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Okay - so I'm in the midst of outlining the story for WIP #2, and came across a stumbling block I'm having a bit of difficulty figuring out how to address. Hoping you all may have some suggestions.
The basic situation:
Longtime soldier lets his cousin talk him out of retirement to serve in one last campaign, and when he returns to the army, he links up with numerous friends and colleagues from his past. The ensuing battle is a disaster, and at least 2/3 of the army perishes in the fighting. Oh, and all of this unfolds by the end of the second chapter (out of a planned sixteen).
My dilemma:
While a number of my MCs friends survive the battle, and prove essential to the later story, a great many of them die in the fighting. The thing is, though, this is all very early in the story, and I want to keep things rolling, not venture off into reunionland. At the same time, I don't want to focus exclusively on the three or four friends who survive, because I always hate it in books and movies when all of the heroes friends conveniently survive disasters while everyone else dies around them.
So...I suppose I'm looking for suggestions/opinions on how to introduce a larger number of characters and then kill most of them off in the space of about a chapter.
The best solution I've managed to come up with is alluding to a larger number, but focusing on five or maybe six close friends, then killing half of them off (and possibly having some of those alluded friends take more prominence later on).
Make sense?
The basic situation:
Longtime soldier lets his cousin talk him out of retirement to serve in one last campaign, and when he returns to the army, he links up with numerous friends and colleagues from his past. The ensuing battle is a disaster, and at least 2/3 of the army perishes in the fighting. Oh, and all of this unfolds by the end of the second chapter (out of a planned sixteen).
My dilemma:
While a number of my MCs friends survive the battle, and prove essential to the later story, a great many of them die in the fighting. The thing is, though, this is all very early in the story, and I want to keep things rolling, not venture off into reunionland. At the same time, I don't want to focus exclusively on the three or four friends who survive, because I always hate it in books and movies when all of the heroes friends conveniently survive disasters while everyone else dies around them.
So...I suppose I'm looking for suggestions/opinions on how to introduce a larger number of characters and then kill most of them off in the space of about a chapter.
The best solution I've managed to come up with is alluding to a larger number, but focusing on five or maybe six close friends, then killing half of them off (and possibly having some of those alluded friends take more prominence later on).
Make sense?