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The Literature of War

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7 Tips For Writing Realistic War Stories (UPDATED 2024)

by Writer's Relief Staff | Inspiration And Encouragement For Writers , Nonfiction Books , Other Helpful Information , The Writing Life | 15 comments

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Updated April 2023

Both fiction and memoir writing have endeavored to make sense of (or even see the senselessness of) violent conflict. But writing about war  can be tricky: Some readers might be sensitive about graphic depictions of war and violence; others may have a hard time understanding what’s happening if you don’t go into detail. Here’s how to write battle scenes that are accurate and effective.

Important Tips For Writing About War

Consider whether certain violent elements need to be included. Graphic, explicit scenes can become offensive when they’re overdone or unnecessary. Of course, you may be going for “offensive” in order to make a point about your subject, but violence that’s heavy on detail needs to have a point. The key is to be aware of your choices and why you’re making them.

Use a panoramic lens. Capture the vastness of a battle by showing us a wide view of the action. Allow your narrator a moment to look around at what’s going on so that your reader can also see what’s happening. However, remember that “epic” doesn’t necessarily mean emotionally engaging. If not handled properly, big battles can feel impersonal and lead to “action fatigue.”

Focus on the details. Whether you’re writing about the trenches of World War I or the Time-Space Wars of the Zygine Galaxy, pay attention to the little details of everyday life. Sometimes, the familiar smell of coffee and a campfire can be more emotionally powerful than the less familiar smell of a lit cannon fuse.

If your violence is comic, be cautious of subtext. Some people may laugh; others might be offended. If you need to make a choice about your character’s actions that happens to align with stereotypes of violence, make sure you do so with caution.

Understand your characters . Whether you’re writing about a perpetrator of violence or a victim, dig deep within your own personal capacity for empathy to tease out elements that will make all of your characters human, relatable, and real—even the villains. You might not respect your antagonist’s decisions, but by understanding them, you’ll bring depth and emotion to your work.

Get it right. If you’re writing historical fiction or even memoir, check (and recheck!) your facts. Confirm that your details are accurate. By spending the extra time and doing the research , you’ll have a story that resonates with authenticity and powerful details—especially if you’re writing military fiction .

Avoid clichés. While every genre has its tropes, be aware of choices that lead to scenes that are overly familiar. Falling back on clichés is sometimes the easy way out. If you find yourself writing a familiar battle scene (one soldier dragging another to safety, or one person dying in another’s arms), be sure to mix up the action with your own unique perspective.

When In Doubt, Read Military Memoirs And Fiction

If you’re not sure your battles have a realistic edge, read other books in the genre. Reading is one of the best ways to improve your writing, regardless of your topic.

When you’ve finished reading military memoirs and fiction, why not try to get published alongside them? The research experts at Writer’s Relief will help you pinpoint the best markets and boost your odds of getting an acceptance. Learn more about our services and submit your work to our Review Board today!

Whether you want to take the traditional publishing route or prefer to self-publish , we can help. Give us a call, and we will point you in the right direction!

15 Comments

In response to your question, “What do you think one of the things many battle/war scenes get wrong is?” I would like to say it is the disconnection/connections between two common enemies. Many solders do not even know the real reason they are fighting. Many American solders have gone to battle under the false premise of spreading Democracy. Our enemy fight for what they believe to be the opposing cause. Yet, when the war is believed to be over, a new bicultural atmosphere has almost always been established. That is because, as humans, we all have more in common than not.

To Mr. JL Gibson: I loved your comment. I don’t imagine that many of us think of what the other guy is fighting for. I have no plans to write a novel about war, but I still believe that this article and your comment could be used for any other type of story. We all have our battles to fight whether it be for love, wealth, a job promotion, or even our own simple way of life. Thank you for the insight.

I’m writing a war story and this has been helpful.

I’m also writing my first war book too. My book is called Ghost Squad, the war I’m researching is very hard trying to put all pieces of information together so that the war itself is real, but my characters, operation groups, and seans are made up of this book. I’m worried if my information of this war would have false information in my novel. I’m still writing and researching, but so far my book is looking pretty good. If you guys have any tips for me that would be helpful.

This is some really good information about writing good war stories. My sister wants to be an author and she loves historical fiction. I liked your advice about getting it right and doing research about the time period. It does seem like a good idea to try reading some memoirs of actual soldiers.

I’m going to write a battilistic war book. It’s not an American war. Another countries war. A central american one. This has been helpful.

I’m writing a fictional war story, meant to focus upon the ascension of a Battalion Commander, to the ranking of General. One issue I’m having is the rankings themselves. While I can hide behind the excuse that this is a fictional war, with a fictional military that could have fictional ranking orders, I still would like to know what the actual officer ranking order is like. Google isn’t very helpful, could somebody please point me to an explicit explanation of military officer ranking ? I would greatly appreciate it, thank you! I eagerly await your reply.

Vincent, the ranks for officers are easy to find. They are: 2nd Lieutenant, 1st Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier General, Major General, Lieutenant General, and General.

Thank you , I am a struggling writer who will indeed benefit from this

Thank you for the help! I am writing a book that has many military scenes. I appreciate this a bunch!

Read books written by veterans

Definitely read books by veterans. And if you are writing a book about the military, it would be extremely helpful to have a veteran as a beta reader. Lee Childs doesn’t write military, but his main character, Jack Reacher, is an ex soldier – however he has so many military fact incorrect it sometimes drives me crazy. One of his main problems is that the author is British, and the character is American. In the British Army, I guess, the enlisted shine the officer’s boots and do their laundry; this is absolutely not what happens in the US Army. Also, his premise that the military police are better trained in weapons and hand to hand so they can subdue elite Rangers and green berets when necessary is crazy.

The government actually has many good primary resources in this area. I recently took over a blog written by a librarian that highlights government sources to help authors with realism in their fiction. I am still in the process of transferring, editing, and updating the older entries (which has been fascinating), but it has several military history posts:

https://fictionwritersguidetogovernmentinformation.wordpress.com/

Hope this is helpful!

Hi. I´m terrible when it comes to battle strategy. I just have my characters with the planned development, dynamics, relationships and often – fitting deaths. I have the moral questions. I have the magical system. I somehow just make the war fit my needs… Which is extremely frustrating! I have to think of stuff to fill plot holes and all the strategies don’t add up! It’s like a patchwork – a beautiful piece of art (an emotional moment, a character death, a release of a magical power) is hanging on some weak shit.

Please send help. I always get stuck on the tactics. How to master it? Or how to write smart and compelling fantasy stories without it? Even if it’s not fantasy, I have the feeling that without all these scheming and mind games my stories sound boring.

