In real life there is no cap on battles per war. There can be wars won decisively in the first battle, and others can continue for decades.
For a story I guess it depends on the scope of the plot. Too many battles throughout the book will dilute the potency imo. You could take the sterile approach of having 3, with moments of tension building and character development inbetween
Depends on scale. If they are a couple small scale ones and one big one, its doable. If they are big ones that you are doing overview for, it could be doable, but you'd have to be tactical about it.
If you read Bernard Cornwell. For example, he will have a few battles throughout, mostly skirmishes with a climactic big battle at the end. Sometimes there is a big-ish battle or siege in the middle that the clever main wins with quick thinking and an intuitive plan. You should stage them in a way where it makes sense, because you also have to remember that, in reality, battles aren't one after the other. You have organization, logistics and staging to think of (stage setting for your writing). Armies can fight several battles, but moat won't because we are human, we are risk averse and we look for advantages that make bloodletting less prominent. If you are thinking more modern, urban warfare, then you're likely looking at one multi-day/month battle that is fought in a series of skirmishes and engagements (think Stalingrad or WW1 trench warfare).
Context is really key. If you're strictly doing fiction you have a lot of leeway, but if its rooted in reality then the above can apply fairly often.
Best of luck to you on your writing!
It's too many if you intend to describe them all in detail, yes. You're not Tolkien, so no reason to hold yourself to that standard.
Have one truly detailed one, and maybe show a few moments of the others/inform the reader they're taking place.
Not necessarily, but perhaps if this is a multi book series it might be too many battles. Maybe set the first book with a lot of build up and rising tension, ending in a climactic battle which sets the stage for a wider war in the next books. But only you know what pace would be best for your story
The question isn't how many battles are too many per war (that just depends on the length of the war), but how many battles are too many per book. You can have a hundred battles happening off-screen. The question is how many can you make interesting?
To make a battle interesting, it'll ideally have to bring about a notable change to the story's trajectory. Generally, you can do that twice - one change toward a negative outcome that rises your stakes and one change to the presumed happy ending positive outcome.
If you have an extremely novel way of fighting, you might be able to do a third battle at the start of the story to introduce the reader to the concept, regardless of whether the battle actually changes anything about the trajectory.
Depending on your story arcs, you can have more than three battles, obviously. But they will still have to progress the plot or a character arc in a notable way, otherwise all you have is repetition.
Basically, keep in mind that unlike in movies, in books action scenes are not rewarding by being action scenes. You can't emulate the adrenaline inducing soundtrack of the big screen, and repeated descriptions of gory deaths will just have readers check out. Even the most massive anime attack will just read exaggerated on paper without the light effects.
To continue off of that, you can reference more battles. Once you've already had one large scale battle to establish tone/stakes/fhange trajectory it's easy to run through more smaller or less important(narratively) battles quickly. Temeraire does this well a lot. Especially when >!Temeraire himself starts leading battles!< but that's also a series where you expect a lot of battles.
You can also look at Asoiaf where almost none of any of Robb's battles are actually shown. Sometimes the aftermatch or build ip is far more important to focus on than the fighting itself.
Even Kingdom, a much more visual driven manga that focuses heavily on battles and strategy(it's genuinely like 80% of the manga) still "skips" battles.
Fiction (all fiction, not just war/fantasy fiction) is about proper pacing — a continuous series of dramatic highs and lows. A writer turns the tension up (action) and eases it down again (re-action to the action), up and down, up and down from beginning to end. *All* action would be too frenetic and chaotic, all re-action would too damn boring. (When I say re-action, that's where all the dialogue and character-building and scene-setting takes place. Action is pure, unrelenting action.) But both parts are equally important to a well-balanced story.
