What do you do when writing battle scenes?

[Nerys Ghemor]

I feel very strong in character-building scenes, in conversations, and internal thoughts, even the runup to a battle...but oh, boy, bring on the battles themselves and I freeze.

I'm writing about three chapters (five-six installments) ahead of what I've posted on The Thirteenth Order so far, and I've entered the thick of battle. And suddenly the writing process has become like pulling teeth. I know what the end state is going to be, I even know what a later stage of the battle is going to be like (the ship-to-ship combat part). But oh boy, the ground battle is driving me up a wall.

What do you guys do when you have to plan battle sequences? How do you keep it all together in your head? How do you overcome the nervousness in writing that sort of thing? (And don't say Jim Beam, Southern Comfort, or anything else along those lines. I'm not a drinker, so that won't work. )

 

[captcalhoun]

i play it through in my head. sometimes with a hand-drawn map if it helps.

usually though, my great visual imagination doesn't require it.

 

[Goliath]

God damn it!

I am so angry with this website right now, I could just scream.

Nerys Ghemor, I wrote a fairly lengthy reply to your question, and then opened another window, to find one of my stories with the search feature, and provide a link.

I clicked on the number of the post in question, so I could provide a link to the exact post within the thread. And for some reason, doing that opened that post in this window, wiping out everything I had written. When I hit the "Back" button, I found that my whole response had been lost.

I don't have time to reconstruct what I wrote right now. I'll get back to this later if I can.

 

[SLWalker]

I'm like you, I agonize. Even just the boarding scene of the Queen Mary in ONOW required one of my betas to tell me to go and add more chaos to it. Generally, that was the key -- convey the chaos. Don't try to map out the entire field of battle, but deal with what your POV character is seeing and handling.

 

[Gibraltar]

As has been pointed out, combat is chaos, and even the best laid plans usually go awry when the enemy does something that you never anticipated, no matter how much planning you've done in advance.

Remember that what your characters do and don't do in battle can reflect upon their personalities. Some people think more quickly than others when faced with dynamic tactical situations. Some react almost instinctively, while others must take a few moments to come up with a plan. Sometimes your enemy gives you the luxury of that time, sometimes they don't.

Nobody makes the right choices all the time, especially in as confusing a situation as combat. You just hope that of the decisions you make, more are correct than not. Dealing with the aftermath of a battle from the viewpoint of your characters can be as much fun as mapping out the carnage itself.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

That part makes a lot of sense.

The actual logistics, though, are really throwing me off, trying to figure out how to actually make this building change hands.

 

[Gibraltar]

That part makes a lot of sense.

The actual logistics, though, are really throwing me off, trying to figure out how to actually make this building change hands.

I don't know if you have the time or the inclination, but I'd recommend some real-combat books such as David Bellavia's House to House: http://www.amazon.com/House-Soldier...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227892382&sr=1-1

Books like this can give you insights into close-quarters combat, the ebb and flow of combat in confined spaces. Just remember, we're fighting in the 24th century, so you have to make allowances for technological improvements. I'd point out TheLoneRedshirt's Stand Off as an example, as well as the sub-surface combat from my portions of Treacherous Waters.

 

[DarKush]

I think Captain Calhoun and Gibraltar gave some really good tips. Visualization is a good tool to help you see the battlefield so that you can write the scenes more convincingly.

To that end, in times past I've looked at Trek battle scenes I have on VHS or DVD to get the lingo and feel of Trek combat. Also, battle scenes from the books or from Trek show transcripts have helped. I don't play the video games but I'm sure they might be a good tool. The comics too.

Gibraltar made a good point about staying true to your characters. Understand them and thinking before hand how they would react in a situation should help guide you to writing the scenes more organically.

I've written a lot of ship-to-ship battle scenes and my fear is that they all are the same, and sometimes it becomes a challenge for me to write them and try to make them different. But at the same times, that can be fun too.

 

[CeJay]

I like the suggestion of writing the battle scene from one person's perspective only. Don't focus on the entire battle but limit yourself to your protagonist or whichever character's perspective lends itself best for telling the story of the battle.

This way you also won't have to worry about every single aspect of the battle itself but only those your character directly perceives.

Another suggestion would be to use short sentences and sudden actions in order to keep up pace and convey a sense of immediacey.

Having said all that, there are probably a million different ways to write a battle and you got to figure out what works best for you, your style and the kind of story you want to tell.

Also, if you know your A and your Z, as in your beginning and your ending, do your progressions. In order to get to C, B needs to happen. In order to get to D, C needs to happen and so on an so forth. Sometimes it might even be easier to start from Z and move backwards until you reach the beginning.

In any case, by the time you got all your pieces together you might have schemed yourself one exciting battle.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Hey! I like that writing backwards idea!

