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Is Violence Necessary?

CupofJoe

Myth Weaver
Skirmishes are far more likely to happen than full scale battles anyway. That being said, guerrilla warfare can be just as horrific, and given it's in a more intimate setting (focused on far fewer people), can be just as powerful as a huge battle with hundreds or thousands of people dying.
Just look at Vietnam for instance. Or Afghanistan.
Or, looking to Tolkien....
The Fellowship's battle in Moria compared to the Battle of Pelennor Fields. Both are wonderful to read but I find Moria far more compelling because I know those involved.
 
Or, looking to Tolkien....
The Fellowship's battle in Moria compared to the Battle of Pelennor Fields. Both are wonderful to read but I find Moria far more compelling because I know those involved.

Aragorn cleaving the orc chieftain's helm in half is one of my favorite moments in the whole book. Especially the audio book version.
 
A benefit of smaller-scale, one-on-one battles for epic fantasy is that they bring the larger scale world-changing forces down to the intimate scale. It is like a smaller version of the change occurring to the whole world.

As someone mentioned earlier, this can be achieved by zooming in to the characters during large scale battles. But even in those cases, there may be less foreshadowing of victory and even less of risk. A small party that fights and succeeds against another small party, ending the battle in victory while suffering injuries and experiencing the threat of total loss might "bring home" the stakes, the promise of an eventual win in the larger conflict, and so forth. But a one-on-one victory against an opponent on a large battlefield leaves the question of total victory a little more up in the air. (Unless that opponent's death seals the total victory, e.g. when the leader of the enemy army is kill and his whole army dissolves into chaos as a result.)
 
Erg. This agent evidently has not much experience with the nature of guerilla war. Speaking as a civilian, give me regular army, any day.

Sorry, the bit about "a lesser degree of violent conflict" was my addition to what the agent said. She only mentioned a preference for guerrilla warfare over bloody battles. It was my assumption she was looking for a lesser degree of violent conflict. It may be that guerrilla warfare is degrees more violent, so I shouldn't have added that bit. Apologies to both her and you, skip. Edit: Apologies to all who read my previous post and took my addition to be attributable to the agent.
 
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skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
No apologies needed. I just wanted to point out the guerilla war can be horrifyingly bloody and cruel. So can set-piece battles, just in different ways.

Moving back to the OP, it feels almost abstract to me. Writing an epic fantasy without battles or violence sounds like a technical challenge one might put to an advanced writing class. Just for the exercise, like writing a poem without using the letter "a". Sure it can be done. But why? And don't we have better things to do, like writing epic fantasy *with* the things readers normally associate with epic fantasy?
 
Mistborn: The Final Empire is categorized as Epic fantasy on Amazon. That book talks about gathering an army, and there's some military conflict involved, which isn't described at all except after the fact. If the off-scene conflict hadn't been mentioned in the story, would that omission be enough to knock the book out of the Epic fantasy category, or would the fact of gathering the army with intent to use it have been enough to make the story Epic?

Look at this another way: If I have a traditional fantasy story, and I revise it so that an army is gathered and its presence has some bearing on the plot, does that automatically make the story Epic? I don't think so. There's something other than battle scenes that has to be present in an Epic fantasy. Is it scope? And if it's scope, why can't a story have a world-encompassing scope without there being even a single battle scene or any mention of an army?
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I'm not speaking to what might be done. Ultimately this is all that matters: 1) where agents and bookstores position your book on shelves; 2) based on the keywords you use at Amazon etc., whether your readers think your book matches those keywords.

We control neither of these.

The rest is ex post facto analysis. We could do a literary analysis on a hundred books in the category of epic fiction and see what the percentage is that employ violent or large-scale military scenes. Might be worthwhile for market research, but I don't think it bears on the question. Write as you please, choose your keywords carefully, and hope for the best.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
I don't think that war was ever mentioned as necessary for Epic fantasy, or as defining epic... but violence almost certainly is an expectation of the subgenre. Mistborn contains violence. Many "epic" stories will skirt around war scenes for a variety reasons. Epic has other qualifiers which have been discussed.