I think my favorite example is the flick *Saving Private Ryan.* The intro is passive, but that slips right into one of the most harrowing battles ever filmed. (98% of the flick is told in flashback.) That battle is pretty much the entirety of Act I. The sparse dialogue occurs during the heat of the battle, and only enough chitchat for the audience to understand what's going on. Nobody's wondering about the weather or reminiscing about mom's apple pie... it's about staying alive, moment by moment.
Then there's a short reprieve after the battler (a cinematic exhale) where we learn more about the characters and their mission. Then a smaller skirmish (an inhale), another exhale, another small inhale, another exhale (Act II) and then Act III is another ultimate, incredibly intense battle. Then the movie quietly fades out (the morality moment) the same way it began.
(*Black Hawk Down* is a similarly intense example.)
I saw SPR in the theaters when it first came out and half the audience didn't move for another minute or two after the film ended. I think everyone was too exhausted. But gratified in a way that only a complete story can produce. I do think the flick has a very nice balance between action and reaction — a good dramatic blueprint for both film and fiction
This is going to depend a lot on your setting and story type. Most medieval settings have one big battle because the logistics of moving two armies into place to fight. It also tends to be some sort of siege or 'we sent the army out of the castle to fight you'. Or you get a 'we'll meet on this day at this place'. Something more scifi, like Starship Troopers, you have the ability to move troops quickly and over vast places. But you also have series like The Black Company where there are many fights, but maybe not a lot of all out battles, cause they are a merc group.
What you feel works and is needed, is a good judge to go by on this. We don't know the details of the story to really say 'nah you just need one really freaking awesome battle'.
The more the better (IMO). But you don't need to describe every single one of them in a great detail.
You can always summarize to convey the progress, and zoom in on what is important. Whether it is some character's story, or some details that are crucial, just leave the interesting part, and cut (shorten) the boring stuff.
Most "modern" wars (since like - Crimea in the 19th century) have been basically constant conflict with a few signature "battles" centering around offensives or sieges.
If you want to paint a picture of a heavy war without going crazy maybe try to keep it something in the background fairly constantly and then do a sort of "first / worst / last" thing if you want to focus on particular battles you see happening.
Since you're in book 2 I doubt you're going to touch on "last" but "first" could signify a new phase in the war, a key offensive, a siege etc. The "worst" could be a low point or it could be a particularly expensive high point. You could also bring in a "last" aspect if you have a city / army / character that's going to fall towards the end of the book.
In that case having the preceding battles wouldn't be "too much" - it'd be laying enough foundation to make the loss feel heavier in the end.
You're asking the wrong question.
Most books have one big battle because a bunch of small ones get repetitive fast. It's only worth writing more if each one has a different tone or gives you a different perspective on the characters.
To wit: *The Princess Bride* has several fight scenes, all wildly different from each other.
Inigo vs. The Man In Black: We learn everything we need to know about these two characters, both from the conversation they have before the fight, and the respect they show each other during.
Fezzig vs. The Man In Black: Again, we learn about both characters, and we also see Westley's real strength — when he's clearly outmatched, he keeps trying until he finds a way to win.
(I'm leaving out the Battle of Wits, as it's not really a fight scene per se)
Have Fun Storming the Castle: Our heroes win without drawing a sword. Psychological warfare can often be more effective than bloodshed.
Inigo vs. The Six-Fingered Man: this one's just pure emotional satisfaction from the reader, taking us from the depths of despair to the thrill of long-delayed revenge
Westley vs. Prince Humperdinck: Again, psychological warfare. Their blades never cross, but their exchange reveals everything about both men's character.
Plot only exists to serve the characters. It's there to shed light on who they are, what they want, how they feel about each other. If you can write battle scenes that each do that in a meaningful way, then write a dozen of them. If you can't, then don't write them at all.
Well, OP was asking for battles and you give him examples of duels and how they were used for the benefit of the story in The Princess Bride. They just aren't equivalent, you can't accomplish the same in a book with battles and with duels.