Look at what you did in the first paragraph. You have already arrived at most of the story, since story is about character and relationships. The action that arises from the characters, i.e., what each character does, moves along the plot, defines character, and produces story theme and meaning. Then, think of your story within the context of a particular moment in the war. For example, “Platoon” selected a section of a company to go on patrol in the Vietnam jungle, night and day, to tell the story of young American foot soldiers and particularly, the growth of one particular named Taylor. How does the war fit into the story? The war, or a particular aspect of the war necessary to the story is selected and used as a container to hold the entire story about Taylor.

Take a look at another war story, “The Deer Hunter”. This is the story about Russian-American steelworker friends who go off to Vietnam as foot soldiers. Each one is altered. Therefore, the writer must have planned particular moments in the war to highlight the exigencies of each character as such character encounters life-challenging and possibly, life-changing conflicts that determine what we must notice about the character.

Please don’t allow the loud and epic nature of war to scare you into giving up. Writing about war is no different than writing about a city, or school, or people on a cruise liner. The fact remains that all of those are contexts or backdrops to your story, which should always be about the human condition, i.e., our thwarted desires that lead us to the truth and beauty of realization and/or learning, if we (the characters) accept the challenging lessons, or losing, if we reject, as the author intends to depict.

Finally, a war is always about one side against the other, with a line drawn in the sand. Such could be visible or invisible. Find your war, select a context and people that context with who would be necessary for the particular story. My war story challenge tonight is to tell a story about particular soldiers on the frontline of WWI, but not across the entire several hundred miles of trenches. I selected one small area that produces the particular challenges of that area, which I feel excited about depicting., and how that place set up significant pressure on the characters to think and behave in certain ways that I believe to be necessary for telling the reader/viewer about our mysterious human condition — perhaps, even deepening the mystery.

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Politics & Society » War

The best war writing, recommended by kate mcloughlin.

War writing extends to all sorts of genres, including blogs and Twitter. Oxford University's Professor Kate McLoughlin , author of Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq recommends some of her favourite books of war writing.

Interview by Beatrice Wilford

Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer

The Iliad by Homer

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

If This Is a Man by Primo Levi

1 Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer

2 the iliad by homer, 3 war and peace by leo tolstoy, 4 catch 22 by joseph heller, 5 if this is a man by primo levi.

Y ou’ve chosen three novels, a memoir and a poem. Which other genres come under the umbrella of war writing?

Does writing about war, in the vein of someone like Hemingway, ever glamorise it? And is there a vein that does the opposite?

Yes. It’s possible to split war writing into pro-war writing and anti-war writing and that can depend on the culture at the time, or it can depend on the individual’s view.

Hemingway obviously thought war was a great thing. Outside war, he liked hunting, fishing and shooting. Killing things was his thing and a war was a natural environment for him. That’s not to say that he thinks that war is an unmitigated good. For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms show the human cost of war as well, and the political cost of war, and the futility of it.

“The blog has taken over from the epic as the war-writing genre of choice.”

I suppose it’s rare to find anything that says war is a good thing without it being questioned at all. But some of the earlier texts celebrate heroism in battle unquestioningly.

How do writers deal with the horrors of war?

There is some incredibly graphic description of what goes on in war and among the most graphic is one I’ve chosen, the Iliad , where there are descriptions of horrific injuries. Another way of describing the horrors of battle is by indirection. Describing, for example, all the people who didn’t get funerals in the First World War—as Wilfred Owen does in ‘ Anthem For Doomed Youth ‘—is a way of conveying death and loss and bereavement on a mass scale.

Is there a clear gender divide in written perspectives on war?

Yes, I think there is. There’s a concept famous among academics who work on war writing called ‘combat gnosticism,’ gnosticism meaning knowledge. It’s the idea that only people who’ve been in combat have earned the right to write about it. And it seems pretty unique to war as a phenomenon. You would think something like childbirth would be similar, but it seems not. It’s war: you have to be in it to be able to write about it according to some people. That has led to there being a canon built up of combatant writing. Especially, for example, the First World War and the trench poets. Of course that has implications for that section of humanity who don’t get to fight in armed combat: women.

I think there are only two armies—the Israeli and the Russian—in which women, even now, can fight as ground forces. That means women have been banished and talk about another angle: the folks back at home, the hospitals, the orphans, the widows, the more sentimental aspects of war. But you get some incredibly feisty women who fight their way to the front anyway, who don’t take no for an answer, stow away, just turn up and who write remarkable reportage—and of course that’s not to overlook the role of the imagination in all of this. Being in war, actually having that combative experience, you might get too close and need more of a detached perspective.

I think the gendering of war writing is about different kinds of experience, but not different kinds of validity of experience.

You’re currently writing about modern warfare. Your most recent book choice is Charlotte Sometimes , written in 1969. How has war writing changed in this time?

The book I’m working on at the moment is called Veteran Poetics . It’s an exploration of certain philosophical ideas—self, experience and storytelling—in the age of modern mass warfare, which I date from 1793 as that’s when the French issued their levée en masse : mass conscription. I think the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars were when war became modern, globalized, industrialised and mass.

I also think that was different from anything that had gone before. Walter Benjamin famously said in his essay “The Storyteller”, “men came back from the First World War, not richer but poorer in communicable experience.” I think he got the date wrong, I think it was actually the Napoleonic and French Revolutionary wars. He conveys this sense of having had an experience that you can’t describe because there’s literally nothing to compare it with, and I think that’s a very modern feeling. I think that’s almost a unique feeling to modernity.

The books I’m looking at for my veterans book wouldn’t necessarily qualify as obvious war writing. The most recent ones are by JK Rowling, her Cormoran Strike series, because they feature a detective who’s a veteran. I trace that figure back to Lord Peter Wimsey and to Dr Watson. I’m looking at how veterancy becomes a means of expressing a certain kind of problem solving, not the forensic problem solving of Sherlock Holmes but the more ‘university of life’ understanding of Dr Watson.

Your first book is Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer.

This book is the first war book I read and it made a deep impression on me. I read it when I was about nine or ten. It’s a book for children , published in 1969. The Charlotte of the title is a twelve year old girl who goes to boarding school and goes to sleep in a dormitory in a bed which has a funny set of wheels on it, and wakes up fifty years earlier in 1918. She has swapped places with a girl called Clare, who in 1918 was sleeping in the same bed. We don’t hear from Clare’s point of view, what she makes of 1969 or 1968, but we do hear about Charlotte, who finds herself in the final year of the First World War .

They swap backwards and forwards night after night. The plot twist is that Charlotte gets stuck in 1918. She and her younger sister are evacuated to a house where the son has gone to war thinking it was going to be a fantastic military heroic adventure, and it turns out it wasn’t. They play with his toy soldiers and the family hold a séance. It made a huge impression on me because Penelope Farmer has this incredibly deft way of making you get a sense of the shock Arthur feels on going to war and finding it was nothing like his toy soldiers and his ideas of bravery.

