Writing battle scenes

[Vastatosaurus Rex]

As someone who aspires to be a writer, I find battle scenes especially hard to write for two reasons.

1. An important aspect of battles is the tactics used: for instance, how formations of soldiers are moved around the battlefield. Unfortunately, good stories focus on a small number of characters, or even just one character. This limits the amount of information that can be disseminated about the battle.

For instance, let's say I was writing a story from the perspective of a Persian soldier in a battle against the Greeks. In the story, the Persian army splits into three sections: one confronting the Greek army's front side, and two attacking them from their left and right sides. Our protagonist is in the section that attacks the front side. How is he going to know what's happening on the left and right side of the Greeks if his perspective is limited to the front side? At the same time, I wouldn't want to omit the left and right sections' attacks, as they are important in winning the battle for the Persians .

2. Describing the characters' action in battle is also difficult for me, for they're fighting and killing a lot of people over a long period of time. Obviously doing a blow-by-blow account, describing in detail how each character kills each enemy soldier, would not work, as it would get boring quick. However, I'm afraid that condensing the fighting by not describing a lot of the killing would suck the tension out of the scene.

Is there any way around these problems?

[Sinewmire]

I'm a big old geeky LARPer, and I can go into "battle" safe in the knowledge that the worst I'm going to get is some bruises, maybe a concussion or broken bone if someone steps on me. However, I'll share my experiences.

How is he going to know what's happening on the left and right side of the Greeks if his perspective is limited to the front side?

Up to a point, he is not. Depending on whether he's in the thick of it, or not, and exactly how he feels. A confident, focused soldier will probably focus somewhere in the middle distance, knowing that focusing on one enemy will mean you miss blows coming from his partners, focusing only on arms and weapons. Soldiers in this state concentrate on taking out their opponents and less on self preservation. In this state, one can easily be taken by surprise if the line breaks or you are suddenly forced to retreat - it's like a slap in the face, a real shock to remember you're not by yourself.

If you're a little more worried about the outcome, say you're intimidated or heavily outnumbered, you'll be more aware of what's going on, fearful of making eye contact with your opponents (you can be psyched out or 'hypnotized' doing this - heroic duels in shield walls are largely myths, you cut whatever's in front of you.) and will generally be more aware of what's going on. You'll be very aware of the men next to you and be very afraid of being caught by yourself.

The most obvious way to tell what's happening on the flanks, is to listen for epsecially boisterous massed roars, which usually indicates a charge or the preparation for one, or the drumming of feet which usually indicates a retreat, or worse, a rout.

In LARP, when injured you can force your way back from the front line and take stock of what's going on, I'd imagine this wouldn't be the case in actual shieldwalls - after all, there's no healing stations waiting to patch you up.

The same is true of retreats, yours or the enemy - once the enemy are out of throwing range, it's fairly safe to have a look around, looking for the position of banners and shield walls.

In short: Your character can look around in the lull of fighting or from behind the safety of his comrades. He can hear audiable indicators such as a cheering for a charge, or the drumming of feet from a retreat. He can also feel the line around him grow thinner as men are redeployed to flanks to defend them.

Describing the characters' action in battle is also difficult for me, for they're fighting and killing a lot of people over a long period of time. Obviously doing a blow-by-blow account, describing in detail how each character kills each enemy soldier, would not work, as it would get boring quick. However, I'm afraid that condensing the fighting by not describing a lot of the killing would suck the tension out of the scene.

What do other authors do? Remember that there's not usually mass slaughter going on here. The majority of a shield wall or phalanx is a lot of showing, of trying to see over other people's heads, and, if you're at the front, a lot of parrying and deflecting, and a lot of just standing there, waiting to take an opportunity, such as an opponent overextending himself, or someone with a longer weapon killing someone in front, craeting a gap. This is not *always* the case, however - in cases where victory is swift and decisive, you will get an extremely skilled leader or champion cutting his way swiftly through his opponents, perhaps not killing, but forcing attention on himself - either bravery (he MUST die!) or caution (no way can I stop him, I'll get his mates instead). Behind him, his men will cluster in his shadow, cutting down those who focus to much on him and using his bravery to boost their own.

As such, you can gloss over much of the fight, simply describing shoving matches, or the enemy crumbling away ahead of your character, lavishing detail on your character's personal combats and victories, the majority of which will be a few minor injuries or a lashing out at a random opponent, never knowing what happens. I'm pretty good with a shield and axe or shortsword, but I rarely outright defeat more than one or two opponents, and even then that tends to be in smaller skirmishes. In a pitched battle, you tend to move away from the people you're trading blows with.

