The Ultimate Guide to Writing Fantasy Warfare
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 มิ.ย. 2024
- Unlock the secrets to crafting captivating battle scenes in fantasy. From understanding the stakes and developing realistic tactics to incorporating magic and creating memorable characters, this video covers everything you need to elevate your warfare storytelling.
If you find this video helpful, please consider giving it a like, and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel for more content on storytelling, worldbuilding and fantasy writing.
#Worldbuilding #WorldbuildingAdvice #WorldbuildingGuide #WorldbuildingTips #Storytelling #StorytellingAdvice #StorytellingGuide #StorytellingTips #FantasyWriting #CreativeWriting #WritingAdvice #WritingTips
Transform Your Fantasy Writing in Just 5 Minutes a Week: Sign Up for the Tale Tinkerer Newsletter here => thetaletinkerer.com/newsletter/
Never ever underestimate practical things either, if you have any RTS games, like Mount and Blade, Civilisation, Age of Empires, Total War, or the Paradox series these can act as a great outline, of conflicts, factions, potential reasons for wars, history and a tonne of background information that you normally wouldn't think about can be extracted from resources like RTS games, it's also a good way to avoid burning yourself out as you get to have some entertainment whilst you're learning/planning.
I've personally used Total War many times for inspiration with my battles, just because of highly detailed the battle sections of the games are, allowing you to get a visual understanding of the terrain, weather, foliage and how that could affect or be used in a battle. Strategies, manoeuvres and tactics are all at the players disposal allowing you to essentially act out the battle in real time before you turn it into narrative form.
Total war also due to it's sandbox nature on the campaign map allows for you to craft lore and storylines around certain generals, armies and the battles they fight in, the game will also generate some basic traits for you depending on which game you're playing which can help a lot with adding depth to the more minor characters that may appear, but you don't think necessarily need hundreds of pages of backstory, another good way to give superficial depth to characters in or around armies is to remember that an army is a moving city, everybody has another job on top of being a fighter, soldiers had to double as cobblers, blacksmiths, farriers, butchers, hunters, and more.
Another really good tip, is to learn about real historical practices within warfare of your chosen time period, and compare it with your unique fantasy setting, what exists in your world that would improve, alter, or have to be considered in military doctrine. If their are dragons and wyverns, would people have developed advanced trench warfare systems to avoid dragon fire, could these flying creatures be used to maintain supply lines over land based animals and vehicles. How could your magic system affect transportation, movement, and the daily struggles of a soldier within an army, or affect an army on the whole.
Once you've gone through the process of tailoring real world military doctrine with your own settings rules and systems, you'll have essentially created a military doctrine for your own world, stuff that would be the norm or common knowledge for the average military man, this is where you can start to have a lot of fun, because now you can begin to break the military doctrine, by using things that would be considered out of the norm for your setting, this will allow you craft tactics, strategies and plans that will be as equally surprising for the audience, as well as for the in-universe characters. The Greatest military leaders, who are revered as genius's all broke what was considered the norm in their era.
One thing that is essential in my opinion is to understand scale, real battle formations would extend for a few kilometres, Alexander the great during the battle of Issus had his army spread out over 1Km, at the battle of Gaugamela some historians have said it extended upto 3-5Km long. Set piece battles are large, and that needs to be carefully conveyed to the reader so they can truly understand the scale of the battle that's happening.
Realistic numbers are also super important, remember to always keep the size of the armies reasonable, it's already difficult to comprehend 100,000 people fighting a battle so always ere to the smaller scale, battles, it will be much easier for the reader to understand and handle, also understanding how real battles played out, surprisingly enough the death rate for medieval and ancient battles was actually quite low, the majority of the deaths came from fleeing/routing causing a stampede, being chased down whilst fleeing, sickness, disease, and infection. Soldiers would very rarely fight to the death, so battles would end as soon as it became clear who the winner was going to be, keeping the death toll of the battles you stage relatively low and reasonable will only add too, and make it even more poignant when a battle does have a high death toll. I say keep the death toll low, because you should allow your character to lose and not have it be the end of the world for them, I've read many stories where the protagonist never loses a battle, and it gets stale after a while, because all the tension is gone, allow your characters to lose and to grow from the consequences.