There is another poignant moment surrounding a teacher in the 1918 school called Miss Wilkins. She’s very bright—a little bit plump, she’s sort of birdy and beady—and Charlotte likes her very much. When she eventually gets back to her own time there’s a Miss Wilkins who’s white haired and a different person altogether, her fiancé died in the First World War. It’s a way of showing how, without being graphic in the slightest, this enormous worldwide conflict had very personal consequences. I think it’s an extraordinary novel and a very thought-provoking one, with many interesting details for children to use to think about war.

What should we tell children about war?

You don’t want to overwhelm children with the seriousness and magnitude of war, but on the other hand there are children who have no choice but to live through war. The children who are told about it are the lucky ones. But I think doing it in this way, having details of the home front, makes it extremely vivid.

There are other fantastic war books for children. Carrie’s War by Nina Bawden is another good example. That also involves an evacuation. It is dear to my heart because my dad was an evacuee. That sense of the impact of war on children comes across very convincingly, very vividly.

As you describe, this book has a very complex temporal framework. How does war alter our experience of time, and how does writing seek to reflect this?

Let’s move on to your second book, the Iliad .

The Iliad is absolutely extraordinary. I read it every so often, and from the beginning it has the most incredible evocation of place, on the beach with the camp fires and Achilles sulking in his tent. There’s such a sense of camaraderie between these warriors. It’s an ancient culture, completely foreign to us now, and yet somehow we are brought to feel their day-to-day emotions. Not just on the Greek side, on the Trojan side as well. There are poignant moments, for example where Hector’s going in to fight and his wife Andromache doesn’t want him to. It’s an extraordinarily vivid account of war and a very graphic one.

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The edition I read it in first, and still read it in, is E. V. Rieu’s Penguin Classics translation. When I’m doing my academic work, I check it against the Loeb Classic edition where it’s very literally translated. Rieu fought in the First World War. He was in the Maratha Light infantry in India and then in the Second World War he was in London in the Blitz, when he decided to start translating the Odyssey . He did the Odyssey first and then the Iliad . This is a veteran in war, translating the great book of war.

How has the Iliad influenced and shaped the genre of war writing?

It continues to inspire. There have been so many writers who have been influenced by it. For an epic, it manages to do both things: it has an enormous scope, but then it really focuses in. To write vividly about battle you need that human interest angle. Monomachia or hand-to-hand fighting comes out in other much later works of war literature, which focus on a single individual and their fate in war.

I’m thinking now of C.S. Lewis in Surprised By Joy . He fought in the First World War and when he got to the western front he said, “This is war, this is what Homer saw.” I’m sure it was nothing like it actually, it’s dubious whether Homer was one single person and it’s unclear whether he could see. But it still carries the weight of all these centuries of cultural baggage.

Having influenced war writing; do you think the Iliad influenced the way people fought in wars?

Book number 3 is War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy . Don’t people only read it for the peace bits? Because the war bits can be quite boring, people say.

The last hundred pages are dull, but if you can stick out the first 1200, then you might as well stick out the last. For the first 1200, it’s a kind of ebb and flow between war and peace, and I think each is equally engaging. When you get to the war parts, Tolstoy is always having the characters think about how they can talk about war. So Nikolai Rostov has these very heroic ideas of going into battle, but then it’s not quite as heroic as he imagined, it doesn’t go as well as he thought, and then when he’s asked to talk about it he realises his listener seems disappointed, so he very quickly slips into a standard heroic war tale. Tolstoy didn’t fight in the Napoleonic wars, but he did fight in the Crimean war, so he drew on his experiences in that when he wrote War and Peace .

Yes, it’s not about the time that he’s writing in. How common is writing written post conflict? What difference is there between this and writing written in a conflict?

That’s true of most of the choices here. Tolstoy is writing in the 1860s about the beginning of the nineteenth century, Homer is writing about an imaginary war, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is published in 1961 and it’s about the Second World War . Penelope Farmer was writing a good fifty years after the First World War . I think people do write about previous wars and partly it’s a way of avoiding contemporary rawnesses.

Let’s move on to Catch 22 , tell me about this book.

This is the great war book of the twentieth century. It’s laugh-out-loud funny. He’s talking about the Second World War , which is thought of as the good war. He picks up on an aspect of war which has gone on since Homer. You have an overarching war strategy which might make sense, but, for the individual, the things they’re asked to do can seem absolutely ludicrous — in this case to fly death-defying, practically suicidal missions. It’s completely illogical, being in the war zone. He captures that brilliantly: through repetition, through completely farcical situations and through extremely harrowing moments as well.

Is comedy antithetical to war, or is it a useful lens through which to look at the experience of war?

Laughter and war are almost natural companions. But I wouldn’t say laughter implies funniness or a lack of seriousness, and nor does comedy. Catch-22 gets you to the point where you can’t apply your reason any more and laughter takes over. It’s the laughter of the absurd which might not be to do with funniness, but is to do with preposterousness or incongruity or disbelief. It’s that kind of, “I can make no sense of this,” laughter and I think evoking it is incredibly skilful.

Another person who does it is Spike Milligan. I love his war memoirs. The first one is Hitler: My Part in His Downfall . Just the title conveys the ridiculous. He is one person who mostly spends his Second World War in Bexhill-on-Sea doing maneuvers.

Catch 22  also has some very visceral descriptions of the horrors of war. How successfully does he convey those experiences and what are their purpose in this book?

He does convey them graphically. He makes it absolutely clear that man is mortal. A character gets chopped in half and there’s someone else who’s horribly wounded in an air accident and you find out the contents of his stomach. It’s literally visceral, his kidneys are there with the tomatoes he had for breakfast. He’s very good at conveying that sense of the absolute mortality and carnality of the human body.

“There’s nothing like war to show the fragility of the human body, its destructibility.”

There’s a recurring character called the Soldier in White, who’s a soldier in the hospital completely encased in white plaster cast. In another scene the characters discover the solder in white is gone and an identical one is in his place. Although his arms are different lengths and his body’s a different length, he’s still encased in white, so there will always be a Soldier in White. People become absolutely indistinguishable from one another, which conveys this sense of man as organic matter. There’s nothing like war to show the fragility of the human body, its destructibility.

There’s the amazing description of the Blitz in Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life . The narrator sees a body that she thinks is clothes on a coat hanger because it’s just hanging there.

I was stunned by Life After Life . I think that idea of the world turned upside down, and particularly the house turned inside out, is quite common. I can only imagine what it must feel like to have an intimate room like the bedroom suddenly on show in the street, and have all your possessions out in the street. It’s the complete opposite of civilized living. Writers use it quite often, “ The Land-Mine ” by George Macbeth described how the war has ripped off the front of houses.

Your final book is If This Is a Man by Primo Levi.

