Tips on Describing Big A$$ Space Battle?

talktidy · Oct 24, 2019

Space battles of the pew, pew, pew sort, not the scrupulously scientifically correct sort.

My space opera requires a major character to observe an enemy fleet attacking Earth, and Earth's defences mobilising its own fleet. My character is besides himself, because he is not present to take part in the action and back up his fellow officers.

At the moment I have seven capital ships on team defence, meeting five attacking main ships, though there is a host of smaller vessels piling in too. The attackers have better capability.

I have had a few runs at the scene, but it's like pulling teeth. I'm lacking inspiration to describe the dance of ship movements. At the moment I would settle for adequate. Adequate can be improved on.

So, my question is how to describe the action and how to make it interesting and compelling?

Kjbartolotta · Oct 24, 2019

I still think the best book I ever read for hard SF space battles is Scott Westerfield's Killing of Worlds. Of course, hard SF creates tons of issues because the distances involved are enormous and most of the crunchy action takes places over milliseconds. And ships can't turn that quickly and there's no such thing as stealth in space.

Curious to see people's input, as I might have wondered about this question myself.

MythMonger · Oct 24, 2019

Most big battle scenes can be condensed into what the main character can process, and their reaction to what they're witnessing.

What would your MC notice? What would they think of it?

talktidy · Oct 24, 2019

MythMonger said:
Most big battle scenes can be condensed into what the main character can process, and their reaction to what they're witnessing.

What would your MC notice? What would they think of it?

He's a well-trained tactical officer, so he's going to notice lots and anticipate how the enemy fleet will jump. My problem is deciding how to show that.

Bufty · Oct 24, 2019

talktidy said:
He's a well-trained tactical officer, so he's going to notice lots and anticipate how the enemy fleet will jump. My problem is deciding how to show that.

Would he perhaps be mentally envisaging and weighing up the situation and deciding action or commands based upon what he's seeing on screen (assuming anything meaningful can be seen at all) and/or hearing from his communications officers?

What images are he 'seeing' -what's he imagining and thinking? Strategy? Orders? Bigger issues I would imagine than 'noticing lots'.

Roxxsmom · Oct 24, 2019

A lot will depend on the narrative viewpoint of the story or scene. Are you planning on showing this from a large-scale omniscient or external view, or are you going to be in the viewpoint of a particular character on a particular ship?

How do some of your favorite SF writers describe them? I like CJ Cherryh's space battles, because she generally writes them from a fairly tight limited third, so you get a sense of what a given character is doing, thinking, feeling and experiencing when ships are firing at each other. Hers are a bit more technical, because she stays fairly true to the physics of her universe in most respects (lots of concern about ship speed coming out of "jump", vector, communication lags, maneuverability and the great distances involved, and the effects of vector changes on the people within the ships), but they are grounded in the characters' perception and knowledge of the situation. Note they don't generally "see" the other ships in the battles, as they rely on sensors to detect their location and condition.

There are plenty of other writers who incorporate climactic space battles into their stories--some with more attention to the in-world physics of how the ships work, some more on the level of Star Wars. It's hard to give specific advice without knowing what type of novel you are most inspired by. I think it's the same question that comes up in fantasy and SF a lot, actually--how to describe combat and battles in a way that gives the reader a view of what is happening without getting so bogged down in details they lose their connection with the characters.

Paul Lamb · Oct 24, 2019

Didn't Ender's Game do this in its ultimate "simulation"? You may find some ideas there.

Dan Rhys · Oct 24, 2019

I have only some experience reading sci fi and none writing it...however, since sound cannot travel through space, I think recognizing that and focusing on perhaps a dizzying array of lights flashing during the battle--a sort of eerily silent destruction--would be my approach to it. Take it for what it's worth.

ironmikezero · Oct 25, 2019

Keep in mind that respective distances between opponents will likely be vast (well beyond visual range), so long-range sensor arrays and data transmission/flow will be critical. By manipulating and/or interrupting that data flow you can deftly ratchet up tension on the bridges of your opposing vessels. You could even have the entire encounter played out in miniature via a 3-D hologram on the command deck. Have some fun with it.

benbenberi · Oct 25, 2019

Since he's a tactical officer, he's likely to be trying to figure out what the participants will do next, and react in some way when they do something he didn't expect or doesn't agree with. What's his source of information about what's going on? Where is he located relative to the action? There may be some time-lag between the action and when he observes it, or even (depending on the scale of the battle) some time-lag between the active parties that might shape what they do and how they react/anticipate each other. How does this affect his experience of what's going on?

I suggest that, since your character is observing the battle, not directly part of it, you might want to focus more on his reactions than on merely blow-by-blow choreography of the action. It will become interesting and compelling to the extent you can get across how it's affecting the character we already care about.

talktidy · Nov 2, 2019

My thanks to everyone who pitched in on this topic. Food for thought and reassuring that I was running on similar lines to what some of you suggested.

Introversion · Nov 2, 2019

talktidy said:
Space battles of the pew, pew, pew sort, not the scrupulously scientifically correct sort.

...

So, my question is how to describe the action and how to make it interesting and compelling?

I’ve tried writing space opera myself, and wrestled with this too. Here’s an unsorted collection of the things I was mulling:

If the physics are “bog standard”, then it’s virtually impossible to sneak up on an enemy. Ships (especially accelerating) will be hot and impossible to “cloak”.

With standard physics, if you can see someone, you can shoot at them from far away. Sure, they can maneuver but unless your firing is visible to them, they may not know to dodge.

Standard lasers will spread enough not to be effective except close in.

Armor has mass, and mass “costs” to accelerate or decelerate, so ships aren’t likely to be thickly plated.

