How to Battle – the Realities of Wars

Last week, I introduced this five-part series on writing battles, wars, and fighting into your story. I also offered reasons why more than just fantasy writers would find this useful.

Today, I’d like to discuss what battles really are, why so many people write them wrong, and give a few examples of battles and war in stories that work well.

Reality: War isn’t Glorious

There’s this trope in books and movies (especially in fantasy books and action-adventure motion pictures) where the fighting is shown as “cool”. It’s accompanied by an epic soundtrack or an inspirational speech which are followed by long bouts of conflict in which the main character kills with ease and there’s always room for movement and one-on-one fighting.

What’s wrong with this trope?

Pretty much everything.

Let’s break it down:

1)     Fighting is not cool. Violence and death and pain are not cool. It’s not okay that our society has chosen to make war and battle good things. We’re not supposed to be happy about the fighting, are we? 

2)     Why do we always need inspirational speeches? In real life, I’ve heard like… two inspirational speeches, and neither of them were that great. One was actually just a bunch of meaningless fluff that was meant to rile people up and get them excited, and the other fell a bit flat because the speaker wasn’t that great of a speaker. So. Where do these inspirational speeches come from? The writer. How can I tell? Because it sounds like the character (who’s probably had like two minutes to prepare) has actually taken weeks to make every word count. That’s not realistic. Battles aren’t preluded by the general standing at the front of a crowd of thousands and shouting words that everyone can somehow hear. No, they’re precluded by a bunch of men giving orders to other men, all of whom are close enough to hear them.

3)     Not to pick on movies for a moment, but I’ve discovered that the best war/action movies have little to no music during the battles. For example, the Bourne Trilogy has a lot of violence and fighting in it, and during these scenes there’s very little music. Same goes for Saving Private Ryan. Other action movies, on the other hand, tend to have a lot of dramatic or epic music (examples including The Hobbit trilogy and “Pretty-Much-Every-Superhero-Movie-Ever”). The power of a battle is not in how epic you can make it sound, but how real you can make it sound. Being able to draw in your audience (whether it’s readers or watchers) by the sounds of battle means being real with your sensory information.

4)     I’ll talk later about the way in which main characters always seem to be able to kill dozens without breaking a sweat, but I’d like to point out here that it makes very little sense and statistical odds are always stacked against this. Just… just saying.

5)     I want to point out a realism of battles for a moment: battles take place in relatively small spaces when the number of people fighting is concerned. Books almost never show this. They never show (with few exceptions) the way that only those in the very front actually get a chance at hitting the enemy, that there’s no place for random duels to take place, for characters to have conversation. They don’t show the grappling and struggling for the upper hand in visceral ways. Instead, there’s giant bubbles where characters can fight one-on-one and duel and talk and they can hear each other perfectly well and can show emotion and use fancy maneuvers and footwork without having to worry that someone behind them will accidentally hit them with an axe or throw a grenade at their feet.

The reality of war is this: it’s not pretty, and it’s not glorious.

Reality: We Write War Wrong

I realize this is a serious topic, but can we stop and admire that heading? Say that twenty times fast.

Yeah, I heard you mess up, don’t pretend you didn’t.

Anyway.

The heading (alliterating at it is) is true: few people write war well. There are three basic things we get distracted by or hampered by:

First, we get stuck in the trope I describe above. It’s hard work, writing a battle, and it’s so easy to fall into that trope of “oh, I need an inspirational speech to tell my readers about my theme” and then “well I need my main character to survive, and to fight this person and this one and talk to that one and…” before we know it, we’re swept off into the trope and we can be writers of poor battles before we even realize it.

That’s not a good thing.

Second, we don’t do our research. We get lazy. Sure, we’re writing a battle in the civil war, or in medieval Europe or futuristic Canada, but who needs to research? I mean not you and I, right?

Wrong.

Without research, your battle will turn out awful. There’s no way around that. It will. I speak from experience: no one can write a well-written battle without research. I’ve tried, and I’ve seen others try time and time again. Every single time, it turns out poorly.

Third, we get squeamish. Here’s the truth about battle: it’s ugly. Not the ugliness I talked about a while back, but visceral, brutal violence. It’s deadly, deafening, painful. We don’t want to describe war in its reality because we don’t want to have to deal with that level of brutality and wrongness. Humans don’t like war. We don’t like violence.

However, here’s the deal: presenting war as anything other than the honest reality doesn’t make that reality go away. Instead, it makes war seem less wrong, less violent, less ugly. It pulls away from the truth and creates a naïve lie.