I first read this in my twenties. It was my introduction to the Holocaust . This is when I began to understand what the Holocaust had been. Primo Levi was an Italian Jew and an industrial chemist who was sent to Auschwitz. It is about his existence in Auschwitz. Reading it, horror follows horror. It’s hard to believe that the human frame can survive under such circumstances, let alone survive to write something like this.

There are two moments in it that particularly struck me. Auschwitz is in Poland and it’s winter. The hard labour is extremely difficult and it is very cold and bitter. The prisoners are going to be synthesizing rubber in a factory near to Auschwitz, so there is a chemistry exam. And it’s the most infernal exam in the world. This person who has been reduced to something that is almost sub-human now has to try and remember his chemistry from his degree. If he can remember he will be able to work inside in the warmth, and he won’t die. There’s something about being a scholar and thinking about your knowledge under such circumstances that is very powerful.

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He does get to work in the factory, which probably saves his life. There is a scene in which he is going with a very young prisoner to get soup and suddenly a line from Dante’s Inferno comes to his mind. It’s the Ulysses canto, where Ulysses is saying, “I’m not meant for men like these but men who strive after excellence” and Primo Levi tries to remember it. Trying to remember it is this moment of confirmation that he’s still human. The young man he is with is French and doesn’t see what he’s talking about, but senses that it is really important. Levi doesn’t remember the whole canto, but he remembers enough snatches of it that he’s just about got it. I’d like to say that this proves the enduring, humanising power of literature, but I’m not sure you can. George Steiner has pointed out in his great book Language and Silence that people who read Goethe and listened to Schubert in the morning then went out and did their work as guards at Auschwitz. So I don’t think literature improves you.  Nonetheless, it is a moment worth registering because it is this remembrance that means so much to him and he says, “I would give my day’s soup ration to remember that line.” You’d have to read this account to know how much a day’s soup ration matters.

This makes me think of Elaine Scarry’s The Body In Pain and her idea that if you reduce somebody to just a cipher or symbol of your own power through causing them pain it involves that removal of self. I think it’s a very coherent way of thinking about that loss of humanity–you remove the inner life and you make them simply a body.

Yes, I absolutely agree with that. The writing of this, and similar Holocaust memoirs, is a reaffirmation, it goes back to combat gnosticism. It’s hard for anyone who hasn’t been in that situation to talk about reaffirmation, because it’s hard to imagine just what you would have to come back for.

How does he approach the writing of the truly unspeakable?

He writes with extreme candor and a remarkable lack of self-pity. I think there’s this sense, in theories of representations of the Holocaust, that if you deviate even slightly from the truth then you risk letting in the deniers. And so the place of literature in relation to the Holocaust is a very delicate subject. As readers, we have to be very, very aware of the potential of slipping into sentimentality, or trying to make something good out of it that just isn’t there

Does our knowledge of his suicide in any way alter the experience of reading his writing?

In a way it just makes the bravery of the writing—not only of If This Is A Man but all his other works, which never leave this subject—the more extraordinary. There is something about surviving to bear witness, it is an incredibly brave thing to do. He strikes me as an absolutely heroic person.

You’re writing now about literature and silence, how can silence creep into literature? Might it be the purest expression of a horrific event?

My next project is going to be about literature and silence. It grows out of the last chapter of the book I’m writing on veterans which is called “The End of the Story”. The penultimate chapter is about veterans who never stop talking about the war as a model of literary creativity. And the final chapter is about veterans who won’t say anything or can’t say anything or don’t say anything.

We neglect the silences in literature. I’m interested in the acoustic use of silence in poetry or drama and in things that aren’t said, and how we know they’re not said. It’s terribly difficult if you’re not going to say something or write something in protest, how do you register that? You’ve got to sort of hedge it round with words. But I think we can try and listen to those silences.

And silences, as we know from the two minute silence, are incredibly powerful. I want to try and understand this better, and understand how we can see silences in texts that are there, and also maybe texts that aren’t there, or texts that aren’t as they would have been. It’s looking into the realm of the subjunctive, into the hypothetical, into the not said.

February 12, 2016

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Kate McLoughlin

Kate McLoughlin is Associate Professor of English at Harris Manchester College, Oxford.  Her books include Authoring War: The Literary Representation of War from the Iliad to Iraq (2011) and Martha Gellhorn: the War Writer in the Field and in the Text   (2007).  She is a former government lawyer, an Associate of the Royal College of Music in piano performance, and a poet: her collection  Plums came out in 2011.

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Contemporary Writing on War and Conflict

• World War One: Projects to Mark the Centenary
• September 2014 - December 2018

This project examines the contemporary war experience as reflected by writers, poets, journalists and bloggers, and interrogate how we write about war and conflict today in contrast to the writing that was written on WW1.

Thought pieces from leading contemporary UK writers are a starting point for international public discussions. Looking at questions such as: What is the role of the writer in responding to conflict? What feels like an appropriate amount of time before creating an artistic response to war? Who do we trust to write about war? What we accept as war literature today, and how this is influenced by its context and changing global situations. How do we capture the human experience of war?

Caroline Wyatt on reportage

Patrick Hennessey on memoir 

Helen Dunmore   on fiction,

Owen Sheers  on poetry

Ben Hammersley   on digital writing

Helen Dunmore was the first winner of the Orange Prize and is also an acclaimed children's author and poet. She has published twelve novels including  Zennor In Darkness , winner of the Mckitterick Prize; A Spell Of Winter , winner of the first Orange Prize; The Betrayal , longlisted for the Man Booker prize, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize; The Greatcoat (2012) and The Lie (2014). Helen Dunmore has also published three collections of stories, Love Of Fat Men, Ice Cream and Rose 1944 , and her stories have been widely broadcast and anthologised. Her children's novels include the INGO series, published by harpercollins and shortlisted for the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. Her ten poetry collections include The Raw Garden, Out Of The Blue and The Malarkey , all published by Bloodaxe Books. She spoke on the theme of war in her work at events in Russia at the Krasnoyarsk Book Fair 1-4 November 2014 along with Nigel Farndale (who spoke about the research he undertook on the First World War for his novel The Blasphemer ) and Imtiaz Dharker (who talked about her response to Wilfred Owen’s Anthem of Doomed Youth in the collection of poems 1914 Remembers ).

Patrick Hennessey was born in 1982 and educated at Berkhamsted School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read English. On leaving university he joined the Army and served from 2004 to 2009 as an officer in The Grenadier Guards. In between guarding towers, castles and palaces he worked in the Balkans, Africa, South East Asia, the Falkland Islands and deployed on operational tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. On leaving the Army he wrote his first book, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club , a memoir of a brief but eventful stint in uniform; followed by Kandak an account of how unlikely alliances can be forged in the intensity of battle. Patrick is now a barrister.