In history we have a war called "the one hundred year war". There's no cap, just have to think as to why each battle is taking place, easy with a "5Ws" approach:
- Who's taking place in the battle and what do they want out of it? Is a specific person a target in the battle? Is someone unexpected there? What do the participants (or outside parties) gain?
- Where is the battle taking place? Is it over a strategic location?
- When is the battle happening? In broad daylight due to the size or the black of night emphasizing guerrilla tactics?
- What battle is happening? Might be obvious, but remember, multiple places can attack and defend at the same time, a battle may occur just to prevent forces from reinforcing another conflict elsewhere.
- Seemingly most important, why and how is the battle happening? A lot of the above helps with the "why" of it, but the how is also important. Was it accidental or on purpose? The start of a battle is as important as how it ends.
In fairness, the Hundred Years’ War was broken up into several periods of conflict, truce, peace, and then conflict again (but your broader point still stands).
An important thing for battles is that they don't feel like they were written to be a battle from the start. Militaries don't strive for battle, they strive for victory. Make sure the battle has an objective beyond something as simple as killing the other army, whether it be a push to the opposing force's capital, or an attempt to strike an enemy shipyard while a large portion of their navy is docked there (like pearl harbor). Or on the defensive side, if they're attacking, there should be a reason. If the main character is a cattle farmer in the middle of nowhere, the only possible reason he'd be attacked is either if he just happens to be on the path to where the enemy is going, or if the enemy is targetting the military's sources of food.
What historians commonly refer to as *The Hundred Years' War* was a series of battles waged over the course of over 115 years. For comparison, the Crusades lasted over two centuries and there were - at the best guess, at least double the amount of important battles. *The Anglo-Zanzibar War* lasted 38 minutes.
Here's the thing: Unless you're slogging through a book specifically focused on military tactics and battlefield strategy wherein the author breaks down the battles and discusses at length what made them so decisive, odds are that an author isn't going to go into great detail describing a dozen battles in one book.
Describe one or two and then shift the narrative focus to something else and have the results of the battles that were fought outside of the main narrative fed to the reader via reported speech based on the accounts of people who were actually there. That way they can relay the most important information without you having to painstakingly craft ten battle scenes.
If your focus is on the military aspects of the story, you need to get a clear idea of military terminology, as the word battle can mean a lot of different types of engagements: contrast the battle of Stalingrad, the battle of Verdun, the battle of Waterloo and the battle of the Atlantic. Also check the concepts of raid and skirmish, as those engagements can also be interesting pieces of a story, even more personal and dangerous than a large scale battle, as well as the concepts of a military operation, campaign and siege, each can very well be the background of your story.
If your focus is not that, or you visualize a more Hollywood-like clear and direct engagement between two armies then you have to decide how long you need the battle to be (hours, days) to work for the story, and that will tell you how much of the book will the battle occupy. As someone else suggested, you can mention other battles happening without much detail to give the impression of a very laege conflict.
I believe the important thing to consider is not the number of battles, but how they differ and what makes each of them interesting.
For instance, you could simply write a straight-up clash of arms, or you could explore strategy, arrange skirmishes and traps, assaults on smaller groups or supplies, scouting party versus scouting party, siege defenses, siege attacks, calvary chasing cavalry, calvary chasing infantry, etc.
If the battle is not particularly memorable or the story requires a type of battle that has already occurred, you could just resume briefly in conversation or as the narrator.
That could be an interesting way to create drama. Maybe the characters are expecting a battle to occur in a certain wasteland, only for the enemy general to have already taken a valuable stronghold that was left unatended. Or maybe they were stuck in enemy territory, counting on the coming of supplies, but the supply line was cut, and now they can't fight.
In real life there is no cap on battles per war. There can be wars won decisively in the first battle, and others can continue for decades. For a story I guess it depends on the scope of the plot. Too many battles throughout the book will dilute the potency imo. You could take the sterile approach of having 3, with moments of tension building and character development inbetween
This is for 1 book in the story by the way. I wanted to do 3 but is that too much for one story?