That may actually solve the problem I'm in right now--I know what the final objective is and what they need to be doing at that point in order to kick off the space battle, but the getting there hasn't been so easy.

Thanks to everyone for your advice.

 

[captcalhoun]

if you need a building clearance battle, you can probably look up such things on t'internet. there's bound to be something on there...

 

[Rat Boy]

It also helps to have something else to cut away to, like engineering, sickbay, the opponent's ship, etc. That way you can break it up so that it isn't one long-winded narrative. Unfortunately, space battles are difficult in prose, since it can get repetitive after the fifth line of "Shields at X percent!" or "The phaser beam lashed out at the enemy ship."

 

[TheLoneRedshirt]

Always keep Murphy's Law in the back of your mind. In battle, if something can go wrong, it probably will.

 

[hellsgate]

The only thing that drives me crazy about battle scenes are certain facts. In example:

• Why do authors insist that "Red Alert" alarms & artificial gravity plating are able to keep going (despite 56% - or worse - of the ship's systems have been destroyed / temporarily over-powered,) via fried ODN/EPS systems, dead batteries, or the fact the chief source of the important technobabble has been ripped clean out of the hull via catastrophic decompression?
  
• No-one thinks of keeping EVA suits available in conveniently located lockers on the one deck (The Bridge) closest to space in the event of a shield failure & a direct hit?

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Those seem like very interesting points.

Along those lines--what differences might you expect to see, for space combat, between a Federation starship and one that is actually designed for war? I already have some ideas, but I'd be curious to see if any of yours agree with mine.

 

[captcalhoun]

i subscribe to the theory that Starfleet vessels are warships. so, really the only difference might be having civvies running around in terror or a science lab blowing up.

 

[Admiral2]

What do you guys do when you have to plan battle sequences?How do you keep it all together in your head?

There are certain things you have to keep in mind, starting with the fact that any armed conflict, whether it's a small unit action or a multi-planet interstellar conflict, follows a certain formula, a theory of war that men from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz to Keegan have tried to nail down in basic terms. To write a good battle scene you should always try to follow that formula first, and worry about the drama later.

Here are the basics:

Objectives: The actors on both sides of the battle have goals they expect to achieve if their side wins. While writing your battle scene, find a way to remind yourself what each side wants when the smoke clears.

Logistics: Figure out how many men and how much material each side should need to achieve these goals. "Need" is the key word here. It's not a matter of how many men and how much material you want as the author. Act as if both sides have done intelligence on each other and supplied accordingly.

Intelligence: Both sides should gather information on each other, or have it available, because you can't fight an enemy you know nothing about.

Terrain: This is actually the easiest thing to keep track of if you're making it up in your head. Make it hilly, overgrown, mountainous, flat, whatever, pick the relevant compass points and just keep the image in your head at all times. (captcalhoun's idea about making a map is perfect if you can't)

Strategy: Something people often confuse with "tactics". Strategy is using everything that we've just discussed in a series of battles to achieve the overarching goal.

Tactics: The things you learn as a soldier to use to win a specific battle.

These are all the things you have to use to make your battle scene a battle scene and not just "a lot of people shooting at each other" and "War is hell". If you're worried you can't, there's no shame in outlining it.

How do you overcome the nervousness in writing that sort of thing?

I got into fanfiction mainly to write battle scenes. I'm never nervous about it.

 

[BrotherBenny]

I tend to write my battle scenes from a singular POV and I try to make them last no more than two chapters, which for me is about 2,000 words total. I either do one chapter for the beginning/middle and one for middle/end or one for the good guys and one for the bad.

 

[Mistral]

Although I have dodged battle scenes in most of my stories, any chaotic condition would follow the same rules. When I wrote Fracture there is a scene where the ship is heavily damaged by unforeseen circumstances. I told the tale from the Captain's view and kept track of what each character was doing-at one point the Cpt refused immediate medical attention and I had to keep in mind that the med tech was still loitering to help him. I look on things like that as loose threads-and I keep count of how many I have. When the scene is done I go back and re-count the thread resolutions. A=A and the scene is done. A=B and rewriting is needed.

Admiral had a great post about battles. Calhoun's suggestion about maps was also good.

I learned how to track battles playing D&D as a Dungeonmaster-the players trained me not to lose track of circumstances. Sometimes I used figurines to track locations and positioning- a character facing East would not be aware of an attack coming in from the West. Obviously, space battles take place in 3D and ST Tech can alter circumstances but for a ground battle the theory holds.

 

[Rat Boy]

Another way to do it is to play the battle out in a Trek video game like Bridge Command or Legacy where you can simulate what's going on and write your story based on what happened. That's how tested the plausibility of a warbird blasting the hell out of an Intrepid-class ship for the opening ambush of "Chaos Theory."