Need help writting a book a bit like LOTR.

This is a technique I learned for crowd scenes, but it may work for a battle scene. Maybe it's worth a shot.

First, make one or two sweeping generalizations about the crowd of people. Then, give one or two details about the setting. Next, focus in one two or three people and what they're doing.

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66373 Will be of some help

That's the key. Stories and the events in them happen to characters. Give enough detail to show what's going on, then focus on specific characters and the battle they experience. Don't try to give a wargamer's eye view of the battle as a whole. Show the small fights that make up the MC's battle.

What many pros do is they base their battles off of historical battles. By doing this they can know the incomes, why someone succeeded, and where everyone should be at once. Then from there you just need to piece your characters in, and put in their point of views. Generally just stick magic with the archers or with canons.

A lot of good advice already. You might want to check out one or two of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books or the old Conan books (same guy, who knew?!) I'm sure there are others as well, but these are some of my more memoriable descriptions of battle scenes.

Personally, I note a lot of people try to suddenly thrust their character into the general's seat for the information. So you have a peon who barely knows how to swing a sword suddenly understanding what a flanking movement is and why his company is moving backwards to 'deny the line'. If that meant nothing to you, that is fine, but, in the story where I read that, I understood it and just shook my head. It is much better to keep your POVs straight.

Now to do this, you have to understand what happens in the larger battle. For this, you can look to historical battles or to a number of strategy games that are out there. I hear there is actually one guy who does his battles by playing a game like Rome: Total War and then writing the action into his book/stories. All he has to do then is figure out which company his character(s) would be in.

the old Conan books (same guy, who knew?!)

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Jordan wrote some Conan books, as did many other writers. R.E. Howard invented Conan.

Well, it depends heavily on the scale of the battle scene and what part of it that the MC is supposed to experience. A general will have to think and face conflicts (both martial and narrative) on an entirely different level from a warrior on the very first rank of the battle-line. And a general whose idea of leadership is charging at the head of his troops will experience things very differently from one who prefers to stand back and retain control over the whole force at her disposal.

I agree with Dominic that it would be totally unrealistic (not to mention no fun to read) when a character with no combat experience or military education at all suddenly becomes a military genius who knows every little bit of military terminology; but I beg to differ in the matter of Wheel of Time, because most of the battles in that series have a strikingly modern feel that really threw me out of the story. Maybe that's just because I've read way too much of Caesar and Xenophon and the like--their works are so vivid that they spoil my enjoyment of the vast majority of fantasy battle scenes I read.

Tolkien's battle scenes in Lord of the Rings work for me because they remind me so much of Beowulf, the Battle of Maldon, and the Icelandic sagas--but then he was a professor with a very intimate knowledge of such literary works, and we surely can't expect every fantasy writer to devote so much singleminded obsession to his/her project as Tolkien did.

One good way to get a grip on the techniques for writing battle scenes is to diversify you reading beyond the fantasy genre. Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series is a good example to emulate--he has a good hand at building up the tension and delivering the release in a satisfying climax. His description of Sharpe's swordsmanship and of the (outdated) line vs. column logic in the major battles make me cringe, but it does not dissuade me from reading on as much as Jordan's battles do.

Another idea is to ransack the local library for translations of...well, old stuff. The Iliad is still the bloodiest work of literature I've ever read, and it's still my first choice to read when I'm in the mood to kill something. Xenophon's Anabasis is a first-hand account of a celebrated military retreat, as full of diplomacy and politics as it is of battles and skirmishes, not to mention that it contains many personal anecdotes that can help you understand how to give a personal touch to narratives of war.

I've also written some amateur essays on pre-modern warfare specifically for the use of fantasy writers, but I don't know which one of them I should pimp out to you without more specific information about what kind of situation you actually have in mind.

Ever read The Horse and His Boy, by C. S. Lewis? It's nominally a children's book, but it has a battle scene near the end that nicely illustrates the way a battle looks dramatically different to different characters. At the start of the battle, the viewpoint is focused on the main character, who is actually in the battle, but has no experience of them. It describes the horrific noise, the sense of absolute chaos, the way things devolve into just trying to stay on his horse and stay alive. Then it cuts away to a more experienced character watching magically, from a distance, who narrates in terms of flanking maneuvers and sorties.

If you have multiple viewpoint characters, you might want to play with something like this. A general will see a completely different battle from a footsoldier, and the footsoldier will have a different perspective than an archer on the walls. One or more of them might have an inaccurate perception of what's going on. For instance, the new peasant recruit, shocked by the amount of death and suffering around him, might assume that the battle is being lost when it's actually going as well as can be expected. (This, I'm guessing, was a major reason to have a flag or a battle standard in less technological times. Armies might sometimes rout because of the perception of defeat, and a flag was a simple symbol conveying, "You still have a leader. This army is still alive.")

I suppose the main rule is to personalize the battle. In Tolkien, the battle of Helm's Deep might have been dry or boring if it hadn't been for Gimli and Legolas, playing their rather macabre orc-counting game to keep their spirits up. Like everything else, the reader must have a stake in the battle. It has to matter somehow. You could convincingly write a battle where it doesn't matter who wins; plenty of anti-war books and movies do a good job of portraying war (particularly World War I, the most infamous example) as a senseless meat-grinder where everyone loses. But there has to be something there that the reader cares about, whether it's the life of one character or the survival of a city.