Cheapest/simplest way to ablate armor is probably to fire buckets of sand at incoming ships?

If your AI is good (better than today’s), you’re probably not going to have people targeting and firing - you’re going to turn that over to your software and hope for the best.

Likewise, if you have human crews, and your ships aren’t massive & slow-moving, you can probably accelerate to levels lethal to unprotected humans, so if you’ve turned over your offense & defense to software, your crew had better be protected in some fashion - injected full of “crash fluid” or whatever, to keep their organs from bouncing around too much, or their bodies from becoming paste.

Personally, I was playing with “magic physics” like FTL in another space where it was extremely difficult to actually hit another ship there with weapons, so battles involved getting so close to another that you could drag them into normal space (with handwavium), where you’d be so close to them that any heavy weapons would be fatal to both, and then you’d try to actually board and go hand-to-hand. Because, for purposes of describing the battle, it’s something more familiar to readers. Plus, hand-to-hand in spaaaace. :hooray:

talktidy · Nov 2, 2019

Introversion said:
I’ve tried writing space opera myself, and wrestled with this too. Here’s an unsorted collection of the things I was mulling:

If the physics are “bog standard”, then it’s virtually impossible to sneak up on an enemy. Ships (especially accelerating) will be hot and impossible to “cloak”.

With standard physics, if you can see someone, you can shoot at them from far away. Sure, they can maneuver but unless your firing is visible to them, they may not know to dodge.

Standard lasers will spread enough not to be effective except close in.

Armor has mass, and mass “costs” to accelerate or decelerate, so ships aren’t likely to be thickly plated.

Cheapest/simplest way to ablate armor is probably to fire buckets of sand at incoming ships?

If your AI is good (better than today’s), you’re probably not going to have people targeting and firing - you’re going to turn that over to your software and hope for the best.

Likewise, if you have human crews, and your ships aren’t massive & slow-moving, you can probably accelerate to levels lethal to unprotected humans, so if you’ve turned over your offense & defense to software, your crew had better be protected in some fashion - injected full of “crash fluid” or whatever, to keep their organs from bouncing around too much, or their bodies from becoming paste.

Personally, I was playing with “magic physics” like FTL in another space where it was extremely difficult to actually hit another ship there with weapons, so battles involved getting so close to another that you could drag them into normal space (with handwavium), where you’d be so close to them that any heavy weapons would be fatal to both, and then you’d try to actually board and go hand-to-hand. Because, for purposes of describing the battle, it’s something more familiar to readers. Plus, hand-to-hand in spaaaace.

If I had the foggiest notion where my collection of Hornblower books went, I would have looked up some of the sea battles. Yes, yes, I know they are radically different things, but I wanted a sense of the flow of action and how C S Forrester described the action.

Introversion · Nov 2, 2019

talktidy said:
If I had the foggiest notion where my collection of Hornblower books went, I would have looked up some of the sea battles. Yes, yes, I know they are radically different things, but I wanted a sense of the flow of action and how C S Forrester described the action.

Hornblower, yasss!

Doing the hand-to-hand combat trope may seem too old-fashioned, and maybe it is, but it does have the advantage of being easier to imagine and describe. I’m just not sure it’s realistic either to posit space combat that’s akin to dog-fighting — like Star Wars does. I think The Expanse is closer to what it might be like, if “only” you had a really efficient engine and a way to prop the crews up under hard acceleration?

talktidy · Nov 2, 2019

Introversion said:
Hornblower, yasss!

... and a way to prop the crews up under hard acceleration?

Less delta-v. More pew, pew, pew.

Klope3 · Nov 6, 2019

As much as many of us may love the epic, "pew-pew" space battles we see in TV and movies, I think the urge to pay homage to them in writing is a bit misguided. Writing is not a visual medium, so most attempts to communicate flashy visuals with any kind of written detail are going to fall flat. Spending several paragraphs describing the movement of fighters, the flashing of lasers, the glare of explosions, etc. is just going to slow down the plot. Space battles in movies only move as fast as they do because video is so efficient at communicating visual detail.

Who knows, maybe your readers want to spend paragraphs reading about that stuff. Just my two cents.

talktidy · Nov 6, 2019

Klope3 said:
As much as many of us may love the epic, "pew-pew" space battles we see in TV and movies, I think the urge to pay homage to them in writing is a bit misguided. Writing is not a visual medium, so most attempts to communicate flashy visuals with any kind of written detail are going to fall flat. Spending several paragraphs describing the movement of fighters, the flashing of lasers, the glare of explosions, etc. is just going to slow down the plot. Space battles in movies only move as fast as they do because video is so efficient at communicating visual detail.

Who knows, maybe your readers want to spend paragraphs reading about that stuff. Just my two cents.

But I wantz more pew.

Believe me, I am all too well aware of the dichotomy between visual pyrotechnics and the business of conveying the same action on the page. One of my all time favourite TV space battles was in second season Babylon 5, where the bad guys crawled out of the woodwork and made their move against a Narn fleet, but I would be at a loss if I tried to convert that to prose.

Some of my favourite writers like CJ Cherryh - as Roxxmom mentioned above - and Lois McMaster Bujold have a sure touch with this stuff - me? not so much.

Tips on Describing Big A$$ Space Battle?

talktidy

Kjbartolotta

Potentially has/is dog

MythMonger

Willing to Learn

talktidy

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?

Roxxsmom

Beastly Fido

Paul Lamb

Dan Rhys

ironmikezero

practical experience, FTW

benbenberi

practical experience, FTW

talktidy

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!

talktidy

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!

talktidy

Klope3

talktidy