In short, lavish attention and carnage in small interspersed gaps, particularly challenging or personally important combats, and use sparse detail for the remainder. If little is happenening, let little happen! Your character, after all, should be concentrating on what he's doing, not the men around him.

[Darth Wong]

I honestly think that if writers are trying to describe a complicated battle scene, they should just include an illustration in their book. It's not unheard-of to include illustrations, even in works of fiction. Otherwise, you're trying to describe a lot of movement, location, orientation, and terrain in words, and that can get really clumsy, really quickly.

You also have to ask yourself just how important the precise tactics of the battle are, in terms of telling your story. Maybe you don't even want to describe a complicated battle scene. The fact that you've fleshed out a complete and plausible battle scene in your mind doesn't mean you have to explain every facet of it to the audience. Maybe they don't care (a lot of people don't).

Take a battle dominated by maneuver warfare, for example. You could go into great detail describing the tactics of the battle, or you could be pretty vague about it and focus only on telling the part which most convincingly and directly explains why one side won. So instead of explaining every move, you could just zoom in, show some of the carnage, and then describe an officer's reaction as he turns his head and realizes in horror that his enemy has brought up reinforcements which marched through the night and arrived on his right flank. That singular moment explains to the reader exactly why he lost, without having to go into great detail about all the things that happened elsewhere in the battle.

[Simon_Jester]

I'd like to second what Darth Wong said: this is an application of what I've heard called the Law of Conservation of Detail. Your reader will only be able to keep track of so many details about events, people, and equipment at once. Make sure they matter. Don't waste detail on things irrelevant to the plot, other than the minimum required to explain the plot.

As someone who aspires to be a writer, I find battle scenes especially hard to write for two reasons.

1. An important aspect of battles is the tactics used: for instance, how formations of soldiers are moved around the battlefield. Unfortunately, good stories focus on a small number of characters, or even just one character. This limits the amount of information that can be disseminated about the battle.

For instance, let's say I was writing a story from the perspective of a Persian soldier in a battle against the Greeks. In the story, the Persian army splits into three sections: one confronting the Greek army's front side, and two attacking them from their left and right sides. Our protagonist is in the section that attacks the front side. How is he going to know what's happening on the left and right side of the Greeks if his perspective is limited to the front side? At the same time, I wouldn't want to omit the left and right sections' attacks, as they are important in winning the battle for the Persians .

See, this is a potential blunder. If the Persian flank attacks succeed, all you need the reader to know is something like "And then a great shout of triumph rang out fom the right, as the Persian chariots looped round to strike at the phalanx's vulnerable rear." Your viewpoint character doesn't need more than the roughest idea of what's going on beside his immediate vision, just enough to make sure that the victory doesn't seem like a deus ex machina to the reader.

If you want to show the whole battle, you need a viewpoint that can credibly describe the whole battle. Like third person omniscient (zoom out and away from your character and look at the whole picture). Or the viewpoint of someone who isn't in the thick of the battle, like a general watching the action from a nearby hilltop.

2. Describing the characters' action in battle is also difficult for me, for they're fighting and killing a lot of people over a long period of time. Obviously doing a blow-by-blow account, describing in detail how each character kills each enemy soldier, would not work, as it would get boring quick. However, I'm afraid that condensing the fighting by not describing a lot of the killing would suck the tension out of the scene.

Is there any way around these problems?

Hmm. In my estimate, you aren't up to writing blow by blow fights anyway, because you don't have a sense for how the fighters move. That leads to silly things like someone trying to swing a trident like it was a sledgehammer.

I suggest that you abstract out the action, focusing less on the mud-and-blood front line combatant's perspective. Or use a soldier who isn't a great fighter, and has to concentrate on defending himself while trying to lend some support to his more badass fellows. I mean, it's not like every guy in an army is a killing machine by himself.

In LARP, when injured you can force your way back from the front line and take stock of what's going on, I'd imagine this wouldn't be the case in actual shieldwalls - after all, there's no healing stations waiting to patch you up.

On the other hand, for a well organized infantry force, I'd think it possible (probable, even?) that they'll have a procedure for rotating weakened fighters out of the line. Otherwise they become a vulnerability; it's better to have one of the rear-rankers take your place if possible.

