Introducing Critical Details...

Okay. I've got myself a quandary I'm hoping you all could help me out with.

Basically, I feel that my first chapter tries to introduce too much at once. I have some ideas for how to handle most of the information overload, but there's one section that is giving me fits.

This section introduces the various unit types of the Roman army, describing their armor and weaponry, their ages, the classes of society from which they are drawn, etc. Yes, it is every bit as dry and "expositiony" as it sounds. Unfortunately, it is also critical to understanding the later battles.

I'm thinking of handling this problem by gradually expanding my MC's POV, and leaving the introduction of the various classes of infantry until he finds himself in the position of commanding them.

Has anybody here done anything similar, expanding a character's awareness to encompass a broader "view" of the world around him/her? I think it fits in this case, as he gains experience and takes on more and more responsibility, but at the same time I'm hesitant that holding back the details of the army could make them jarring to the reader when they are introduced.

job - I should clarify. I've already written the book, written all the battles, and now I'm going back and revising. I'm not happy with the way the various classes of soldiers are introduced in Chapter I (the army marches, the soldiers are described, lots of exposition). It feels forced and it interrupts what should be a very fast and tense narrative.

There is a point, about a third of the way through the book, when the MC is elected tribune and placed in command of approx. 600 men. To this point he has served in the cavalry, and interaction with the infantry has been from a distance.

At this point, I feel I have one of two options:

1. Shift the description to his election as tribune, when he is reviewing his men for the first time.
2. Keep it in Chapter I, but revise it so it does not suck.

I prefer the first option...but these divisions of soldiers are the kind of a thing a Roman of the time would have known since boyhood...and I'm not sure if it would jar the reader more to hold off for so long. Thus the "expanding POV" idea. Not that my MC isn't aware of broader events - quite the opposite, in fact - but rather that his immediate awareness expands with his responsibility. So in, say, the first battle, the focus is on the cavalry action. The MC and thus the reader have a general idea of what the infantry is doing, but the mentions are vague as his immediate responsibility is to his cavalry squadron, not what the rest of the army is doing.

Hope that make some sense...

It makes perfect sense, BardSkye, which (apart from the forced nature) is one of the reasons I'm considering shifting it out of Chapter I.

But it is necessary information, critical to understanding how the MC fights his way free in the climactic battle. And it's a lot easier to manage the geography of the scene. To wit:

"The last rank of the hastati pulled back. The principes rushed forward, taking their place."

"The last rank of the men of the first rank pulled back. The men of the second rank rushed forward..."

wee - that's my thinking exactly. By shifting to later in the book, I can work the details into the narrative in a much more natural way.

frimble3 - there's very little of the "who gets to be a who" anywhere, even in the bloated mess that's currently taking up Chapter I. The basic grounds I cover...

Broad demographics (too young or poor to afford proper armor, etc). The Roman army at the time divided its men on the basis of age and wealth. I don't go deep into it at all, but it is important to the story to recognize that the triarii, say, are the older, steadier soldiers in the legion.

Arms and Armor. What they carry and what they wear, again in broad terms. No treatises on swordmaking here. A few adjectives, maybe. To use the archer example, akin to mentioning that they carry longbows with a draw powerful enough to drive an arrow through plate steel at one hundred paces. Because, if they are facing cavalry, that sort of thing is good to know.

Basic numbers / organization. Numbers, basic units, place in battle line.

All of this comes into play, especially in the climactic battle, when the MC has to manage his "line changes" to break his way out of Hannibal's trap.

It may all come into play, but does the reader absolutely need to know it?

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I think without it, a number of readers would be confused, and those familiar with the period would be up in arms.

What is it we need to understand about the later battles? What the POV characters did? Explain it then, or trickle it in as part of character developement.

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What the POV characters did...and how they did it...and the how is a lot easier with a basic idea of what he has to work with.

Then there's the idea of color and detail. I hate it when authors give me too much information (I need to go back and count how many pages it took Colleen McCullough to go over how to properly put on and arrange a toga), but, when the central conflict of a story is war, and the MCs spend much of their time on campaign (if not in battle), it helps to have a vague sense of the soldiers they're around.

Who won? Do we need to know exactly step-by-step how it happened?

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The Romans lose, and lose bad. And I don't want to just tell the reader, I want to show them how, why. It may not be exactly step-by-step, but it is definitely from an on-the-ground perspective.

Is the books about the battles...or are the battles just there because they were in the character's lives...

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I wouldn't say the book is about the battles...but the characters and their attitudes, their political standing, alliances and rivalries, are all seriously impacted by the battles and the events in and surrounding them. But the battles do feature more prominently than they do in McCullough's books.

but I'd thin out that first chapter, by the sounds of it.

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Yep, I'm getting pretty much unanimous agreement on that one.

Just to make it clear...I don't mean to take the whole and just dump it later in the book. By the time the various classes would be introduced, the reader will already have a vague sense of how a typical legionnaire is armed, etc.

And I intend to make casual references to the various soldier classes from that point forward, keeping them in play.

What I don't want to do is spring this on the reader two pages before it becomes absolutely necessary to the story. I want to seed it in well before, so they don't get to page three hundred something and go, WTF, where'd those guys come from?