question about a scene involving a space fleet

This tip works best if you're good at visualising things. If you aren't, work on it. If you don't know how, PM me and I'll share the exercises I used.

Visualise the scene you're trying to portray, as though it were a clip from a film. Pick your favourite sort of film - the usual is third person, but you get to include thoughts and feelings without needing a smug voice-over talking about how he or she won the war single-handed.


Start your viewpoint in with the trainees - include what they're hearing (i.e. the soft hum of the life support system, the hiss of a passing cleaning robot) and what they smell (such as the crisp, clean and entirely artificial scent of a new spacecar). Look at them, all young and innocent and freshly-pressed (are those nice new uniforms perfectly comfortable?). Become one of them, nervous and hopeful and trying so very hard not to dance with anticipation - and then turn and look out of the window/at the viewscreen. See what they're seeing, see it for the first time with them, and write it down.

This is the book of the film. Your film. And your film is a 5-D performance. It comes in smell-o-vision, it comes in taste-o-matic, and it comes in a full-feedback VR suit.

I pity Hollywood. They only get two senses to play with.

It's going to depend on the space combat mechanics you want for your universe.

Are we talking about exchanging broadsides, or brief engagements as the opposing forces streak past each other? Is it more like Star Trek, or are they engaging each other from across the solar system?

Once you can imagine the battle itself, you can think about how a spectator might see it.

Or perhaps don't write an intro to it. Show it to your readers as your trainees file in, in their memories and situation.
"I'm going to do as well as The Frost did in the interplanitary war of '15."
"But they were slaughtered," said the pleb sitting next to him in the shuttle.
"Yes," he frowned at his reflection on the new plastisteal bulkhead.

One thing to realize about a space fleet is that they're not going to look like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. In reality, these ships are going to be spread out over thousands of miles so you may not see one from the other.

A way to have a sensawunda about it all is to have one specific detail, for example how big a single ship is, the number of people on it, the amount of power it requires, how fast it moves, some kind of amazing fact that gives a sense of the scale and scope. Then extrapolate that out to the thousands (?) of other ships that are the same gargantuan size.

Maybe that helps?

I'm not quite sure what you are asking. Seeing the space fleet for the first time or a space battle? Do you have a bunch of trainees from small backwater planet arriving at the major space force base were are the ships are located and if so are the ships in orbit over the planet or on the surface of the planet? Or are they aboard a vessel that's actually in combat? What they see or do in a battle is going to be very dependent on what technology you decide to give your space fleet. If weapons and ships move at a reasonable fraction of the speed of light you're going to have a totally different scenario than if it takes minutes between the time the enemy launches it's weapons to time of impact with your vessel. But if you've going for anything semi realistic about all they will see is beings sitting at consoles and targets indicated by icons on display screens.