[Darth Wong]

For instance, let's say I was writing a story from the perspective of a Persian soldier in a battle against the Greeks. In the story, the Persian army splits into three sections: one confronting the Greek army's front side, and two attacking them from their left and right sides. Our protagonist is in the section that attacks the front side. How is he going to know what's happening on the left and right side of the Greeks if his perspective is limited to the front side? At the same time, I wouldn't want to omit the left and right sections' attacks, as they are important in winning the battle for the Persians.

See, this is a potential blunder. If the Persian flank attacks succeed, all you need the reader to know is something like "And then a great shout of triumph rang out fom the right, as the Persian chariots looped round to strike at the phalanx's vulnerable rear." Your viewpoint character doesn't need more than the roughest idea of what's going on beside his immediate vision, just enough to make sure that the victory doesn't seem like a deus ex machina to the reader.

Alternatively, he could write his story and incorporate the Persian foot-soldier's confusion and lack of big-picture awareness into his writing. That is war, after all. If his protagonist is a lowly front-rank foot soldier, then he has no business knowing about the broader sweep of tactics and strategies. His is to do and die. His fear and his uncertainty about what's happening on the flanks is precisely what a story centred on him would convey.

Of course, depending on what you're trying to do with the scene, you could always cheat extra info in there with lines like "He had no way of knowing that ..."

[Simon_Jester]

Of course, depending on what you're trying to do with the scene, you could always cheat extra info in there with lines like "He had no way of knowing that ..."

True,. Though it gets annoying when authors do it to often, so it has to be used sparingly.

[Sarevok]

Frankly there is nothing more dull than OOBs, unit movements and after action reports. When reading about historical wars I always try to find books that focuses on experiences of individual soldiers not a spreadsheet full of statistics. Fiction should be no different. I highly recommend Hyperion by Dan Simmons for how to write effective battle scenes. Hyperion tells so much with so little and lets the imagination do the work. See the descriptions of Hegira occupation of Mau-Covenant and Kassads experience at the battle of Bressia. They left an impression as strong as any battle scene from a big hollywood movie. When a Hyperion movie finally gets I made I will always compare the end product with the images I had in mind.

That is the effect you should go for. Be short, be descriptive and be imaginative. Above all remember you can never cram enough details in a few pages. But you can inspire the reader to imagine your fantasy world the same way you did. That should be your key to vivid combat scenes.

[Sinewmire]

I'd agree with the sentiments posted here - the exact details of the battle can and should be left to drier, historical writings. I'd recommend the Emperor books by Conn Iggulden, about Julius Ceasar.

Sinewmire wrote:
In LARP, when injured you can force your way back from the front line and take stock of what's going on, I'd imagine this wouldn't be the case in actual shieldwalls - after all, there's no healing stations waiting to patch you up.
On the other hand, for a well organized infantry force, I'd think it possible (probable, even?) that they'll have a procedure for rotating weakened fighters out of the line. Otherwise they become a vulnerability; it's better to have one of the rear-rankers take your place if possible.

Well, certainly the Romans would rotate their maniples (sounds dirty), a maniple being a division of roman soldiers, meaning that the other maniples would have time to rest and take a drink, and the Romans would be able to bring relatively fresh fighters to the front. Other armies may have done this: I don't know.

[Shroom Man 777]

Are complicated OOBs and rundowns of enemy tactics, positions, dispositions, and tactical stratagems all that important? In movies like Saving Private Ryan, and other war movies and action movies, all these in-depth informations are pretty much secondary to seeing the hero shoot people in the face. All we really need to know is that "the enemy's got Panzers!" and we see our badass grunts running around, scrambling for a rocket launcher, to fuck the tank with.

[SAMAS]

Well, some people like reading, or at least writing, about that kind of thing. Although some have the sense to put that stuff in an appendix in the back so the people who don't like it won't have to slog (in their opinion) through it.

And though Saving Private Ryan didn't have that kind of thing, you can certainly find it on History or Military Channel documentaries.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

Seconding what everyone else said, with a little extra:

Why not show how the flow of the overall battle affects your POV character? You don't have to outright state in omniscient third-person what's going on to let the reader know. Instead just show what each maneuver specifically does to the POV's little bubble, battles are a case where a few little hints can go a long way. For instance, if you wanted to show that flanking attack as succeeding, you don't need to outright state it. Perhaps you could show the enemy on that side of the line/field/whatever suddenly becoming disorganized or falling into a retreat, or perhaps a hail of arrows from that direction as the flanking forces lend some support fire to the main battle. Or if you wanted to be really blunt, have your POV character fighting near a local commander, and overhear a scout/messenger running in with the news that the flanking was successful.