Owen Sheers has written two collections of poetry, The Blue Book and Skirrid Hill , which won a Somerset Maugham award. His verse drama Pink Mist won Wales Book of the Year and the Hay Festival Poetry Medal. Non-fiction includes The Dust Diaries and Calon: A Journey to the Heart of Welsh Rugby . His first novel Resistance has been translated into ten languages and was made into a film in 2011. His plays include The Passion, The Two Worlds of Charlie F and Mametz , which has been longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2014. His second novel, I Saw A Man , is published by Faber & Faber in 2015. 

Ben Hammersley is an author, futurist and technologist specialising in the effects of the internet and the ubiquitous digital network on the world’s political, cultural and social spheres. He enjoys an international career as a trends and digital guru, explaining complex technological and sociological topics to lay audiences, and as a high-level advisor on these matters to governments and business. Ben Hammersley is a Fellow at The Brookings Institute in Washington DC, a fellow at the Robert Schuman School of Advanced Study at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and Innovator-in-Residence at the Centre for Creative and Social Technologies, Goldsmiths, University of London. He is contributing editor of WIRED Magazine and writes regularly for the international media including The Financial Times .

Caroline Wyatt became the BBC’s Religious Affairs Correspondent in August 2014, having been a BBC Defence Correspondent from 2007. Prior to that, she covered UK operations in Iraq from 2003 and in Afghanistan from 2001. From 2003 - 2007, Caroline was BBC Paris correspondent, and before that spent three years as Moscow Correspondent, charting Vladimir Putin's first term as Russian President. She also covered NATO in Kosovo in 1999, and Russian operations in Chechnya, as well as working in Gaza and the wider Middle East for the BBC in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She is also an occasional presenter for R4 The World Tonight and Saturday R4 PM. She contributed to 'The Oxford Handbook of War', R4’s ‘More from Our Own Correspondent’ and ‘Only Remembered’, a children’s anthology edited by Michael Morpurgo looking at the literature of WW1.

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How To Write A Book About War: 8 Tips To Authentic Prose

POSTED ON May 16, 2023

Written by Sarah Rexford

Ever wondered how to write a book about war? I don’t know where you were that summer night in July of 2017, but hopefully you found a few hours to sit in a dark theater and watch the new film release, Dunkirk . With a 92% tomatometer score , Rotten Tomatoes describes it as an “Extremely powerful and exciting war movie about the evacuation during WW2.” 

Writers long to craft powerful, exciting plots that bring in readers and garner standout reviews. In this article, I show you how to write a book about war and provide an eight point, step by step guide to help you. Let’s get into it!

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Table of Contents

Defining a war book.

Often termed a war novel or known as military fiction , a book about war has its central focus on the battlefield or the home front. Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken is a classic, nonfiction example of surviving during war. 

Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale is a bestselling fiction of life on the home front during World War II. 

And Unbroken: Path to Redemption is the film sequel displaying Louis Zamperini’s struggle to return to normal life with PTSD and the countless complications that follow soldiers home from war.

When you decide to write a book on war, you do not need to pigeon hole yourself into one time period. Instead, you can choose to write about life on the battlefield, the home front, or returning from war. 

Fiction Versus Nonfiction

While fiction and nonfiction vary greatly in most genres, when you write a book on war, both categories should include a factual recounting of historical events.

While Kristin Hannah can create characters of her own, they need to live in environments that could have, or did, actually exist during the war time setting she places them in. In the same way, Laura Hillenbrand had to include strictly factual details about her real-life protagonist’s story. Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, facts are key.

How To Write A Book About War: Things To Include

Just like every genre, there are key factors to include when learning how to write a book about war. I dive deeper in the coming guide, but keep these three aspects top of mind for fiction:

• Include multiple types of conflict 
• Include realistic battle scenes 
• Include humanized character

For nonfiction, your list is quite similar. Be sure to include:

• The primary conflicts your protagonist faced
• Realistic depictions of their experiences 
• Multiple facets of their character 

Next up, your step by step guide.

Step By Step Guide

With the above in mind, let’s dive into eight steps you can take as you write a book about war.

#1 – Define Your Primary Focus 

There are so many factors to consider when you decide to write a book about war. In fact, it can feel like an insurmountable task to even begin to include every important detail. Instead, focus on the primary goal of your story.

If you write nonfiction, how can you best share an individual’s story or an event? For fiction, what should you focus on most to drive the action? 

#2 – Don’t Forget About All Types Of Conflict 

Second, when learning how to write a book about war it’s important to understand that your conflict doesn’t only include the setting. There are many types of conflicts you can include: Man against self, man against man, and man against nature. 

While a book about war is primarily focused on man against man, consider how you can develop a deep point of view by including the conflict of man against self. This applies for both fiction and nonfiction. 

#3 – Use The Senses To Showcase Emotion 

It may feel difficult to include the five senses when writing on the topic of war, but it’s important to accurately portray it. Resist the urge to sugar coat the experiences of veterans and those who gave their lives, and instead, use the five senses to realistically display your scenes. 

Of course, keep your target audience in mind and recognize that no matter how many edits you make, you can never replicate the experience itself. However, you can do your best to tell an honest story. 

#4 – Understand What You’re Writing And How To Write It

Unless you’re writing your memoir or autobiography, you likely don’t have first hand experience about what you will write about. To aid you in this process, consider watching movies about war to visualize battle. 

Steven Spielberg’s 1998 film, Saving Private Ryan is a great place to start. Spielberg depicted the Normandy landing so well that the film triggered PTSD in the veterans who watched it . If you write a book taking place on the battlefield, learn how to write battle scenes well. 

#5 – Add Humanity To Common Tropes

Every genre has tropes, but when you write a book about war, don’t forget the humanity in the individuals and characters you write about. Louis Zamperini was not only a prisoner of war, he was a living, breathing individual with feelings, fears, hopes, and dreams. 

To strip your protagonist of their humanity, particularly if you write nonfiction, is to lessen the weight of their sacrifice. 

#6 – Resource Other Books

Simply writing this article is a reminder of the gravity in choosing to write a book about war. It is not an easy topic, so be sure to learn from authors who have gone before you. Read as many books in the genre as possible to get a grip on how to write well. 

#7 – Remember You Can Always Edit

With tip number six in mind, remember that when you write a book about war, or any topic, you can always edit your manuscript. Until you send your final draft to the publisher or click publish you can make changes. Do your best to create a great first draft, but you can always:

• Edit your battle scenes
• Add layers of humanity 
• Write in more senses 
• Include internal conflict 
• Fine tune your central focus

Edit, edit, edit.

#8 – Check Your Facts

This should go without saying, but fact checking is so crucial I can’t do less than include it. While you can take some creative liberties when writing fiction, your nonfiction should exactly reflect the details that truly happened. 

For instance, if you cover an individual’s experience during the Bosnian War, fact check every detail of both their experience and the events that occurred. For fiction, you can take liberties with your characters’ experiences, but not with the events that occurred. 

