Is anyone else working on a military thriller? I've just finished what I hope is my final edit and am about to start marketing a manuscript, but I'd love to bounce ideas off of anyone else in the same boat. One of my specific challenges is how to de-Navyify enough of my story to make it make sense for people who have never served. (I spent 10 years in the Navy, and although I've been a "normal" person for 3.5 years now, some things just don't leave you.) I also wonder sometimes if I'm putting in too much detail and dialogue that would exist in these situations but might bore readers.
How do you balance realism and repetition? For example, a lot of orders in the Navy get "repeatbacks," where the person receiving the order repeats it back to affirm it's the correct one. This is realistic, and it would sound wrong to me without it, but am I going to bore people out of their minds?
I've tried to limit my number of infodumps on technology and ships (though I know some folks in the genre love that stuff, it bores me as a reader, so I hate writing it), but how much is too much? How much is not enough? I've read a lot in the genre, even if it isn't my genre of choice, but some of it is so awful and unrealistic that I want to throw a book across the room instead of finishing it. Some of it is super correct and terribly written. Where is the happy medium?
How do you balance realism and repetition? For example, a lot of orders in the Navy get "repeatbacks," where the person receiving the order repeats it back to affirm it's the correct one. This is realistic, and it would sound wrong to me without it, but am I going to bore people out of their minds?
I've tried to limit my number of infodumps on technology and ships (though I know some folks in the genre love that stuff, it bores me as a reader, so I hate writing it), but how much is too much? How much is not enough? I've read a lot in the genre, even if it isn't my genre of choice, but some of it is so awful and unrealistic that I want to throw a book across the room instead of finishing it. Some of it is super correct and terribly written. Where is the happy medium?