still a strict command structure in place, so they can also range from "trash with a name" all the way up to "elite soldiers that just happen to be without a country". The trash will act like trash while the soldiers will act like an army, literally, complete with training, exercises. drills, studies etc as part of their daily living, pillaging only specific targets and only to survive. So as you can see, there is a huge range of "bandits", from pillagers to opportunists all the way up to armies that just happen to be detached from a country.
Bandits give you braindead deadlines to reach and promote "family values" in your organization... all in order to steal your time and life for their own profit, before throwing your burned out remnants to the wayside.
That is a very special class of bandits called "businessmen". They are less bandits and more a heretical cult of the Lawyers sect.
Oh, historically, there is also another type of "bandit", though it might be more precise to call them "gangs" or "protection agencies" depending on how big/serious they are. In the past, when the Chinese moved to another country, they tend to be picked on as the minority, so they very often end up forming "self defence organizations" and band together for protection. This was the origin of what we now call the Tongs or Triads and they can be pretty strict, from mandatory martial arts classes to blood oaths where they literally pour their blood into a cup and share it out for everyone to drink (symbolically meaning that they are all of 1 blood now). Very often they end up carving out "territory" due to different organizations and unfortunately end up controlling all the "underworld" activities in the area since that is also part of "security". I remember during the LA riots, the Korean "association", being mostly ex-military from the Korean War, all ended up breaking out their old M-1 Garands to protect their "area". This is an example of how serious these "protection associations" can be even today. And yes, I know the Koreans are not Chinese, it's just their associations ended up developing along the same lines, mutual protection. These kind of "gangs" are more often found in cities since there really isn't much to protect from in a rural village or the wilderness, so you can actually call them "city bandits" and they work very differently to rural farmers taking up banditry as a hobby. So if you want to write a story, you have to ask, what skills do you want your MC to learn? Military? Rural ex-army. Assassinations? Rural black organization needing new blood. Negotiations and running "dark" businesses? Urban gang. Just messing around with no life? Urban trash. Why don't you toss out what you want your MC to be here and we can see if we can come up with a convincing back story?
What I know about Chinese Bandits in the 30s is that they claimed they acted on behalf of poor people. But they kept their operation afloat by indiscriminately kidnapping people, rich or poor. If the victims' family can't afford the ransom, they will force them to work for them either as fighters or servants, without wages. Kidnapping is very lucrative for them, and historians believe it made up more than 90% of their revenue. The same is true for modern bandits in different parts of world. I just read a NYT report. Looks like they are still doing it and believe kidnapping is much more lucrative than narcotics.
If this is a historical "hide in the mountains and attack travelers" kind of bandits, you have to think about things like where you want them to live. If they are in tents moving their camp around to avoid being caught, part of the "off" time will be moving camp, hunting, etc. Aquiring food, maintaining weapons, treating injuries... the gold and jewelry and whatever else they steal, they will need to take into a town or city to sell for money. All humans needs to cook food and do laundry etc... do low ranking members do this, or they have servants or slaves? Think about what kinds of bandits you want like people said above, and then start thinking about details of where do they live, how do they feed themselves, that kind of mundane thing will help fill the days when they are not robbing etc.
The important thing to keep in mind is that bandits are people just like anyone else. The majority of them would have started out as peasants who were driven to banditry out of desperation so their primary day to day activity is going to be to find ways to survive. Acquiring food is a constant challenge for these people so that should be the most important job. Also historical bandits often have good relationships with their neighbors. They sell stolen merchandise to these people, they will turn to them for medical attention and shelter, and they rely on their neighbors to warn them if the authorities are trying to hunt them down. So it's common for bandits to target travelers but leave the locals alone.
This is important, and something that seems to be missing in most novels, which to often have bandits who are just in it for the evulz. But ya, it really depends on the setting how well its society is maintained and a bunch of other factors. But there are plenty of records of Pirates and historical highwaymen to use as a basis, and likely modern gangs would also be worth looking at. But there would likely be a trend to gravitate towards worse behavior over time.
The big difference is the writer and the kind of stories he's interested in telling. A detailed setting will take a single character (say a bandit) and ask who is he? How did he get here? What motivates him? How does he live day to day? How will he react to major events? This kind of thing takes a lot of effort and thought put into the character and the world he inhabits. And in other stories, he's a generic bad guy so the only values that are important is that he's worth X experience points and Y money.
Remember the dread pirate Robert, after he amassed a level of wealth he became... the dread pirate Robert. At the same time someone else became a bartender. They do have goals so they may sit around and dream in their leisure. Also some bandits would leave the area and become mercenaries elsewhere, so you can consider what would mercenaries do incorporate those too.
I think it'd be better looking up actual historical documents or sources for that...but I assume they live from robbery to robbery or if they are a bit more sophisticated, they take jobs from people. Kinda like mercenaries