The Key Is To Begin The Process

If you feel a bit overwhelmed after all of this, simply focus on your first step. What can you do after exiting out of this blog to further your manuscript? Do you need to:

• Decide what perspective character to write from, or what point of view to use ?
• Research important dates? 
• Interview an individual? 

Every book begins with the first step. You can do this! Feel free to reference this eight-step guide as often as you need to, and if you need further guidance, you may want to watch this video.

Remember, take it one step at a time. Best wishes as you set out on your journey!

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How to Write a War Story

So, you started writing a War story and got stuck along the way. Maybe you aren’t sure if your story meets all the obligatory scenes and conventions of its genre. Maybe you’re wondering if your controlling idea or theme addresses the overall values at stake in a War story. Maybe you’re asking, what are the core emotions, subgenres, and audience expectations of a War story? Do you even have a War story?

I’ve completed a great deal of research on War stories and I’m excited to answer these questions and more by sharing what I’ve learned.

Let’s get started.

What is a War story?

Fundamentally, a War story includes a single soldier or group of soldiers preparing for, waiting for, engaging in, and possibly recovering from wartime combat. A war story must have soldiers on a battlefield with the possibility of death. It’s important to note that it’s not every story set in time of war. It has to build and lead to a core battle, which is the equivalent of the “hero at the mercy of the villain” scene for a Thriller or the “proof of love” scene for a Love story. A wartime setting could function as a backdrop for any genre. A War story is not a history lesson on war-time conflict, a bunch of battle sequences strung together, or about a protagonist who is just a bad-ass Terminator robot. A war story is much more.

In War stories, human behavior is dramatized to demonstrate the coexistence of brutality and altruism and how extreme circumstances and trauma bring out the best and the worst in soldiers.

The story dramatizes a political perspective on war. (See subgenres and commentary on politics, below.)

What is the Global Value?

The global value at stake describes the protagonist’s primary change from the beginning of the story to the end. It’s the primary arc you’ll keep your protagonist moving along throughout your story.

The global War story turns on honor and disgrace in the context of war.

Conflict in a War story is expressed on three different levels:

External Conflict  arises from fellow soldiers and/or the environmental pressures (weather, enemy forces, terrain). The protagonist is motivated by the expectations and limitations of his team to stay alive, win the battle, and obtain honor via sacrificing for fellow soldiers.

Interpersonal Conflict  is between the antagonist and protagonist. The antagonist of a War story is usually the enemy forces and at least one member of a soldier’s own side, often a higher ranking official.

Internal Conflict  is a war within the protagonist. This usually follows a Worldview or Morality trajectory (or both) and culminates in a shift in thinking that allows the protagonist to display all their gifts while fighting in the Big Battle. In most stories, the conflict might unfold on one or two of these levels. A War story’s conflict must unfold on all three. Confusing? Let’s take a look at the infographic.

The protagonist doesn’t necessarily have to be defeated with dishonor, but it must be a possible outcome. In a War story, the “negation of the negation” is dishonorable defeat presented as honorable. In other words, trying to convince others that one’s dishonorable behavior in war was honorable is equivalent to a character’s damnation.

War stories arises from the protagonist’s physiological AND emotional needs for safety. The War protagonist’s primary goal isn’t love, self-esteem, or financial rewards. Initially their want is to win the battle and stay alive (external storyline, conscious object of desire). They come to realize their need is to believe that life is worth living but, if they must die, dying with honor is better than dying in disgrace.

What’s the Controlling Idea?

A story’s Controlling Idea (sometimes called the theme) is the lesson you want your reader to come away with. It’s the meaning they will assign to your story.

Each of the main content genres has some generic premise statements. They are either prescriptive–a positive story that shows the reader what to do–or cautionary–a negative story that warns the reader about what not to do.

War stories can have broad-ranging purposes. You need to be absolutely clear which type you’re telling.

Prescriptive:

War is justified and meaningful when waged against a truly evil enemy. (war propaganda, Pro-War subgenre)

War’s meaning emerges from the nobility of the love and self-sacrifice of soldiers for each other. (Credit to Editors Anne Hawley and Leslie Watts)

Honor is gained in war when a soldier sacrifices for their fellow soldier, regardless of victory or defeat in battle.

Cautionary:

War lacks meaning when it is not morally justified. (Anti-War subgenre)

War lacks meaning when leaders are corrupt and dishonor soldiers’ sacrifices on the battlefield. (Credit to Editors Anne Hawley and Leslie Watts)

Honor is lost in war when a soldier refuses to sacrifice themselves for their fellow soldier, regardless of victory or defeat in battle.

What Are the Core Emotions?

Controlling Ideas help the writer elicit core emotions from the audience. Because a War story operates on three levels of conflict, it can elicit several different emotions:

Excitement, Fear

People choose War stories to experience courage and selflessness in the face of intense fear, without actual danger. False bravery.

Satisfaction, Pity, Contempt

They may also choose War stories to experience righteous satisfaction at the proper outcome for the protagonist, whether negative or positive. They want to feel pity for the tested and contempt for the unrepentant but righteous satisfaction when the punishment comes.

What are the essential moments? 

Each subgenre has its own essential moments but here is what they all have in common:

A shock (negative or positive) upsets the homeostasis of the protagonist and disrupts their ordinary life. The inciting incident of a War story is an attack that challenges the morals of the protagonist. It must put them under pressure.

The protagonist denies responsibility to respond.

Editor Tip: In overtly refusing the call to change, the protagonist expresses an inner darkness (fear of cowardice and/or fear of uncontrollable rage) or a clinging to unrealistic ideals (a worldview that never allows for the expression of violence). Classic Hero’s Journey.

The protagonist’s refusal of the call complicates the story and the call comes a second time but in a different form, usually as a requirement to fight for someone or something else.

Editor Tip: The War story often compels the protagonist to act without much choice beyond do or die. 

Forced to respond, the protagonist and other soldiers lash out according to their positions on the power hierarchy.

The protagonist’s initial strategy to outmaneuver antagonist fails.

The protagonist learns what their antagonist’s object of desire is.

Editor Tip: The real antagonist is often on the “side” of the soldier rather than a member of the enemy forces.

There is a clear “Point of No Return” moment, when the protagonist accepts the inevitability of death.

The protagonist, realizing they must change their approach to attain a measure of victory, undergoes an All Is Lost moment. The All is Lost in a war story is usually cathartic, a moment of acceptance of fate that either compels madness or resignation.

A Big Battle is the story’s core event. This is when the protagonist’s gifts (usually the gifts of all the team members) are expressed or destroyed. They discover their inner moral code or choose the immoral path.

Editor Tip: Make sure the primary antagonist is present in the Big Battle scene of the climax with the intent to see the protagonist fail.

The protagonist is rewarded with at least one level of satisfaction (external, internal or interpersonal) for their sacrifice. They gain honor or dishonor.

What are the essential situations?

