Writing the aftermath of a battle.

[Lucus The First]

Alright, here's a quick question.

I've been writing quite a bit today, but I've been obsessing over making my opening as strikingly effective as possible. Therefore, I've decided to place my character into peril near the end of the story and build up the rest of the story in the form of a flashback.

What sort of peril would I put my protagonist in? The middle of a Passchendaele-level battlefield, surrounded by dead bodies, pests, and enemy patrols.

The part that gets me is the details. I know what I want to do with the scene, but I'm at a loss as for how to implement it.

What details are most important on a Great War battlefield?

I'll leave a sample of my writing here.

"The fertile soil where corn and barley once grew tall, now barren and dead, had been drowned in a crimson sea which flowed down the pulpy mounds in rivers of red, trickling off cliffs of faded blue and running off into the shell-craters as streams to the ocean....."

 

[Orc Knight]

Craters of no man's land, thrown up carts and tanks and the corpses of fantasy beasts and all. The fog of war that blinds so you never know what you're going to run into. Unless it's a sunny day, though you can get smoke and the like. Bodies of those caught in the middle and tried to hide in the ruins. Dead and downed dragons and planes. Maybe a burning airship wreckage. Poison gas seeping around certain area's or a wizards spell gone wrong (or right).

A tattered flag upon a hill of bodies, or two, each claiming the ground for themselves. Another dazed and shell shocked soldier, wandering lost and looking for their own. A spooked horse or other beast of burden or calvary unit. A piece of propaganda on a wall. Maybe battered. A helmet with a hole in it. Or if you can, watch the opening to Battlefield 1. Or if you have it, that's a good way to go through with it.

 

[Penpilot]

What details are most important on a Great War battlefield?

What's details are most important depends your POV character. Things that relate to them and are most important to them will be the things that stand out. For example, if your POV character is standing next to a dead friend, then that's what they'll probably notice, not the hundreds or thousands more dead piled up around, because that's what matters to them most, not some strangers.

It also depends on who your POV character is, what type of person they are, and what they've experienced. I mean someone who has grown callus may barely notice the dead, and may be more occupied with figuring out a way to fix the hole in the sole of their boot because water is seeping in and soaking their socks.

Think about who your POV character is, what their current situation is, and try to see the world through their eyes. A doctor will see the battlefield differently than a soldier. A reporter observing the aftermath as dispassionate observer will focus on different things than a soldier desperately searching for their lost buddy.

My 2 cents.

 

[K.S. Crooks]

A few thoughts on the subject: What is the character's mindset- do they still have their wits or are they overwhelmed. Do they have any joy or guilt over what they have done. What is their goal for the battle and has been achieved or does it still need to be accomplished even though the battle was won or lost. What friends or enemies do they want to confirm are still alive or dead.

 

[skip.knox]

I'll echo the emphasis on characters. So far, all we have is setting. What is supposed to happen? If you really are going to hang the entire story on this, because everything else is flashback, there has to be some unresolved question posed that will keep us reading through hundreds of pages to get to the resolution of that question. That's asking a lot of the scene. I won't try to talk you out of it, but you do need to ask yourself, when I get to the end of this scene or chapter, what will make me keep reading?

There are lots of ways to answer that, but a vital component is the main character, or even a couple of characters. We will want to know what happens to someone, to a particular person.

What does this person want? Who are they? Why are they there? Is this a general or a grunt, or maybe a local peasant scavenging? Or a reporter? Every one of these will have come to the field that day with their own dreams and fears. Once you know who your character is, then the battlefield descriptions become easier, because it's what that particular person would notice.

Yes, you could go all omniscient narrator, and that can work well, but I submit it works best further into a novel, when you've already hooked readers on the characters. It's more difficult to start that way. It can be done, but I'm danged if I can come up with an example. But if you're going to go omni, I'd still start with individuals. Instead of a main character, though, just make a list. Common soldier, officer, commander, medic, journalist, aerialist, artillery gunner, local citizen, maybe even a prisoner of war, spy. Do it for both winning side and losing side. Write a paragraph or more of where each might be on the battlefield, what they experienced, and what they see now, in the aftermath. In there you'll find the grist for the omniscient mill