Mistborn: The Final Empire is categorized as Epic fantasy on Amazon. That book talks about gathering an army, and there's some military conflict involved, which isn't described at all except after the fact. If the off-scene conflict hadn't been mentioned in the story, would that omission be enough to knock the book out of the Epic fantasy category, or would the fact of gathering the army with intent to use it have been enough to make the story Epic?

Look at this another way: If I have a traditional fantasy story, and I revise it so that an army is gathered and its presence has some bearing on the plot, does that automatically make the story Epic? I don't think so. There's something other than battle scenes that has to be present in an Epic fantasy. Is it scope? And if it's scope, why can't a story have a world-encompassing scope without there being even a single battle scene or any mention of an army?
 
Epic fantasy needs some kind of escalating conflict since the stories tend to involve a substantial geographic area, multiple political powers, etc. War/violence, historically, has been the outcome of many of these types of conflicts, so it seems to be the natural go to scenario. I like the epic showdowns between massive armies, but I'm more interested in chess board type maneuvering, not only of armies, but also that of the choices leaders (kings, politicians, etc.) make when trying to win the war. I guess you could call this the "Game of Thrones" element of the story.
 
I don't think that war was ever mentioned as necessary for Epic fantasy, or as defining epic... but violence almost certainly is an expectation of the subgenre. Mistborn contains violence. Many "epic" stories will skirt around war scenes for a variety reasons. Epic has other qualifiers which have been discussed.

The OP posed the question: Does an epic fantasy need battles of large and small scale?
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
A large scale battle does not a war make, depending on definition. But more straightforward, whether we see the battles or not, I don't think "epic" is defined by there being "war" present. A large scale, world/regional shaking conflict, yes... which will entail violence on or off screen, I would roll with.

Mistborn is the tale of overthrowing an empire, and I am hesitant to speak much of large battles without finishing the book. but seeing as I've seen people discuss whether religion was present in the books with some folks remembering it not having any... and wow is it, I hesitate to assume no battles. As far as religion goes... Heck, defeating the lord ruler is as much defeating a religion as it is an empire. But I digress. The lack of large scale battle scenes (if true) would not, IMO eliminate it as epic. Someone else might disagree, of course. Defining any genre/subgenre down too tightly kind of gets whacky, Epic Fantasy might be worst than most because of its breadth.

The OP posed the question: Does an epic fantasy need battles of large and small scale?
 

glutton

Inkling
The OP posed the question: Does an epic fantasy need battles of large and small scale?

I think if the MC kills a god changing the order of the world, that would qualify for epic without needing what you are referring to as "battles". Although when I saw the OP I interpreted battles as including one-on-one, one-on-many, or small group fights and not necessarily organized military conflicts.
 
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I like your responses, Demesnedenoir and glutton, because I'd like to classify my WIP as epic fantasy. It has no military conflicts, no armies marching anywhere. But near the end of the story, practically everyone on the planet will observe two powerful magical entities in combat, and the result of that conflict will impact everyone. The scope of the impact is large, while the number of participants in the "battle" is not.
 
Is physical/magical violence between 2 entities necessary to be a good story? Absolutely not.
Is violence between 2 (or more) entities or groups necessary to be a good epic fantasy? That's a more delicate issue. In fantasy, and both Epic and High fantasy in particular, the violent conflicts are part of the expected convention. I would argue that they may not strictly be needed, but they are expected. I think you would alienate a sizable percentage of the community by not including it. (But that may just be me.)
 

Fenrir

Acolyte
Necessary... I think not. Tied to the genre, expectations, and an easy way to create Interest? Yes. Life and death or the threat there of is high stakes. And high stakes are generally interesting. When we think of conflict on large scale, well war is right up there and familiar. So interesting + large scale = war/violence is a viable formula.

But, is it a required formula? Off the top of my head Robert Asprin does some fun fantasy and sci-fi reads that are very low on actual violence. Myth series and Phule series spring to mind. Threats of violence, and so on, abound. But actual kill 'em violence? Rare. Fisticuffs sometimes tho. The Phule series particularly deals in multi system species versus species conflict at times, which is epic in my book anyway. Yes its SF, but could be re-fluffed fantasy easily enough. Of course that is still low violence, and not no violence so...

