Greetings,
I'm trying to study warfare so as to have a better idea of where to go with my story. As is the main battle at the end is quite terrible. I have some magic to spring to make it a little more interesting but the thing reads like a Civil War documentary

So. I'm studying war. My only resources are Tolkien's final battle and the Art of War, by Sun Tzu. How have you approached warfare in your books? Where did you learn it from? What are best tips and practices in general? What should be avoided, what must be included?

Hit me

eru

It depends on what angle you're going in from. Single character combat is easier to choreograph. From there sometimes it works to bring to mind another character and then switch to what they're doing (as in The Last Battle). I've also noticed that if you go into too much detail with the fighting it makes the battle too short for the amount of words you use. Sometimes it's okay to be a bit vague about it if you ask me.

I have a battle with large amounts of men and not very much single combat, unfortunately. There's also a lot of description and it...reads like the Civil War (my passion in historical wars).

eru

A better way would be to describe it in ranks then I suppose. "Now this part of the army is gaining ground... (arrows, guns tanks, whatever) They're being pushed back!" Sort of like a less involved sports announcer...

Warfare... in my books? I haven't gotten near that far.
However, I do have some ideas with how I'd go about doing it.


I've learned most of my warfare/strategy from video games. Playing some fantasy turn-based strategy will introduce you to some weapons you might not have heard of and help you think more strategically. (I recommend the 2 games on your emulator, they are excellent in both those respects. )
I've also benefited from Tolkien's stories and World War II movies.


Knowing what I do about your story, I'd recommend keeping almost the entire battle in Zacire's POV. To inform Zacire what's going on on the other fronts send couriers on phoenix to him so that he can get information as soon as it happens.
There are a few things that won't work that way however. For that you might have to change to someone else's POV (I'm thinking primarily of the Sann (which might help in developing Sannahet more) ).
Anything that doesn't require immediate knowledge can be told to Zacire by couriers after that day of fighting is over (or perhaps even after the battle is over).


In a nutshell, I'd basically go with what Riniel said in her first post.

I read the excerpt you sent me. It is exactly what I was talking about in the previous post. Everything is either in Zacire's perspective or the Sann's perspective and the phoenix make perfect messengers (sorry, I forgot that your phoenix could talk ).

OK. *nods * (Yes, my phoenix talk ). How much of a balance should there be between hand-to-hand descriptions and broad, sweeping, "this army moved this way" descriptions?

What's the best way to write hand-to-hand fights?

eru

I would avoid any descriptions of the "this army moved that way" sort except those that your POV character can actually see happen. Have frantic reports come in, and frantic orders go out, perhaps, and only piece together exactly what happened in its entirety after the battle is over. Or, at least, that's my instinct. I do recommend reading fiction by writers who do battles well; H. Beam Piper is the name that leaps most readily to hand.

H. Beam Piper? *will look up* Is he public-domain?

eru

What is your character's rank and position in the army?

A lot of his work is public domain, yes. Most of his stuff is before the cut-off date that would have meant automatic copyright renewal, and when he committed suicide soon after his agent died he left his affairs in such disarray that his final book made it to print before its final installment was serialized in Analog (which had a strict no-reprints policy), so it wasn't clear who owned the copyrights to renew them, so most of it has come into the public domain in the last few years. See his work on Project Gutenberg. Unfortunately, the work I had most in mind, Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, having been published in 1965, isn't public domain. (Most of his other fiction with notable battle-writing is in his Future History and uses its technology heavily; I still recommend it for getting the "feel" right---particularly Junkyard Planet aka The Cosmic Computer---but it's less imitable.)
There's also the Belisarius series by David Drake and Eric Flint, which while not in the public domain is freely available because it was on one of the Baen promotional CDs.

*groans * *also must deal with this * *watches topic *

Ditto. I have at least one massive battle scene charted for Flight, and I've not idea how *I'll* survive. Forget the characters.

I didn't think of this, when I decided to put a battle towards the end of my novel... * is now wondering the same thing *

On a different note, I did write a battle scene awhile back, but it was by a single character's POV. Not a bird's eye view sort of thing, which I imagine would be a bit more tricky to write.

