Warfare

Being a Better Writer: What Should My Characters Be Doing in a War or Battle?

Max Being a Better Writer , , , , , ,

Welcome back writers … to a bit of an odd topic, I’ll admit. Even now, looking at the title floating there above my text box, I can’t help but note how strange it is … But at the same time, I feel like there’s some value in this one. So, today, we’re going to talk about it.

Is this an odd way to kick off Topic List #22? Well, we’ll see. Sometimes Being a Better Writer discusses strange topics, topics that most other writing advice columns or YouTube channels don’t touch. I think this will be one of them. To those of you that are new to Being a Better Writer, either post-LTUE or from another part of the web, I’d say to stick around, because while this topic looks odd, I think there’s value in it, and you may be surprised what arises from it.

So without any further ado, or without hitting the news from last week or anything else that’s going on, let’s talk about today’s Being a Better Writer topic. Let’s talk about what your characters might be doing in a war or battle.

Hit the jump.

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Being a Better Writer: Micro-Blast #5 – Logistics, Combat, Social Activism

Max Being a Better Writer , , , ,

Hello readers! Welcome back after another weekend! I hope yours went well. Mine had some pretty good occurrences (one of which I won’t spoil just yet) and was also a good opportunity to step back and assess everything I’ve got on my plate at the moment. Especially with regards to writing, because Jungle is in it’s last quarter on the first draft, which means it’s soon going to be time for me to switch gears over to Shadow of an Empire and start cleaning that up for publication!

My bad, this isn’t a news post. I just got a little excited there. The weekend is my recharge time, usually, so it’s nice to come back with a bit of a boost.

Anyway, time for a Micro-Blast! Beginning, as usual, with a quick recap of what a Micro-Blast is. For the new or the uninitiated, it’s usually done when I near the end of a topic list and have a few leftover topics that don’t quite seem worthy of a full post on their own, but are still little useful tidbits of advice. Rather than discarding them outright, though, I decided to just bundle them into one larger post that addresses each one individually. Because honestly, discussing these isn’t bad. They’re just not large enough topics to warrant more than a few paragraphs’ worth of material. But there is still value in discussing them.

So, now that you’re caught up, let’s get this post underway and clean out Topic List IX!

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Being a Better Writer: Writing Warfare

Max Being a Better Writer , , , , ,

Welcome back, readers (and by extension, writers). It’s time for another Being a Better Writer post. The topic for this week? It’s another request, and an interesting, if complex, one. Today, we’re going to discuss how to write a scene of warfare. Not a shoot-out, or a simple fight, but a full-on war.

Alright, let me clarify. This isn’t going to be a simple “here’s what you write.” At least, not the way most people (including the commentator who asked this question) think. Most people, upon reading the topic, likely promptly thought of one of their favorite battle scenes from a book, movie, game, or other form of entertainment. Scenes of fantasy armies clashing, magic flying around, spaceships shooting one another, muskets being primed …

Uh-oh.

Yeah, see, here’s the thing. All of those different things described up above? They’re all different battles … and they’re all going to be different types of warfare. Which means that each one could be written differently, or focus on different aspects of war. The magical warfare, for example, could be a type of war in which anyone not under a magic shield becomes a bloody mess of human remains, leading to armies only moving around under special shields, or possibly being reduced to just some elite cleaning crews and a bunch of magic users flinging destruction back and forth trying to catch a shield off-guard. Meanwhile, a scene of musket warfare would be bloody, gritty, and close, with clouds of smoke covering the viewpoint and obscuring the battlefield, cannons firing volleys, lines of men frantically reloading as balls whiz past them, and lines of cavalry sweeping in from the flanks.

All of these different kinds of war are going to lead to—you guessed it—different scenes of war, and therefore different things to write about. And that’s not even mentioning our viewpoint, be they front-line infantry, commander, narration, or some other perspective that could be bearing witness to the whole thing.

If you’re getting the idea that writing about a scene of warfare may be a complicated, messy business, then good. I’m doing my job. I’m not trying to discourage you, but rather point out that there are a lot of things you’re going to need to take into consideration before you start having two factions throw down.

What are those things? Well, now we’re getting somewhere.

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