Battle-Scenes, how to write them, how much detail they need, and how often should they be used?

[Massive_attack]

Hey everyone. In the process of writing my AAR for medieval 2 I've run into serious pacing issues with my battle sequences.

At first I had too few, most chapters were dramatic events, character building, etc, and now things have finally gotten bloody.

Thing is, I can quickly see this turning into a "huge battle every single chapter" thing, and get bogged down terribly by it.

I have tried to limit my scope down to one singular army, that of my protagonist, but I'm still worried. Right now it takes me longer to write combats than anything else because of how much is going on, the necessary description, and the need to satisfy my readers.

There has to be a more effective way to do this that remains satisfying and narratively sound?

One option I've considered is trying to refine battles down to a very short amount of lines, trying to go for impact, maybe backed up with some pictures, letting my narrative be the focus.

What are your thoughts on all this?

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

I remember making the point that your AAR is quite interesting because it has a wide selection of characters and also quite a few time skips between installments. You can use both of these to your advantage if you're scared your battles are a little too overbearing on the AAR as a whole. Break up the 'monotony' by focusing on what's going on with the rest of the cast. You jump from month to month and year to year quite rapidly, so there's a lot of time in between you can focus on in the interim between battles. If you're really stuck, pay attention to the in-game events and happenings. In my Shogun 2 AAR, I had a random event where a feast was called and I was presented with a new agent. I used this to write the basis of three installments I think (about 3,000 words) and they all happened within the space of a single night. Try to remember that despite playing a Total War game, there is much more to focus on that battles. Similarly don't fall into the trap that thinking your readers necessarily want to hear about battles first and foremost. As I said when I read over yours, the bits that really stood out to me where the character moments with Otto and Elisabeth. That's not to say you don't write good battle scenes, but it's the stuff thats happening outside of the battles that really breathes life into the story. It's how your characters cope with the stresses of battle, how they prepare for them, how they will themselves to carry on, how they're ultimately affected by them, rather than the battles themselves. If you want a good rule of thumb, I try to stick to two non-battle installments for every battle installment. Not that I follow it to the letter, but it's a nice way to balance things out if you're in this kind of predicament.

Character building never stops as well. Just because you've introduced the cast doesn't mean they've stopped evolving and no longer deserve plot-heavy chapters. Even if all that happens in-game is battles, don't give up trying to write non-battle chapters. Remember that you're the author and the one with the power to do as you will with the story. Robin, one of our resident writers, abandoned his game about half way through his AAR, and wrote the rest as he saw fit, using custom battles when he needed them to do battle scenes. Whilst few have been quite so radical (and few have finished an AAR, a strange correlation ), a lot of us take a similar approach, in that we don't let the game dictate everything to us. I remember Merch disregarded the game for quite a few chapters in his AAR, as his protagonist went off on an adventure, before returning and picking up where he left off. At the end of the day, it's about thinking outside of the box and approaching things from new and interesting angles; sometimes that neither you or your readership will expect. Use the game as a jumping off point for your story. Simple things like your characters traveling through a forest on the way to a battle open up a wealth of possibilities. Maybe they meet someone in the forest, maybe they find something, maybe they get lost, maybe they go hunting etc etc. There's so much you can potentially write about outside of battles, you just need to put your thinking cap on You can of course also read others' AAR's and see how they tackle the problem too

In terms of writing the actual battles themselves, I try to stick to the protagonists perspective, so that you get quite an insular and narrow, yet authentic, picture of the battle. If there have been quite a few same-y battles in a row then I'll be more brief and not go into horrendous detail. Try to examine the pivotal moments in a battle and emphasize those in your scenes - the initial cavalry charge, the first volley, the duel between generals. In many of my battle scenes, the protagonist charges into the melee, and then everything gets blurred for a while as he loses himself in the combat. This prevents your battle descriptions from getting bogged down and overdone. It's not a technique you want to overuse either though, but if you're pacing your story well enough outside of battles then it's not as big of an issue to deal with. It also depends on how important the battle is to the plot and the game. If its some minor skirmish somewhere then you don't necessarily need to cover it in detail, but if you're sieging the emperor's fortress then you might want to take a few chapters to do it justice.

[Dude with the Food]

I'll let some of the more experienced writers give you solid advice on this but something I find that annoys me is when battles drag on too long because of the balance of power twisting back and forth. Some of this is necessary for interest and suspense but it is easily overdone and that can take up a lot of time you could be focusing on something else.