But, I guess, if I had to write a battle scene that way...I wouldn't write it like a battle scene. I'd probably try and look at it as if I were describing a calm scene on a normal day, and do a description similar to that. Just with shorter sentences and similar things to make it more "fast paced" so to speak. I'm not entirely sure though; never written a battle like that.

Bethany Faith

Most cases, I would not recommend detailed accounts of troop movements unless it directly affairs the character. Soldiers only see small portions of the battle.

If a the right flank collapses while your character is on the left flank, the character won't notice it until the opposite flank rolls in on them.

@Varon: He is supreme general, but not leading the main attack

@kingjon: I will check out that link. Ah, Eric Flint! Yes, I do have some of his stuff, and it is good - thanks for reminding me of that

@Varon again: True. How well can a commander keep abreast if he has messenger phoenix coming repeatedly, though?

eru

Okay. He'd be getting dispatches that are already outdated. Battles change very rapidly. The best place to be is actually in it. The US military has a saying; the man on the ground is always right. Only the soldiers in it actually know what's going on.

How close is he?

I meant to ask this earlier: In my mind, probably overly-influenced by Harry Potter (and HP fanfiction), I tend to associate instantaneous travel (i.e. teleportation, generally "by fire") with phoenixes. If yours have something like that, to some extent it could change the nature of battle entirely (tangentially: if you can get ahold of a copy of the fan but licensed sequels to Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, starting with Great Kings' War, I recommend them too---there's a battle in that first sequel where Kalvan's plans have to work around communications lag), but on the other hand a commander who can't see the whole battle at once can never have information that is both complete and perfect (without computers ), no matter how fast his communications are.

@Varon: Ah, right. He's on the right flank. Messages from the left and center can be transported by phoenix in...30 seconds to a minute. And he's not actually leading/making decisions about the attacks in those places. Just staying abreast of them (and keeping the reader up to date )

@kingjon: See above - the communications aren't instantaneous. But they're pretty fast, I think.

eru

Even in that time, battles could change immensely.

I still wouldn't try and do to much with troop movements, unless they're extremely important. They can get pretty boring.

I agree with Varon, it can. But, in your story, I think those times when battle changes drastically on a front other than Zacire's front can be done from the Sann's perspective. Right now, I can't think of anything major happening on any front except the Sann's and Zacire's fronts (I haven't read your gdoc yet. If I read something that changes this, I'll post again in here.).


Again, I agree. If at all possible, keep to Zacire and the Sann.

Well, I have the bulk of the scenes with Zaciré. Then there's...two? with the Sann and one unavoidable one with Hardvan. *shrugs* Once they all converge at the center it's Zacire's POV.

I actually have the battle scene on gDocs if anyone's interested in reading it.

eru

*tries to remember how to get into Gdocs*

Okay.

Thanks!

eru

I'm about to write a battle scene, a siege really, quite soon. I have no idea how I'm going to about it. I'm just gonna dive in and go for it. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Please do!

Yes, I second that - please do!

eru

I want to know how it turns out. *nod nods *

Well I'm about halfway through chapter 16 in which a pretty intense siege is taking place. I hope I'm capturing in writing what is happening in my mind and that the reader can "see" what's going on as well. I'm not going into super insanely incredible detail, because of course I want to keep most of the text running quickly and smoothly, and I want to keep the reader's own imagination open as well. As far as the warfare goes, I'm keeping the siege tactics pretty basic. I have siege ladders and rams in play, but no towers or trebuchets... under the circumstances they're not really needed. Hopefully I've caught the intensity of the situation so far.

Well... I've never actually written a battle scene, so my advice is probably worth nothing, but I'll share it anyway.

I would keep things on a personal level during the battle. Instead of a bird's eye point of view, stay with individual characters. How are they reacting? What are they seeing? Are they worried about their friends? Things like that. And, if you need to share what's going on on the rest of the field, use messengers. If you have multiple POV characters, you could always switch between them.

Well as it is right now, it's a little bit of both. Character point of views and bird's eye. I have done that.. what they're seeing, thinking about, worrying about friends and stuff like that.