Reality: We Can Write Battles Well

This post seems pretty hopeless, doesn’t it? I mean, I keep pointing out all the ways we write battles wrong. I’m also speaking in such a way that I include myself, because I’m also guilty of all of these things.

So….

How do we do this right?

Well, let’s look at a few examples of books and movies that did it right. One of the easiest ways to learn is to observe those who know what they’re doing.

I’d like to get two of my go-to examples out of the way right away: Saving Private Ryan and Hacksaw Ridge are two of my favorite war movies. They’re both hard to watch, and one of them is known as one of the most brutal movies ever (well, it used to be… some are more violent, but not in the same way).

These two movies are set in World War Two, and do excellent jobs in showing war for what it is: violent, bloody, vile, brutal. It shows that war is not cool, it’s real and it’s hard. Both of these show war in all its violence, which can be hard to watch.

To get a few more movie examples out of the way, 3:10 to Yuma is one of my favorite examples of fighting where the main character suffers just as much as the rest. He’s not immune to bullets or knives, he’s the opposite of invincible. Not to mention the ending is so unexpected and realistic and… yeah, I won’t spoil it. Go watch it. Do it.

To turn to a couple books with fantastic battle scenes, Killer Angels (and its prequel, Gods and Generals) is a great book about the American civil war, specifically about Gettysburg. It shows that soldiers aren’t just masses of screaming entities hacking away at each other, but that both sides contain human beings with lives and families and dreams.

It’s a hard tale to read, because you want to cheer for both sides (regardless of your opinions on the Civil War) and neither at the same time because war isn’t about who wins, it’s about who lives.

There are many, many examples out there of books that do battle well. Not near as many as there are examples of poorly written battles, but there are examples if you know where to look. For more intimate, small “battles”, try The Raven Boys Cycle. For fantasy battles (and excellent commentary on war in general), try The Wheel of Time series.

Battles can be hard to write. They take time and effort and a willingness to put yourself at risk of writing something visceral. It’s saying “war isn’t pretty, and here’s why”, and letting yourself write that ugliness.

It can be a work of art, when done right.

How to Write Pain

I write dark stories.

If you’ve been reading my serial story Eyes, which I’ve been posting every other Monday for quite a while now and will be wrapping up shortly, you probably know this.

A lot of my stories involve pain and hurt and loss. I don’t do it because those things please me or because I’m some sort of sadist. Usually, when I write the pain of a character I’ve developed and invested myself into, it’s hard. It hurts me as much as it hurts them. Part of that is due to the fact that… well… they’re in my head and so hurting them is literally hurting me.

Beyond that, however, I’ve also struggled to write that pain well. I’ve witnessed many other writers (published and not) struggle with that same thing.

The thing is… pain is hard. It’s hard to write true pain and make it hurt the reader to read without making them put the book down. A few weeks ago I posted about Saving Private Ryan, and why I thought it was such a powerful movie and why I feel that all the pain and violence portrayed in it was right and why I feel all authors should consider the violence and pain in their novels under the light of that idea.

A good friend of mine wrote a blog post on pain a few months back, and it was an excellent blog post. He wrote about showing the pain, rather than telling. This friend and I chatted a few weeks ago, and we critiqued each other’s works. One of my excerpts that he critiqued involved a scene with a lot of pain (a character is flogged), and we realized, as we read over it, that I used the word “pain” twelve or thirteen times in the span of seven pages.

I literally told the reader that there was pain involved in this flogging thirteen times.

See, I’m not a perfect writer, either.

So today, I want to draw on that idea, as well as my friend’s post and my own struggles with overcoming this block, to find ways to write about pain without just stating that it’s present.

Step One: Find and Delete

Most of us write using word processors that have this handy “find” tool, where you can find any word or phrase or letter or character you want. It’s a fantastic tool. So here’s what we’re gonna do. In order to show pain for what it is, we’re going to systematically go through the manuscript looking for the word “pain” in all its forms. I do this when I edit my first draft, so keep this in mind: let yourself write the word “pain” in your first draft. Rough drafts are meant to get the ideas out of your head and into the page, not to make things perfect. That’s what the find tool is for.

Now. Our goal is to remove as many of those “pain” words as possible. Remember: you can’t get rid of them all. There are instances and cases where the word “pain” is necessary. Use it in dialogue, and use it when there’s no time to show us the pain and when it’s used for stylistic emphasis or something along those lines. Got it?