The anime No game No life has quite a few episodes that are totally violence free as I recall. Yes its an anime, but it is also fantasy with sweeping country vs country conflict (eventually) and a good watch. Something like that could be done completely violence free I would imagine and at least I would watch/read it.
 
Tied to the genre, expectations, and an easy way to create Interest? Yes.
Well...yes. And, of course, no.
Is it tied to the genre? Absolutely. Is it tied to expectations? Definitely.
Is it an "easy way" to create interest? Absolutely not.
In fact, good "violence" that does everything the reader expects it to do is exquisitely difficult.
You have to strike the right balance of violent enough whilst not also being too violent. You have to focus on your POV character, especially their state of mind and how this impacts their emotions and personality.
Does the violence mean something? If it doesn't, it is best to leave it off the page, because your reader will grow quickly bored.
I could continue on, and on, with this. Violence is needed, in measure, especially in fantasy. (Even the ones you listed include violence. It may be minimal, it may be personal, but the violence is there.) But it absolutely has to be delicately handled, delicately balanced, and brilliantly used. A good writer will never include violence "just because." Even GRRM, an author whose works I absolutely despise for so very many reasons, doesn't include violence just because he can. It serves the story, or the character, or the mood he is trying to develop.

Life and death or the threat there of is high stakes. And high stakes are generally interesting.
Actually, high stakes is boring. The reader and viewer needs to know the high stakes, but it is the small stakes that invest the reader.
Take a look at Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy. I don't care if you like his version of the books or not, that's not why we're going there. Take a look at the battle scenes, especially Helm's Deep. You view the high stakes, the large picture. But you don't stay there. You crash in on characters- not even always major characters. Those are the small stakes. The guard watching his buddy get turned into hamburger by an orc. Legolas watching his Elven friends cut down.
Those are the beats a good author hits. I don't mean great. I mean good, because any competent author should be able to do this. The small "reaction shots" are what invest the reader.
The anime No game No life has quite a few episodes that are totally violence free as I recall. Yes its an anime, but it is also fantasy with sweeping country vs country conflict (eventually) and a good watch. Something like that could be done completely violence free I would imagine and at least I would watch/read it.

And that's just it. A creator doesn't, hopefully, go for a niche audience. They create what they want to see- and generally hope that a great many others are also interested in it.
You're not only talking about a niche audience, but an extraordinarily small one.
 

Peat

Sage
Actually, high stakes is boring. The reader and viewer needs to know the high stakes, but it is the small stakes that invest the reader.
Take a look at Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy. I don't care if you like his version of the books or not, that's not why we're going there. Take a look at the battle scenes, especially Helm's Deep. You view the high stakes, the large picture. But you don't stay there. You crash in on characters- not even always major characters. Those are the small stakes. The guard watching his buddy get turned into hamburger by an orc. Legolas watching his Elven friends cut down.
Those are the beats a good author hits. I don't mean great. I mean good, because any competent author should be able to do this. The small "reaction shots" are what invest the reader.

Amen to this with a side of "I'm real bored of it suddenly all being about saving the entirety of mankind".
 
Amen to this with a side of "I'm real bored of it suddenly all being about saving the entirety of mankind".

I'm fine with that being the High Stakes. I'm completely okay with it.
But the thing is...nobody can really get behind that. I mean, sure. Intellectually, even spiritually, I can absolutely get behind that. But the grunt on the field? He/she can't. Your hero absolutely can't. It's not about the politics, the salvation of the entirety of the universe, or whatever. It's not even about glory or honor, although those can factor in. It's about revenge. Or anger. Or their sweetheart.

2 quotes from "Hoot" in Black Hawk Down absolutely nail my approach to combat in my writing.

"Once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that shit just goes right out the window."
"When I go home people'll ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do you do it man? What, you some kinda war junkie?" You know what I'll say? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you, and that's it. That's all it is."
 
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