Each subgenre has its own essential situations but here is what they all have in common:

The war portrayed must be necessary to your story, not ancillary. As an example, in  Platoon , the war is what isolates the men together and forces them to act.

There is a team of soldiers on a battlefield confronting life and death stakes.

Editor Tip: Five is a common cast of predominant characters; the protagonist plus four. As  Editor Anne Hawley   pointed out, “Odd numbers of characters in any scene will generate more dynamic energy than even numbers.”

There is one protagonist with offshoot characters that embody a multitude of that character’s personality traits. Examples are Achilles in  The Iliad , Dienekes in  Gates of Fire,  and Chris in  Platoon .

Editor Tip: Make sure you have a foil for your protagonist within the team. This is the character who embodies the ideals and attributes opposite of your character. As in a  Status story , this character exists to show the reader the other path your protagonist could have taken. An example is Mother in A Midnight Clear who represents the emotional and vulnerable traits that the protagonist, Will, is too cynical and skeptical to show. Another example is Bunny in Platoon who represents a complete lack of moral character and thoughtfulness in opposition to sentimental Chris.

The War itself is a seemingly impossible external conflict. The protagonist confronts overwhelming odds. Often, their team is substantially outnumbered.

As in a  Horror story , physical violence (or the threat thereof) is ever present.

Editor tip: Use this to heighten the consequences of seemingly minor character actions.

The protagonist has a mentor or sidekick, for better or worse. This character may lead the protagonist astray or encourage moral behavior. In  Platoon , Chris has Elias.

The protagonist brings their past into the war in the form of memories, ghosts, photographs, traumas, representational trinkets, etc. Whether they are able to overcome these or lean on these for support in war in order to make the right choices in the end depends upon your subgenre. In  Platoon , Chris brings his emotional isolation with him. He clings to his grandmother and refuses to acknowledge his father. He comes to war to rid himself of the privileges he has at home.

The protagonist receives assistance from unexpected sources, the Herald archetypes. Some examples are the characters who tell the protagonist “the truth” such as Rhah pointing out how good and evil are battling for Chris’ soul in  Platoon  or Eldridge calling out James in  The Hurt Locker . Or they are characters who enable the protagonist, like Bunny in  Platoon .

The protagonist’s values are tested, and the test culminates in a sacrifice for the team, or, in the negative story, in a failure to make the necessary sacrifice. Platoon’s final battle scene tests Chris’s values by giving him the chance to kill Barnes. Chris chooses to sacrifice his own safety during the battle for his fellow soldiers and he kills Barnes in the name of the good of humanity.

Editor Tip: The protagonist’s self-sacrifice makes little emotional sense unless the relationships among the soldiers has been clearly shown long before this culminating scene. By the end of Platoon, Chris has stopped writing his grandmother, is connected to other soldiers, and acknowledges both Elias and Barnes as father figures.

What are the Subgenres?

Ideologically Pro-War, more externally focused stories

The core values of this subgenre ride between honorable victory and dishonorable defeat. These stories focus on the false idea that it is “us versus them” and that one side (usually American) represents the liberators and freedom fighters. “We are good. They are bad.” These stories often assert that a low status person can become a high status person and hero by virtue of their involvement in battle, that they can finally belong. Soldiers are honored and portrayed as the saviours of humanity. Violence is glorified, justified, and meaningful. Battle sequences might be under-realized and the impact of violence and the cost of war are minimized. These stories carry aspects of the Brotherhood subgenre.

Examples of this story are  The Longest Day, Inglorious Bastards, Black Hawk Down, Red Dawn,  and  The Guns of Navarone.

Ideologically Anti-War, more externally focused stories

The core values of this story range between honorable victory and dishonorable defeat. The explicit use of random violence and repeated terror, combined with characters’ heinous acts as behavioral norms within context of their humanity, dramatize the basic premise that war negatively influences behavior and damages lives. Soldiers are flawed and often behave as their own worst enemies. Suspense techniques are employed to simulate the harsh realities of combat whether there is victory or defeat. War is meaningless and horrific for all of humanity, not just soldiers. These stories include at least one  war crime scene  and carry aspects of the Brotherhood subgenre.

Examples of the Anti-War story are  The Red Badge of Courage, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory, A Midnight Clear, The Thin Red Line ,  Dispatches  (the novel on which  Full Metal Jacket  was based),  Platoon,  and  Bridge On The River Kwai .

Editor Tip: Some critics and scholars argue that no film can qualify as an Anti-War story. For more information, check out  this link . Whether or not their assertions apply to novels as well is unclear.

Brotherhood, more internally focused stories

The core values of this subgenre are honor and disgrace regardless of victory or loss in battle. Battle sequences are well realized. The trials of War are the external framework on which the internal genre is hung. Action and battle scenes are only used when needed to drive the internal transformation of the protagonist. Scenes may be longer than those of other subgenres to allow for more dialog and the dramatization of the protagonist’s change arc. These stories carry aspects of either the Pro-War or Anti-War subgenres or both. This story has a secondary genre of  Morality  or a Morality/ Worldview  combo in which the protagonist must sacrifice for their fellow soldiers. This story type has a lot in common with the  Performance story .

Examples of this story are  Gates of Fire and The Deer Hunter.

Do you really want to tell a War story?

The challenge in writing a War story is how to innovate while remaining respectful and truthful; how to make sure the story resonates with audiences and that you don’t accidentally glorify war if you meant to damn it.

In my examination of many War stories, I saw the same story repeated over and over. If you can’t make a strong case for why you’re adding another War story to the world and clearly state how your story will be different, I challenge you to ask yourself why you want to tell a War story in the first place.

If you’re telling a primarily external genre story, you may find that your story is better told through the  Performance ,  Society , or  Action  Genre. Look at the controlling ideas and value shifts of these stories and see if they are a better fit.

If you’re telling a primarily internal story, you may find your story is better served by using the frameworks of the  Morality ,  Worldview , or  Status  Genres. Does your story even need ever present threats of violence and horror to work? As you recall, just because it’s set in wartime doesn’t make it a War story. You may even find your story is better served in a different setting than War.

So, if a War story is what best serves your idea, how do you craft it?

By now you know a War story isn’t created by stringing a bunch of battles and carnage together. You’ve seen they’re not a history lesson on the who, what, when, or where of war-time conflict. And you know you are going to have to take your protagonist to emotional extremes as a reaction to war events.

Your story will dramatize how a combat soldier is split between the person they were at home and the person they are at war. Put them through an emotional journey where they are helped by certain members of their team, fight an enemy, destroy part of themself, and suffer a real or metaphorical death and rebirth. Show how individual soldiers react to trauma in different ways, how they struggle with the expected and approved deception of combat with their sense of self and the world outside of combat where they’ve only ever been told to avoid deception. After the trials of horror and pain, they may or may not physically return to the world they came from.

