Heart-pounding, quick-paced, shocking. Every writer wants to hook the reader with high-octane, energetic scenes. The most complicated has to be army to army as there’s a lot happening at once and maintaining the energy gets tricky. I tried once and thought I had aced a spectacular battle.
In the end, I had a cacophony of main characters strewn across the battlefield in separate worlds. It felt empty and dead. Maintaining the epicness of a great war requires engaging the reader in more ways than visuals. There’s more to war than gore.
The Motivation
There are many styles of war when it comes to one group butting against another. Sieges, riots, ambushes, street fights. All of these have something in common other than a massive group of bodies to account for. Every single battle has a motivation. And the motivation between one combatant and another is different.
Politics, religion, and pure survival are all reasons to go to war. So is money, power, and revenge. Whatever the reason, there’s a logical component and an emotional component. Logic initiates strategy and planning to fight while emotion sneaks in during actual combat with the introduction of hormones like adrenaline. Some characters hold their composure, staying logical even in combat. Others fall prey to their emotions and use it to their advantage. I mention this because whether your story is written in the third person or first, readers should be able to see the range and understand where your character lies on the spectrum. If the battle is no big deal, then the reader won’t care.
Another aspect of motivation is spontaneous attack. I said there’s a logic component to all fights. Despite this being true, emotion can spontaneously bring about conflict. A man enraged by a couple guys mugging a woman doesn’t have a complete plan. He simply acts. For these altercations, describing the boiling blood and clouded mind of your character is important. Descriptive language connects your reader to the character and allows them to feel the same fury. Despite the randomness of such an attack, strategy is needed on your part.
The Strategy
Army-on-army combat is rarely spontaneous. When you’ve nailed the motivation, you need to plan the actual attack. Or, more accurately, have your characters plan the attack. As much as you need to know what will happen, readers need to understand that the characters aren’t being willy-nilly with their forces. Show the strategy meetings in some detail between the generals.
In-story strategy will consist of numbers and location. In her book Writing Fight Scenes, Rayne Hall talks about how the best stories show the good guys as the underdogs, the bad guys having more men or power than they do (pg 134). It’s a little overdone nowadays, but the forces your protagonist is up against does matter when planning an attack. Location will determine what weapons and tactics will be used. Chariots don’t work on hills, but they look threatening on flat plains. Mountains provide the advantage of archers while flat ground is more even.
Author strategy involves the before mentioned plus in battle structure. Your characters aren’t narrating their placement, but you need to know where they are so you can describe who and what’s around them. It won’t be in-depth description, but enough to give readers a sense of place and in-body experience. You also need to have the end goal set and a way to get your characters there through the chaos. You’re not going to have a pretty straight line from beginning to end.
The Pre- and Post War
The prep and the aftermath are important sections because they give the battle presence and craft a backdrop for further character growth. Thinking back to the first major battle I wrote, my city didn’t experience mass destruction or rivers of blood. Everything was fairly the same and dead bodies weren’t really there. That’s not realistic to war.
Pre-war speeches are fun to watch in movies. They’re eloquent and meaningful. But not realistic. It’s not normal behavior to go with the intention of killing people. Generals need to encourage their troops with their motivation and dehumanize the enemy so it’s less painful to strike. Nobility is not a concern before combat. It’s all about victory and accomplishing the end goal. Even in battle, honor and humanity take a backseat.
These sensibilities can return in the aftermath. Dead bodies strewn across the field, vultures feasting on remains. Men collecting weapons or prisoners with grim expressions. Blood on the air, staining the grass. Now you can fully describe what’s happened, what the world looks like. And you can bring the feelings of disgust, gratefulness, and horror to the mind of the character. It’s in these moments when they fully realize what happened and that this wasn’t a simple hunt. This form of realization could come in the middle of the battle, causing conflict within the character and maybe opening them to attack. Each person is different, so toying with moments like these can play into your end plot.