The thing about worldbuilding/battle planning is that while it's good to have all the details planned out in your own head (for purposes of consistency and the like), the reader only needs and only wants the factoids that are relevant to the main characters and their own plots. Just because you've constructed an entire world/battle for your story doesn't mean you actually have to show it in its entirety to the reader to tell a good story about it. If you want, you could write a full summary outside the story and let whomever is interested in knowing more read that.

[Stuart]

As someone who aspires to be a writer, I find battle scenes especially hard to write for two reasons.

1. An important aspect of battles is the tactics used: for instance, how formations of soldiers are moved around the battlefield. Unfortunately, good stories focus on a small number of characters, or even just one character. This limits the amount of information that can be disseminated about the battle.

For instance, let's say I was writing a story from the perspective of a Persian soldier in a battle against the Greeks. In the story, the Persian army splits into three sections: one confronting the Greek army's front side, and two attacking them from their left and right sides. Our protagonist is in the section that attacks the front side. How is he going to know what's happening on the left and right side of the Greeks if his perspective is limited to the front side? At the same time, I wouldn't want to omit the left and right sections' attacks, as they are important in winning the battle for the Persians .

2. Describing the characters' action in battle is also difficult for me, for they're fighting and killing a lot of people over a long period of time. Obviously doing a blow-by-blow account, describing in detail how each character kills each enemy soldier, would not work, as it would get boring quick. However, I'm afraid that condensing the fighting by not describing a lot of the killing would suck the tension out of the scene.

Is there any way around these problems?

The first thing you have to do is to decide what the focus of your story is. Is it on a single foot soldier who gets caught up in a major battle or is it on a much broader perspective in which the battle plays a part? That decision makes a major impact on how you tell your story.

Let's take the first possibility to start with. Let's say your telling the story of Jamshid, a farmboy who runs away from home because he's bored stiff and gets enlisted into an Army. The details of the battle here are quite irrelevent. In a very real sense it doesn't even matter who wins and who loses. The story will be told entirely through Jamshid's eyes and concentrate on what he hears, sees, smells and does. We might see him facing a Macedonian phalanx for the first time, sees the sarissas coming at him, seeing the hedge of spearpoints and making the terrifying realization that the Sarissaphoros are not going to stop. Those 18-foot sarissas are going to crash right into his part of the line and the probability is that his only choices are getting the spearpoint in his front as he fights or in the back as he runs. At this point, he'll be suffering from severe tunnel vision, he literally won't see what is happening around him. All he will see will be those spearpoints. All he will care about are those damned sarissas and how he can avoid getting skewered. Mike is absolutely right, his overwhelming emotion will be sheer unadulterated terror and how he overcomes that (or doesn't) is the focus of the story. It'll only be at the end that he will find out what happened. For example, he's had a good battle (ie all the sticky red stuff is still inside his body where it belongs) and they stopped the charge of the Sarissaphoros. Only they're retreating what gives? "Well son, we did pretty good but Alexander's Companion Cavalry smashed in our right flank and now the high-ups have decided to try something else. Don't sweat it, just get your ass in gear and do as you're told."

The second possibility is treated in a completely different matter. I actually have a story under way at the moment called "Decimating the Diodoch" that is actually a retelling of the Diodochi Wars from 323 to 280 BC. The main viewpoint characters is a professional strategist called Parmenio (yes, that Parmenio and no, he wasn't) and a young woman he uses as his courier. The viewpoint here is that the Jamshids in the Army are utterly irrelevent. Their thoughts, feelings and so on are of no account. They are counters on a gaming board, no more. Here, you can tell the story from the point of the general, sitting on his horse at the top of the hill. HE sees his horse's ears and the battle laid out between them. He's asking, what is happening, what is the other guy up to? Why is he doing this or that? What should I do about it? Should I do anything about it? You can track his thought processes and in the process of doing that tell the readership what is going on. For example. "He's moving his slingers up to his right. What's he up to? He can't be planning a charge surely? The ground there is way too muddy, that's why I anchored my left on it. Telemachus, take word to Horrifides. Tell him to take two squadrons of the light cavalry and move to reinforce our left. That way if Panofices tries an attack there, they can back-stop our auxiliaries. And tell Horrifides, back-stop means cut them down if they try and run away." (Cavalry was mostly a battlefield goon squad who were there to stop their own infantry deserting).