Remember (as I said in the discussion above) that the reader doesn't have to see everything as it happens. One of the things that comes through most clearly from the best battle scenes I've read is the sheer confusion of the battle itself; it's rarely clear exactly what happened until the aftermath, when the various commanders (and perhaps other characters) will inevitably discuss how the battle went from their perspective. One IMO good example of this that hasn't been mentioned already is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (as well as the rest of the Narnia books): we see Peter drawing up plans beforehand, we see a very little of the end of the battle, and then we're told the highlights of the battle as Lucy is healing the wounded, but we see essentially none of the battle as it happens .. and this works extremely well. It certainly isn't necessary to go quite that far (taking your POV characters off the battlefield entirely for the duration), and in most stories I suspect that wouldn't work, but giving us one character's view of the battle (or a few, switching POV now and again) and then having the characters figure it out in the aftermath is what I recommend and what I'm going to try to do myself.

That sounds very interesting, Kingjon, and that's probably what I'll try to make my battle scene look like. I guess...confusion is natural, so play it up

eru

*has not paid much attention to this thread * And the masses gasps.

However, I will read through it all when I go to start writing book 3 of the trilogy. I may need some brushing up then...

One thing I forgot to mention, and which makes writing warfare effectively even more tricky, is that we need to portray the confusion clearly without actually confusing the reader. (I highly recommend, as I mentioned above, the various books by H. Beam Piper; here I'm particularly thinking of the scene in Junkyard Planet aka The Cosmic Computer.) This isn't to say we can withhold information that the characters wouldn't know, but we need to be especially careful to be especially clear about what's going on, what's happening to the characters, what the characters are doing, and whose perspective we're following, for example. It'd be easy to portray confusion in a way that left the reader worse off than the characters on that front; we need to scrupulously avoid that.

Right.

I've looked up Piper on manybooks.net and his books are available free - I'll add this one to my nook and read it. Thanks for the recommendation!

eru

Ok well I finished my first big battle, and I hope I captured it the way I intended. It's available here in chapter 16. http://valleyofdragons.blogspot.com/

OK, for anyone who hasn't read it, the Cosmic Computer by H. Beam Piper (thanks for the recommend, kingjon!) has some excellent scenes for confusion in battle and how to best portray it. 'Course, this is sci-fi so they've got camera screens and whatnot, but it still is very helpful

*will be updating his battle scene soon*

eru

That was a really cool battle scene. It went well.

Thank you very much. I was hoping it made sense to the reader as much as myself.

I need to read it 6strings *bookmarks*

(Actually, maybe I should catch up on your book as a whole...I think I'm on chapter 4 still )

eru

Please do, and I hope you like it.

Oh, I already know I will like it, from what I've read before. *runs off to read*

eru

Good work, 6strings. It flowed, I knew what was happening, and you told me enough of what I should be seeing, to see it.

Thanks Airianna. It was fun to write, but it got a little difficult keeping up with everything going on while writing it. I'm happy with the way it turned out though. First big battle I've written ever, so I'm hoping the rest will come easier and be even better woohoo!

I knew there was something I was forgetting this week *goes to read*

eru

*lurks*
I have the same problem. I have no idea how to write warfare from the battles to the strategising and recruiting. Anyone have ideas for the parts of war besides the actual fighting?

It's very complicated and prone to Murphy's Law. You have to balance defending your territory, attacking the enemy, guarding your supply line, disrupting the enemy's recruits, and things back home.

I recommend Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

I recommend the same thing here as I've said above for the more limited problem of just writing battles: read and study authors (of fiction and history) who do it well. I've already recommended H. Beam Piper a few times in this thread; he does the planning elements of warfare as brilliantly as the confusion of battle itself. (And there are, if you can find them, quite a few fan-fiction stories in his universes that are nearly as good, including some estate-authorized and published sequels.) Much of The Lord of the Rings might also be worth studying on these points.

The Lord of the Rings battles are extremely well-done. I might re-read RotK just for that, actually. Not that I ever need much of an excuse...

Aldara, kingjon has already given good reasons for H. Beam Piper's books, but I'd like to second. I read The Cosmic Computer on his recommendation and it's been very helpful to me

eru