The Pace
I mentioned in my study of NF’s music that he tells a story with musical rhythm as much as his lyrics. Writers can affect the rhythm as well. I won’t get too deep, but there are ways to give the impression of a fast rhythm.
Short word and sentences automatically create tension. The quicker a reader gets through a paragraph, the faster the story seems. Partial sentences have a similar effect, leaving readers tense and in search of the rest of the statement. Active verbs are super important whereas adjectives, adverbs, and link words (eg, and) should be avoided. Extraneous words slow the pace. Finally, as much as I love internal thoughts, those should be kept to a minimum. Thinking about the strike you’re going to make or how terrifed you are by the grenade wastes time and slows the story. Use internal thought for spontaneous interruptions that show humanity and fear. Just don’t dwell in it.
How do you slow down a scene? Do the opposite. From what I’ve read, most writers write slow automatically. I’m a little more fast-paced and had to slow down for specific sections. Don’t be super choppy when flipping back and forth though. Fade from short sentences into longer paragraphs. Depending on the fight, the pace change may come from nowhere. Nailing pace will influence the overall acceptance of your battle.
Siege
With the basics out of the way, I want to cover a few battle types. Sieges primarily feature a fortress of some kind. One group is inside, the other is outside, and the goal is for the attackers to get in and the defenders to keep them out. Easy enough.
Rayne Hall describes two kinds of sieges: active and passive (pg 139). Active sieges involve full attack or defense. Battering rams, cannons, archers, boiling oil. Even if you’re trapped within the fortress, there are active ways to defend the fortress. Passive sieges are waiting games. The attacker closes off the fortress people from supplies and support and waits. It won’t be roses and sunshine on the inside due to starvation, and it’ll be equally worse on the outside with impatience. After a few months, this form of siege will end with the attackers giving up and shifting to active or someone on the outside betraying their brethren and opening the door.
This form of attack is probably better as a backdrop than a main event. In Eragon, the active seige took a few days to actually become all out warfare, and even then they fought for days and nights until the conclusion of the book. Sieges, especially passive ones, can go for months before one side concedes. The landscape will show the carnage, soldiers ravaging nearby towns for food and drink and the fortress becoming a burial ground.
Nautical
I haven’t messed with boats, though I suspect it’ll become a main feature in some story I write. There are three possible goals of water wars: sink, plunder, capture. Sinking doesn’t involve personal combat, but plundering and capture result in treasure and provisions. Picking one of the three will influence how the fight transpires.
Individual weaponry is straightforward. The only restriction would be the time period. Ship weaponry will vary because some are equipped for attack while others are constructed for defense or speed. Not every vessel will have cannons. Sometimes a battering ram works better for punching holes. The type of propulsion and steering will also determine how quickly it moves. Though in all honesty, ships aren’t cars; you can’t drive a ship around like Dom Torreto in Fast & Furious. Getting into position, turning around, and escape will move slowly without some special force.
Something else to note is the difference between ships and boats. Yes, there’s a difference, so don’t call a ship a boat. Ships are much larger with multiple masts and decks that can feature attacks. Boats are smaller and have less space for full combat. In either scenario, you need to consider the area you have. Ships can be more three-dimensional with sword fights descending into the galley or gunman climbing masts. Boats are better suited for quick squabbles or ambushes that end with bodies falling overboard.
Final Thoughts
Rayne Hall discusses more about combat, weaponry, describing emotion, and such in her book. It’s one of my favorites, so I definitely suggest it as a starter guide. I’d give away the whole book if I could, but I really wanted to give you the highlights of things to consider when showing full combat.
You’ll probably notice that a lot of these points can be said for one-on-one combat. You’d be correct. Armies are filled with individuals, and so struggle with the same issues of logic vs. emotion, strategy, and psyching yourself for battle. The difference is the number of individuals involved and how you play each person’s perception off the other. Some are cowards, some are courageous. Some are vengeful, some are remorseful. Don’t just consider the whole; think of the people involved.