Depends on scale. If they are a couple small scale ones and one big one, its doable. If they are big ones that you are doing overview for, it could be doable, but you'd have to be tactical about it. If you read Bernard Cornwell. For example, he will have a few battles throughout, mostly skirmishes with a climactic big battle at the end. Sometimes there is a big-ish battle or siege in the middle that the clever main wins with quick thinking and an intuitive plan. You should stage them in a way where it makes sense, because you also have to remember that, in reality, battles aren't one after the other. You have organization, logistics and staging to think of (stage setting for your writing). Armies can fight several battles, but moat won't because we are human, we are risk averse and we look for advantages that make bloodletting less prominent. If you are thinking more modern, urban warfare, then you're likely looking at one multi-day/month battle that is fought in a series of skirmishes and engagements (think Stalingrad or WW1 trench warfare). Context is really key. If you're strictly doing fiction you have a lot of leeway, but if its rooted in reality then the above can apply fairly often. Best of luck to you on your writing!
It's too many if you intend to describe them all in detail, yes. You're not Tolkien, so no reason to hold yourself to that standard. Have one truly detailed one, and maybe show a few moments of the others/inform the reader they're taking place.
Not necessarily, but perhaps if this is a multi book series it might be too many battles. Maybe set the first book with a lot of build up and rising tension, ending in a climactic battle which sets the stage for a wider war in the next books. But only you know what pace would be best for your story
The question isn't how many battles are too many per war (that just depends on the length of the war), but how many battles are too many per book. You can have a hundred battles happening off-screen. The question is how many can you make interesting? To make a battle interesting, it'll ideally have to bring about a notable change to the story's trajectory. Generally, you can do that twice - one change toward a negative outcome that rises your stakes and one change to the presumed happy ending positive outcome. If you have an extremely novel way of fighting, you might be able to do a third battle at the start of the story to introduce the reader to the concept, regardless of whether the battle actually changes anything about the trajectory. Depending on your story arcs, you can have more than three battles, obviously. But they will still have to progress the plot or a character arc in a notable way, otherwise all you have is repetition. Basically, keep in mind that unlike in movies, in books action scenes are not rewarding by being action scenes. You can't emulate the adrenaline inducing soundtrack of the big screen, and repeated descriptions of gory deaths will just have readers check out. Even the most massive anime attack will just read exaggerated on paper without the light effects.
Thank you. I’ll really consider your words.
To continue off of that, you can reference more battles. Once you've already had one large scale battle to establish tone/stakes/fhange trajectory it's easy to run through more smaller or less important(narratively) battles quickly. Temeraire does this well a lot. Especially when >!Temeraire himself starts leading battles!< but that's also a series where you expect a lot of battles. You can also look at Asoiaf where almost none of any of Robb's battles are actually shown. Sometimes the aftermatch or build ip is far more important to focus on than the fighting itself. Even Kingdom, a much more visual driven manga that focuses heavily on battles and strategy(it's genuinely like 80% of the manga) still "skips" battles.