Izunya

The very first thing anyone researching battle scenes should do is run - don't walk - RUN to the bookshop and pick up a copy of the brilliant war novel "WAR AND PEACE" by Leo Tolstoy.

That's the gold standard of battle writing. Whether you want massive troop movements, or combat seen through a single soldier's eyes, you've got it. And it's stellar writing, and a joy to read.

Don't let Charlie Brown and Linus fool you. This is one incredible book.

Izunya said:

One or more of them might have an inaccurate perception of what's going on.

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Nope. All of them will have perspectives that are inaccurate to some degree, though the scale of this inaccuracy and its potential impact to the course of the battle as a whole varies greatly from participant to participant.

It is perfectly true, however, that standards serve this role of keeping the troops' morale up, in addition to being a godawfully important signaling device. Standard goes this way, troops follow; standard goes that way troops follow; standard falls, troops get confused. A good illustration of this is a folk story related to the battle of Nagyszeben/Hermannstadt/Sibiu (22 March 1442) between the Hungarians and the Turks. A good summary of this battle (as well as several other battles involving the medieval Hungarians) is available here: http://www.warfareeast.co.uk/main/Hungarian_Battles.htm

badducky said:

The very first thing anyone researching battle scenes should do is run - don't walk - RUN to the bookshop and pick up a copy of the brilliant war novel "WAR AND PEACE" by Leo Tolstoy.

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Well, I'd second this recommendation. Many people would question the book's applicability to modern writing, but there are very few battle scenes that stick as strongly in my mind as the one where Nikolai Rostov falls from his horse and gets chased into the bush by French skirmishers. Or the one where he nearly gets ridden down by a column of friendly cuirassiers!

What is most valuable from the book, however, is the appended note on the subject of battle narratives, where Tolstoy discusses the "fog of war" and its applicability to fiction writing. It is present in the Louise & Aylmer Maude translation, but I don't know whether it can also be found in other editions/translations.

KishaN said:

Well as the topic title says. The book is called 'Beasts and Harlots', and I need a bit of advice on how to make the battle scenes effective and for it to portray everything a battle should. Also I need a little bit of help on how to have a good opening on chapters.

Thanks.

Kishan.

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I had the same problem, so I grabbed a copy of "Pirates of the Caribbean" and wrote all the moves of the fight scenes then incorporated some of them into my story. It helps.

kim

My first advice in regard to "writing a book a bit like LOTR" would be:

Don't.

First, it's been done. By a guy named Tolkien, who was pretty good at it.

Second, twelve-thousand six-hundred forty-two other young writers are doing the same thing. Not one of them is anywhere near as good as Tolkien.

Third, go write something new and different and creative.

caw

blacbird said:

My first advice in regard to "writing a book a bit like LOTR" would be:

Don't.

First, it's been done. By a guy named Tolkien, who was pretty good at it.

Second, twelve-thousand six-hundred forty-two other young writers are doing the same thing. Not one of them is anywhere near as good as Tolkien.

Third, go write something new and different and creative.

caw

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I could not agree with this more, and I write what people unfamiliar with the genre might call Tolkienesque. Even within the realms of epic or high fantasy, there is an incredibly wide range of approaches and styles. Carve out someplace for yourself with a unique vision.

Not to mention that if you are just starting to emulate or simply admire Tolkien because of the cinematic adaptations, you are two generations behind the game.

I've wanted to do a LOTR thing; but it would have to be for fun since it probably wouldn't be a sellable, like the above poster said, it's been done a thousand times over. I'd have to decide if I want to do it bad enough to spend a year on a novel that will end up on a desk drawer.

I also always thought I had one good pulp novel in me. I may do that instead. It'd be easier to write and if it doesn't sell, It wouldn't be as much of a waste.

Hm, Blacbird, I hesitate to tell anyone not to write something they enjoy.

Children's Literature is very hard to do well, and a saturated marketplace, but people still find a way to surprise me, and others, within some of the most limiting conventions.

You never know, after all. Tolkein-esque writing may be tiresome today, but by the time the OP finally finishes the darn thing, he/she could be on the brink of a new renaissance.

And between then and now, the OP spent time writing something they enjoy.

My ten cents.

If the OP wants to go for it, I say, go. Should be fun at any rate.

badducky said:

"WAR AND PEACE" by Leo Tolstoy.

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Ew.

No.

Why not? It is a great book. Somehow I had more fun reading it than, say, Terry Brooks's Shannara series or Raymond Feist's Midkemia books...

It does need a rather patient reader, though. I'm one, since I can rarely decide whether a book is any good until I've read ten thousand words or so, but the same is not definitely not true for everyone.

I think Tad Williams did a creditable job with it in his Green Angel Tower series.

Athenais said:

I think Tad Williams did a creditable job with it in his Green Angel Tower series.

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I wasn't thinking of epic quest fantasy in general - I wouldn't say Memory, Sorrow and Thorn was trying to be LOTR.

Dennis McKiernan and Terry Brooks most definitely were. That's where the low bar is set.

MattW said:

I wasn't thinking of epic quest fantasy in general - I wouldn't say Memory, Sorrow and Thorn was trying to be LOTR.

Dennis McKiernan and Terry Brooks most definitely were. That's where the low bar is set.

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Ouch. But you are correct.