You also don't have to focus on every battle. The Ben Kane Hannibal series is an excellent show of this. The first book ends with the the Battle of the River Trebia and then completely bypassing Hannibal's other great victories, the second picks up two years after Cannae. The prologue of that is set just after the battle but not the main story and while I was a little disappointed at first to miss such spectacular moments that impacted all then main characters heavily, I think it made the story much better and helped it keep its focus. Besides, a lot of spectacular events make them lose value and become more common. Fine if your story is exagerrated purposefully but useless if you want an authentic world.

A last point to make is whether or not you focus on your protagonist or the battle in general. Obviously you must mention both but you can focus on the men he must kill and only when he is resting give an overview or talk about the lines of men crashing and then named characters getting half a line-three sentences maximum each.
Edit: f0ma's third point is pretty much this.

[m_1512]

I think I can give some tips. I have been researching about writing battles for a book project I am currently on. I know there is a difference between that and an AAR, but this would nonetheless help. I'll put it point-wise so as not to make this post as an article like f0ma.

- The first thing to consider is this, the point of the battle. Is the battle you are going to write about noteworthy? By noteworthy, I do not mean the size, just the significance to the story. After all, I once had to write a 3 unit somthing skirmmish in an AAR because I found I could introduce a shady absolute coward yet cunning character in the story.

- Second, in line with the above, you must decide how that battle with relate to the protagonist or to others or to the plot itself. This is very important, as a long drawn pointless AAR battle adds nothing to the AAR. An example is this, you have put in a battle in a far off land, but are unsure what to relate it to. Why, this battle can be a perfect excuse for your protagonist or any other character to go to far off lands.

- Third, the presenting of the battle. It becomes repetative to present every AAR battle in style of 'Siege of Minas Tirith' all the time. To go even further, why would you want to even do that. Experiment with the style of presenting for every battle and your AAR will have the effect of being fresh. A small idea I can give here, you have a sack of your city that you want to include. Why not make that as a tale told by and from the point of view of a survivor to your protagonist? This is one, and I am sure you can find more creative ways.

These are the points I can find for now. Will get back to you if have some more. Please do PM or VM me if you want to talk about it.

[McScottish]

I'd have to agree with all of the above, as everything they've said rings true and they're all fantastic writers. I especially agree with the POV of the story - first person, third person, etc - as a guideline to how you should write the story.

Personally I favour first-person because I like to imagine myself in their position, write from a narrow viewpoint and so on, a style that some people I know actually quite dislike. I would also say to look at how many people are fighting and who they are; for example a combat with sixty people would be different from one with six-hundred, smaller in writing scope and possibly 'grittier', the protagonist maybe engaging in a numer of single combats rather than the usual 'swirl' of mass combat.

Eeerm...lastly, try to focus on the character - how much experience do they have of battle, what are their feelings and emotions before, during, and after the battle, do they have a bit of banter with another or not? On more than one occasion I've written about characters urinating or defecating into their own lower-body garments, something that was a reality but not really written about...for obvious reasons!

As to how many, well, as many as you like! Not too many mind, but I'd use your own judgement to decide whether a battle was major enough to warrant an entire update to it. I often skip over minor incidents or battles, leaving an update only for an important one(s).

So, hope that's helped, and sorry for any repetition.

[Lugotorix]

When I started writing the Pasture of Slaughter- I had tons of battles at my disposal in replay format and replays were working, finally. But I had auto-resolved the battles in which Hannibal was actually FUBAR. I resolved to focus on three interesting ones- one epic in scale and participants and implications (The Pasture of Slaughter; Pontus Marmora), one strategic that I otherwise wouldn't have won, and one allied, to show off the allied AI.

[Shankbot de Bodemloze]

I did an article on writing battles for the Critic's Quill... I doubt it will be of much use, but here you are: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...l-Issue-34#r71

If you are worried about too many battles you need not write about everyone involving your protagonist. One chapter could contain a battle, and in the next you could make passing reference to a couple more you have fought in-game, maybe something like being tired of fighting again and again, but yet another battle... and then you whack out another battle that is being written out. You could only focus on the important battles, or if it is a diary type AAR I imagine small skirmishes wouldn't be of much note in the author's diary... and even after a few big battles the author might stop writing about them, and only go into detail about the ones that contained memorable events (death of a friend/capture of an enemy general/starting or ending a war etc.).