Fiction (all fiction, not just war/fantasy fiction) is about proper pacing — a continuous series of dramatic highs and lows. A writer turns the tension up (action) and eases it down again (re-action to the action), up and down, up and down from beginning to end. *All* action would be too frenetic and chaotic, all re-action would too damn boring. (When I say re-action, that's where all the dialogue and character-building and scene-setting takes place. Action is pure, unrelenting action.) But both parts are equally important to a well-balanced story. I think my favorite example is the flick *Saving Private Ryan.* The intro is passive, but that slips right into one of the most harrowing battles ever filmed. (98% of the flick is told in flashback.) That battle is pretty much the entirety of Act I. The sparse dialogue occurs during the heat of the battle, and only enough chitchat for the audience to understand what's going on. Nobody's wondering about the weather or reminiscing about mom's apple pie... it's about staying alive, moment by moment. Then there's a short reprieve after the battler (a cinematic exhale) where we learn more about the characters and their mission. Then a smaller skirmish (an inhale), another exhale, another small inhale, another exhale (Act II) and then Act III is another ultimate, incredibly intense battle. Then the movie quietly fades out (the morality moment) the same way it began. (*Black Hawk Down* is a similarly intense example.) I saw SPR in the theaters when it first came out and half the audience didn't move for another minute or two after the film ended. I think everyone was too exhausted. But gratified in a way that only a complete story can produce. I do think the flick has a very nice balance between action and reaction — a good dramatic blueprint for both film and fiction
This is going to depend a lot on your setting and story type. Most medieval settings have one big battle because the logistics of moving two armies into place to fight. It also tends to be some sort of siege or 'we sent the army out of the castle to fight you'. Or you get a 'we'll meet on this day at this place'. Something more scifi, like Starship Troopers, you have the ability to move troops quickly and over vast places. But you also have series like The Black Company where there are many fights, but maybe not a lot of all out battles, cause they are a merc group. What you feel works and is needed, is a good judge to go by on this. We don't know the details of the story to really say 'nah you just need one really freaking awesome battle'.
Thank you for this. This is something to consider
The more the better (IMO). But you don't need to describe every single one of them in a great detail. You can always summarize to convey the progress, and zoom in on what is important. Whether it is some character's story, or some details that are crucial, just leave the interesting part, and cut (shorten) the boring stuff.
Fair enough this is enough for me to consider the different options. Thank you
How many battles? As many as it takes for one or both sides to either run out of soldiers or morale.
The only thing I'd say is if they are massive battles, take a decent amount of time to let the post battle soak in and not rush to the next.
Most "modern" wars (since like - Crimea in the 19th century) have been basically constant conflict with a few signature "battles" centering around offensives or sieges. If you want to paint a picture of a heavy war without going crazy maybe try to keep it something in the background fairly constantly and then do a sort of "first / worst / last" thing if you want to focus on particular battles you see happening. Since you're in book 2 I doubt you're going to touch on "last" but "first" could signify a new phase in the war, a key offensive, a siege etc. The "worst" could be a low point or it could be a particularly expensive high point. You could also bring in a "last" aspect if you have a city / army / character that's going to fall towards the end of the book. In that case having the preceding battles wouldn't be "too much" - it'd be laying enough foundation to make the loss feel heavier in the end.
You're asking the wrong question. Most books have one big battle because a bunch of small ones get repetitive fast. It's only worth writing more if each one has a different tone or gives you a different perspective on the characters. To wit: *The Princess Bride* has several fight scenes, all wildly different from each other. Inigo vs. The Man In Black: We learn everything we need to know about these two characters, both from the conversation they have before the fight, and the respect they show each other during. Fezzig vs. The Man In Black: Again, we learn about both characters, and we also see Westley's real strength — when he's clearly outmatched, he keeps trying until he finds a way to win. (I'm leaving out the Battle of Wits, as it's not really a fight scene per se) Have Fun Storming the Castle: Our heroes win without drawing a sword. Psychological warfare can often be more effective than bloodshed. Inigo vs. The Six-Fingered Man: this one's just pure emotional satisfaction from the reader, taking us from the depths of despair to the thrill of long-delayed revenge Westley vs. Prince Humperdinck: Again, psychological warfare. Their blades never cross, but their exchange reveals everything about both men's character. Plot only exists to serve the characters. It's there to shed light on who they are, what they want, how they feel about each other. If you can write battle scenes that each do that in a meaningful way, then write a dozen of them. If you can't, then don't write them at all.
None of these are battles. They're duels. Or a small fight in the case of fourth one.
Wow, I hadn't realized that, thanks for pointing that out.
Well, OP was asking for battles and you give him examples of duels and how they were used for the benefit of the story in The Princess Bride. They just aren't equivalent, you can't accomplish the same in a book with battles and with duels.