I have a tiny pet peeve, in that a lot of historical/fantasy stuff I read tend to skip over any sort of impact a battle should realistically have on characters, unless the basis of the novel is to explore those specific scenes, but I've read many books where people just go through war after war, battle after battle and it never seems to dent their happy go lucky spirit, we should see how all of these things have begun to weigh on the shoulders of your characters.
You're right about the unsung heroes, sometimes the best way to write a battle scene, is through the eyes of the people who have to deal with it's consequences, that have to help or support but don't actually see any fighting, you could write an entire war from the perspective of a field nurse, a maid, an arrow boy who fetches the quivers of arrows for the archers on the front line, or an administrator who suddenly has to deal with handling supply lines, storage, hospitality, food, water supply, medicine, and more.
One of the best ways I've seen perspective done in medieval/ancient battles was in a Chinese web novel book, called Mediterranean Hegemon of Ancient Greece, the author often centred every battle around 5 main perspectives.
1) The Main character, who was a general, so the reader would see the overall, big picture through the main characters eyes.
2) A Veteran within the army, normally an officer, this would allow the reader to see a battle through the perspective of someone who is leading on the frontline and having to react spontaneously in the moment.
3) A rookie, this perspective lets the reader view the battle through the untrained eye of the common foot soldier who's thrust into battle for the first time, allowing us to see and hear the chaos first hand
4) The Enemy commander, and 5) an enemy foot soldier, as this not only lets the reader see the capabilities of the adversary the character they're following has to over come, it also helps to illustrate the advantages and disadvantages within the army of the people we're rooting for to be victorious, the enemy commander can reveal to the reader weaknesses to be taken advantage of that can increase the stakes and tension within a battle, it also really ups the tension when you get to see both sides scheming their plans, to see which one will come out on top.
Kinda wrote a short story worth of tips, but i think all of these things but these all things I think are important
Incredibly valuable insights here, I'm sure others coming across the comment will appreciate it :)
I do agree in regards to videogames as a good "testing ground" btw. Played a ton of RTS back in the days as well ^^
Enjoyed the supporting visuals along with the great commentary. Well-organized, pithy, good selection of clips. ... My eight-year-old came in halfway through to watch with me, and I got a little nervous, since combat was the topic and some of the clips are violent, but you managed to cut them well, making the point without overdoing it. ... Subs climbing (25% since I came along), production values soaring. Keep at it. You've got something good going here. ... I strongly agree with your warnings about spectacle and fireworks falling flat if the stakes are weak or the battle gets lost in the details without showing the impacts on the characters and also internal conflicts.
Thank you for taking the time to leave that feedback, much appreciated :) Also glad to hear that you are noticing the production value going up. I'm trying to ramp up production quality and content depth since I'm focusing on my creative work (incl. TH-cam) full-time for now, and having it noticed already is obviously incredibly motivating.
@@TheTaleTinkerer The most successful channels (at least for creative endeavors) offer scripted and tight commentary, intense attention to supporting clips, and good visuals on the host when speaking (nice backdrop, clear and loud-enough sound, voice not monotone). I see all of that climbing in your work, which I think is a good sign. Content is still the reason people will come, but production values help reach and sustain a wider audience.
Great video as usual.
In general, obviously, this depends on the story/author, but I would think for the most part. The best approach is, as you mentioned, treating war scenes as a large canvas for pating. Using broad strokes to help visualize a complete picture.
But, then, focusing on the main character(s), the finer details of the painting, to help move and progress the story.
Epic battles are great, but very few people want to read page after page or repetitive tactics, violence, and death.
I watched a video recently that highlighted a Superman movie with a six minute long battle where Kal-El and Zod are just punching each other with escalating visuals as they break buildings and whatnot. So dull! Punch. Punch again. Building damaged. Building damaged again. What's coming next? That's right! Another punch. ... My goodness. ... Scenes need new things to happen, different things. Repeating action types might be realistic, but repetition is boring. If it's absolutely needed in spots, starting using short tells and glossing over. Otherwise, bring in new thing, next new thing, and new thing after that. So much more interesting: balance things out, vary pacing, sentences, too.
Glad to hear you liked this one too, really trying to ramp up quality of production and content depth :) Appreciate you being so active here since the beginnig.
Read the Malazan books and don't do that. Seriously that series has the worst action I've ever read.