When the word is just used to describe itself, that’s when you’ve got a problem. That scene I mentioned earlier, with thirteen uses of the word in seven pages? Well, when I edited it, I ended up with three.

Therefore, it’s possible to do this. In the first two-thirds of my novel Agram Awakens, I use the word “pain” and its derivatives ~180 times. That’s not counting the last third, which definitely has that word in there a few more times. Out of 202,911 words, 200 of them are the word “pain”, or something like it.

My goal is to cut that in half, if possible. To get rid of all the times when “pain” is used to describe itself.

I think that’s an easy goal to attain. Shall we do it together? Let’s all band together and decide today that our goal for second drafts is to cut the number of times “pain” is used in half.

But… what do we replace it with?

Step Two: The Reality of Pain

Authors like to compare pain to other things. We like to make pain appear on the page as an entity. Whether it’s “burning” or “lancing” or “waves of pain” or “needles” or “pinpricks” or “fiery” or whatever it is the kids are saying these days, we give the pain a modifier that makes it a separate entity from everything else.

What’s wrong with this?

Well, let’s consider what pain really is. It’s your nerves responding to stimuli. That’s it. Your brain and the nerves it hangs out with are reacting to stimulation. This stimulation can range from petting a cat to licking an ice cream cone to being stabbed in the stomach. Why do some of these cause pain, and some don’t? And why do some of them cause pain and pleasure at the same time?

Basically, pain is caused when the brain and nerves decide that the stimulation is dangerous to the body. Petting a cat doesn’t cause pain (all allergies aside) because your brain doesn’t find anything wrong with that stimulation. It’s pleasant, relaxing, soft. But when the cat starts kneading your thigh with its claws?

Immediate reaction. You might not even register the pain until you yank the cat off your lap and squeak. The sudden and piercing stimulation of the cat’s claws are perceived as a danger. They’re cutting into your skin, killing cells and providing openings for bacteria. Your brain and nerves recognize this as not okay, and so stimulate you to react. Fast.

Licking an ice cream cone activates the nerves connected to your taste buds and your brain goes “hmmm, I like this taste”. So you lick it again. And again. And again. Soon your brain realizes “OH THIS IS COLD THIS IS NOT OKAY” and reacts to get you to stop. The result is a “brain freeze”, or whatever you so choose to call it.

Now. From the looks of it, it’s clear that pain is not a separate entity. It is not cold or hot or lancing or needle-like. It’s an electronic impulse traveling through tiny threads of organic matter through your body.

How then, do we describe pain?

We don’t.

Wait what?

Here’s the deal: pain is nothing in and of itself. There is no such thing as pain for pain’s sake. There is always a cause. Even psychological disorders where the person feels pain or sickness without physical symptoms are not pain for pain’s sake. They’re a malfunctioning of nerves in the brain, whether that’s hyperactivity or lack of activity.

Pain is always caused by some outside factor. In the above examples, the pain is caused when the cat decides to sink its claws into your flesh, when the cold from the ice cream becomes unbearable, and when the knife sort of… cuts you.

If the pain is simply a chemical and electrical reaction in your body, what can we describe?

The cause. You don’t have to describe the pain if you describe the cause well enough that the readers imagine it happening to themselves. Describe the tanned curve of the claws, the pop as they break through your jeans, and the silent sinking into your thigh, followed by the knee-jerk reaction that sends the confused and insulted cat to the floor where they stare miffed at you as you rub your leg before they trot off, wagging their tail like they meant to stab you.

Describe the muffled squelch of the knife making contact with your insides, the tickle of cold steel where steel isn’t meant to be, followed by the slow scrape as the knife is pulled free. The warmth of blood on your stomach and the trembling of your hands as you attempt to hold it in. Let your readers see the contortion of your face, the black flecks and swirls of color obscuring your vision, the roiling of your stomach and tightening of your chest. The difficulty in heaving in air, the slow drop to your knees. Sluggish thoughts and drooping eyelids. Each breath makes you shudder, your hands fall to your lap before you force them up again, attempting to keep yourself inside of you. Trembling, all over. Trembling.

We’ll imagine the pain.

Step Three: Remembering the Purpose

What is the purpose of pain? To show the conflict between right and wrong and the glory of the victory when it’s achieved. Don’t write pain just to have pain.

Let pain fuel your story, propel it forward. Then, when you’ve done that, you can edit it.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Then, after who knows how many edits, you’ll have it: pain that means something, that causes your reader to feel it directly. Pain that works for your story, and works well.