Now, of course, things aren't that simple. Normally a story will be a mix of the two. So, once you have your character set defined (say, your prime characters are the General Pompostulos, his daughter Panafried, Horrifides, a trusted but eventually treacherous sub-commander and Dumbpestes, a brave Sarissaphoros who rises through the ranks and eventually foils the evil plot of Horrifides and win the hand of the fair Panafried.). You can then bounce from one to another and tell the story of the battle as it develops, giving the general account from the eyes of the commander and what his orders actually mean to the people who actually execute them through the eyes of the Sarissaphoros

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Battle stories vary by context and purpose and there's not necessarily a right way to tell them. I tend to write my stories in the Russian fashion, i.e., with fairly extensive exposition and a comfortable and permanent dwelling in the third-person omniscent. Generally I also write about people fairly in control of situations and have a lot of point of view characters. Ship Captains at the least or at least a platoon commander. The level scales to the situation. The Jewish corporal girl pretending to be a man to serve in the dragoons in my alternate-WW1 Operation Heinrich was probably my lowest ranking POV character, so I scale battles commissurately. When writing a story of a war, though, it's easy to get carried away. Chris and I ended up writing about 60 - 70,000 words covering the first four months of an alternate WW1 and gave up because of the hyperfocus. I leaned a lesson then to only provide detail on critical engagements, but I can be lavish, and there's no reason why not. The last three chapters of a serious novel I'm trying to get published are devoted to an engagement of sword, pike, and shot involving close to 220,000 troops on both sides. In all cases explaining the details of the battle are necessary to readers, but I limit knowledge transfer to what the commander of the focus army knows with a few exceptions. There should be moments in which entire sections of battles are covered merely by the surprise of receiving a messenger who carries bad news.

[MarshalPurnell]

60,000-70,000 words? The full archive text is nearly 205,000 words.

I've found in my writing the same thing as others are suggesting. You can either focus on the individual's experience of combat, the subaltern perspective so to speak, or you can focus on the broader picture through the commander. Trying to fit in the broad strokes of a battle your character would have no way of knowing detracts from the emotional investment of the individual perspective. The use of multiple characters can allow you to fit in both the raw, gritty war experience and the tactical-strategic details but it's best to have some degree of separation between the two.

[General Brock]

I used to read a lot, so I'll kick in my 2 cents about what I liked.

As someone who aspires to be a writer, I find battle scenes especially hard to write for two reasons.

1. An important aspect of battles is the tactics used: for instance, how formations of soldiers are moved around the battlefield. Unfortunately, good stories focus on a small number of characters, or even just one character. This limits the amount of information that can be disseminated about the battle.

As others have mentioned, the character's experiences count more than dry technicalities. However, if they are woven into the character(s) experience, it can be fun to read. For this to work, a sound grasp of the technicalities involved goes a long way to setting a believable stage for the character to act in. At no time should the reader be asking 'how did that just happen' and or some such; anticipate and answer such questions with the dialogue and narrative.

Not everything you learn can be applied, in fact avoid writing like an educational tract. However, its the fine and relevant detailing that read a nice picture to the mind's eye, and if the reader learns something new about the ancient battle, that can be a bonus. A lot of stories are enhanced sharing a learning experience - but this has to be accurate if it is to stand the test of time. Readers appreciate authors who give them accurate mind fodder that is also entertaining; it allows a good story to stay alive in their imaginations and one of those things that separate the novels from pulp.

For instance, let's say I was writing a story from the perspective of a Persian soldier in a battle against the Greeks. In the story, the Persian army splits into three sections: one confronting the Greek army's front side, and two attacking them from their left and right sides. Our protagonist is in the section that attacks the front side. How is he going to know what's happening on the left and right side of the Greeks if his perspective is limited to the front side? At the same time, I wouldn't want to omit the left and right sections' attacks, as they are important in winning the battle for the Persians .

Assuming this isn't historical fantasy and mind-reading magic between friends or familiars isn't possible, and he isn't in the centre force reserve on a hill, he could hear about it from secondary characters in addition to the other suggestions presented.

The ancient militaries probably had their version of the the grapevine, so a day-long battle might give him plenty of opportunities for catch up. For example, should he receive a minor wound, he might talk to an ancient equivalent of a medic. Of course, I don't know if such exists, but standing around bleeding to death from a treatable cut doesn't seem likely either, so someone dedicated to treating wounds would probably know what is happening elsewhere. If you can find the correct word for it and toss it in, all the better for ambiance.