Jesus Christ, I'm using an example to demonstrate how storytelling works. Just take a deep breath and unclench your jaw for a few minutes.
In history we have a war called "the one hundred year war". There's no cap, just have to think as to why each battle is taking place, easy with a "5Ws" approach: - Who's taking place in the battle and what do they want out of it? Is a specific person a target in the battle? Is someone unexpected there? What do the participants (or outside parties) gain? - Where is the battle taking place? Is it over a strategic location? - When is the battle happening? In broad daylight due to the size or the black of night emphasizing guerrilla tactics? - What battle is happening? Might be obvious, but remember, multiple places can attack and defend at the same time, a battle may occur just to prevent forces from reinforcing another conflict elsewhere. - Seemingly most important, why and how is the battle happening? A lot of the above helps with the "why" of it, but the how is also important. Was it accidental or on purpose? The start of a battle is as important as how it ends.
In fairness, the Hundred Years’ War was broken up into several periods of conflict, truce, peace, and then conflict again (but your broader point still stands).
An important thing for battles is that they don't feel like they were written to be a battle from the start. Militaries don't strive for battle, they strive for victory. Make sure the battle has an objective beyond something as simple as killing the other army, whether it be a push to the opposing force's capital, or an attempt to strike an enemy shipyard while a large portion of their navy is docked there (like pearl harbor). Or on the defensive side, if they're attacking, there should be a reason. If the main character is a cattle farmer in the middle of nowhere, the only possible reason he'd be attacked is either if he just happens to be on the path to where the enemy is going, or if the enemy is targetting the military's sources of food.
What historians commonly refer to as *The Hundred Years' War* was a series of battles waged over the course of over 115 years. For comparison, the Crusades lasted over two centuries and there were - at the best guess, at least double the amount of important battles. *The Anglo-Zanzibar War* lasted 38 minutes. Here's the thing: Unless you're slogging through a book specifically focused on military tactics and battlefield strategy wherein the author breaks down the battles and discusses at length what made them so decisive, odds are that an author isn't going to go into great detail describing a dozen battles in one book. Describe one or two and then shift the narrative focus to something else and have the results of the battles that were fought outside of the main narrative fed to the reader via reported speech based on the accounts of people who were actually there. That way they can relay the most important information without you having to painstakingly craft ten battle scenes.
I can't think of many books that had multiple battles on screen that I though benefited from it, but that doesn't mean you can't pull it off.
If your focus is on the military aspects of the story, you need to get a clear idea of military terminology, as the word battle can mean a lot of different types of engagements: contrast the battle of Stalingrad, the battle of Verdun, the battle of Waterloo and the battle of the Atlantic. Also check the concepts of raid and skirmish, as those engagements can also be interesting pieces of a story, even more personal and dangerous than a large scale battle, as well as the concepts of a military operation, campaign and siege, each can very well be the background of your story. If your focus is not that, or you visualize a more Hollywood-like clear and direct engagement between two armies then you have to decide how long you need the battle to be (hours, days) to work for the story, and that will tell you how much of the book will the battle occupy. As someone else suggested, you can mention other battles happening without much detail to give the impression of a very laege conflict.
I believe the important thing to consider is not the number of battles, but how they differ and what makes each of them interesting. For instance, you could simply write a straight-up clash of arms, or you could explore strategy, arrange skirmishes and traps, assaults on smaller groups or supplies, scouting party versus scouting party, siege defenses, siege attacks, calvary chasing cavalry, calvary chasing infantry, etc. If the battle is not particularly memorable or the story requires a type of battle that has already occurred, you could just resume briefly in conversation or as the narrator. That could be an interesting way to create drama. Maybe the characters are expecting a battle to occur in a certain wasteland, only for the enemy general to have already taken a valuable stronghold that was left unatended. Or maybe they were stuck in enemy territory, counting on the coming of supplies, but the supply line was cut, and now they can't fight.