There are any number of devices you could dream up, but it is unlikely, for example, that he would end up having fought on all three lines, so avoid the implausible. Of course, if you write the spell well enough, little is in theory implausible, and any number of bad writers don't know their limits. Still, a protagonist could draw from his own experience to sense or speculate what is happening there. If he has a height advantage, say on a hill, he might actually see what is going on sometimes. Lastly, he won't always be at the front of the battle. A Persian battle line usually consisted of at least two rotating lines to keep the fighters as fresh as possible, and most other ancient armies rotated lines if they could.

2. Describing the characters' action in battle is also difficult for me, for they're fighting and killing a lot of people over a long period of time. Obviously doing a blow-by-blow account, describing in detail how each character kills each enemy soldier, would not work, as it would get boring quick. However, I'm afraid that condensing the fighting by not describing a lot of the killing would suck the tension out of the scene.

Focus on the close calls, personal loss, moments of introspection, intermissions where he can talk to comrades, and so-on. Blow-by-blow accounts are usually more icing than cake; those and the 'Gosh am I bloodied and tired' -type lines have all been done. Its like writing for school; use your own words; while it may have been done before, if you figure you can do it better, go for it. Sinewmire mentioned his live-action roleplaying, and seeking a similar experience might give you ideas.

Is there any way around these problems?

Its writing a story within a story. As long as you have a clear theme or cycle of themes you want to develop, its no more difficult than the rest of the story (cough... did I mention I'm not a writer?).

Writers who do this well make battles a seamless part of their larger narratives, sometimes a centrepiece, sometimes just a stop on the journey. For example, is the battle about the battle, or is it to develop that character a bit more or a main or secondary storyline. The battles that are just about battles are boring, as the reader kind of already knows the outcome here; the Greeks won and the main character usually has the infamous 'character shield' that allows survival or sometimes a glorious death.

A good book I would recommend to you is 'Ghost of the Hardy Boys' by Leslie McFarlane. He is credited with making 'The Hardy Boys' young North America's Sherlock Holmes and Watson during the golden age of pulp fiction from the 1930s-1960s. MacFarlane describes the early juvenile pulp novella industry and how stories - often commercially successful stories - were churned out by legions of anonymous ghost writers, who were themselves aspiring writers in need of a job. Such men and women were behind such fictional pen names such as Franklin W. Dixon.

Times have changed, of course. People are more educated, but the basic principles of good storytelling haven't changed. Accuracy (not just historical accuracy, but sticking to a clear theme), careful word choice considering every possible nuance of meaning read forwards or backwards, a concept of the target audience, all contribute to writing a good battle scene.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

60,000-70,000 words? The full archive text is nearly 205,000 words.

I've found in my writing the same thing as others are suggesting. You can either focus on the individual's experience of combat, the subaltern perspective so to speak, or you can focus on the broader picture through the commander. Trying to fit in the broad strokes of a battle your character would have no way of knowing detracts from the emotional investment of the individual perspective. The use of multiple characters can allow you to fit in both the raw, gritty war experience and the tactical-strategic details but it's best to have some degree of separation between the two.

Heh. I think that proves my point better than I expected.

[Stuart]

This does bring up another point. When writing a story, it's essential to decide what the story is about and stick to it. It's always tempting to diverge from the planned story line and pursue an intriguing sub-plot but the result of that is an over-inflated novel that lacks focus. This happened to some extent in The Salvation War:Armageddon, partly due to its group authorship and partly to the fact that I didn't have the plot fully drafted when I started writing. In contrast, The Salvation War: Pantheocide was pre-plotted in detail and, even though it appears to wander sometimes, it's actually taking us straight to its planned conclusion.

It's also always tempting to try and cover too big a canvas in a single novel. A novel should have a theme, usually one that is suggested (however obliquely) in the title. The story should then keep to that theme. If there is a second story, witha different theme in the same time/place/universe, tell it as a seperate story in another book. You'll get some complaints because people will find that their own particualr hobbyhorse hasn't been covered (for example the moron writing "The Tarpit" criticizes one part of Armegeddon because I don't go into detail about the civil disputes caused by the reintroduction of conscription. Well, I might do that one day as a companion story but it was simply irrelevent to the story that was the focus of TSW:A. Different theme, different story.)

So, when writing military novels, think hard about what story you want to tell. If the answer is "the war" then you are asking for grief.

[Knife]

Battle tactics and details on doctrine are more for the writer, just like technical details of the technology, than for the actual writing. Personally, I make little sketches, even as simple as X's and O's so I can keep the tactics and formations right in orientations to each other so when you're describing what's happening around the characters it stays consistent with the tactics you wanted to convey.