Remember, a soldier isn’t a robot. The journey of a soldier is one of change the hard way. Consider taking your protagonist through the stages of the  Kubler-Ross change curve .

From what I’ve read, soldiers in a war zone go through four immutable stages. You could send your protagonist through all four or assign individual stages to various supporting characters.

Stage One:  This soldier just arrived. They think they’re in for an adventure and are sure they will survive. They don’t accept advice from senior soldiers or leaders. They’re special and this war gig is manageable without the need for personal change. Or, they underestimate the transformation they need to make to stay alive and honorable. They’re experiencing shock and denial. An example is Chris in the beginning of  Platoon.

Stage Two:  This soldier has seen combat and is changed by it. They recognize they’re in danger and institute caution. They implement change. Now they are accepting mentorship.  In Platoon,  Chris starts paying attention to Elias after Chris is accused of falling asleep on his shift and failing to prevent an attack.

Stage Three:  They’ve seen enough to know the brutalities of war and the rules for staying alive. They are willing to share useful information with others. In  Platoon , King, Elias, Rhah, and Lerner are all at this stage.

Stage Four : The soldier believes they are more likely to die than live through the war. They’ve seen the unexpected and horrific over a long period of time and now believe they’ve cheated death and luck longer than they deserve. In  Platoon,  Barnes reaches this state after he kills Elias.

Stage Five:  Real soldiers rarely get clear resolutions but our protagonists require them. A War story must deliver meaning by dramatizing how the protagonist comes to integrate their experiences in war, even if it is in the short-term. In  Platoon , Chris gives a monologue in the helicopter as he’s lifted off the battlefield that explains both his short-term and long-time thinking.

No matter which stage your protagonist is in, find what could disturb them via the real horrors of war. Is it their fellow soldiers raping, pillaging, killing, and burning civilians? Is it prostitution, a crisis of faith, insubordination, cruel punishment, irreconcilable moral choices? All of it? Mine those events for opportunities to create misinformation and misunderstandings for which your protagonist must contend. Your protagonist is likely hiding something crucial about themselves from their team and maybe something from their people at home. Exploit that.

Find what is truly beautiful and meaningful to the protagonist. Find ways to represent those values in external form. Some examples might be in an animal (“save the cat”), a civilian (mother protecting a child), photograph of a loved one (Betsy back home), religious trinket (pocket Buddha statue), or nature (a crushed flower). 

Final Thoughts?

Do your research or be consistent with your world building if your story is set in a fantasy setting. Know the following:

Social customs, landscapes, and costumes of the time period

Daily routines of soldiers, their slang, profanity, and communication patterns

Communication devices and transportation methods

Cause of the war and precipitating events

Key figures in the war and which outcome you want to highlight

Editor Tip: Spare us the weaponry lecture or gun porn (specs display). In the context of story, this is exposition and unnecessary detail. What do I mean by that? It’s boring. Good writers skip the boring parts.

On Politics:

If you find a way to avoid becoming polemic in your War story, you’ll be the first I’ve ever seen. You can try the “neutral as possible” approach to your story. After all, if you really understand the horrors of war, you won’t want to support the violence, but what about supporting individual soldiers fighting a war? Can you write a story that is Anti-War but pro-soldier? Is it possible? Or maybe you  want  to make a political point. If so, make sure you are well-informed. Know the political atmosphere and be very specific about what you want your audience to believe. Even if your story has a fantasy or sci-fi setting, politics apply.

On Moving to the Next Level in Your Writing:

Now you have the basics of the War Genre and are ready to finish that story. When you’re ready for an editor, please  contact me  for a consultation on your work.

I hope I’ve been able to help you with your story and I wish you the best of luck and hard work with your writing.

For more discussions on war stories, check out the excellent Editor Roundtable Podcasts on  The Hurt Locker  and  A Midnight Clear .

Here is a list of  War novel suggestions . I’ll add  Bring Out the Dog  to that list.

Suggested readings:   How to Tell a True War Story ,  On Writing the War , and  Write a War Story .

This post originally appeared at storygrid.com where I am a regular contributor for the Fundamental Fridays Series.

2 thoughts on “ How to Write a War Story ”

Thank you ever so much for providing this guidance. As you know, this comports with C.G. Jung and Joseph Campbell, as well as Oliver Stone in his approach to writing ‘Platoon’, and it resonates as sound litetary instruction to me. I’m a Vietnam Combat Vet, and the information you’ve provided I shall share with our Vietnam Veterans group. We are being encouraged to write about our experiences, and some don’t know how to go about it. This will certainly help. Thank you!

C.T. Clements

I specialize in helping people write their nonfiction stories and used to be a mental health therapist. Should anyone in your group need assistance in writing around the tough topics of war, I’d be happy to assist.

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How To Write An Epic Battle Scene

• by Hannah Collins
• January 18, 2017

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Whether it’s a muddy siege on a Medieval castle, rugged cowboys firing pistols from horseback, or a laser-beam shoot-’em-up in another galaxy, a great battle scene is a staple of action stories. High stakes, high body count, and – if it is in space – really, really high up.

We’ve covered the fundamentals of writing a good fight scene before , so let’s expand those ideas into the ingredients of an epic battle scene.

One battle scene is great, twelve is too many

Less isn’t always more. I, for one, prefer ‘more’ cake, for instance. But when it comes to battle scenes, this age-old phrase rings true. Why? Because they’ll start to seem like the worst thing an action scene can be: pointless and, by extension, dull. It may be tempting to fill your story with wall-to-wall, adrenaline-pumping battles in the spirit of ‘giving the people what they want’, but this level of drama is hard to maintain.

You also shouldn’t underestimate the power of breathing room in between periods of action. The best romance novels harness this power to its fullest – tantalizing readers with a slow build up of tension punctuated by short flurries of excitement, leading eventually to one or two big, um, ‘ pay-offs ’. This technique is applicable to novels with all kinds of action; it’s just that in a battle scene, the pay-off is more along the lines of slicing off someone’s head.

Define the goals and consequences

We’ve established that you should have plenty of breathing room between big battles, but what should you use that breathing room for? It may seem obvious, but a battle scene needs to have a point. Establishing your character’s goals will help you define why your battle scene is happening in the first place. What is your character’s motivation to fight? What is the end result they need from the battle? Are they going to win or lose? What does the outcome of the battle mean to them? What does the outcome mean for the story?

Determine short, medium and long-term goals for your character. If we use The Hobbit as an example, a short-term goal for Bilbo is answering Gollum’s riddles correctly or distracting Smaug long enough to steal the Arkenstone. A medium-term goal is for men, dwarves and elves to unite and defeat the orcs and wargs in the Battle of Five Armies on the Lonely Mountain. The long-term goal for Bilbo is… Well, just to get back home ASAP and put his hairy feet up. Each of these goals are character-building for Bilbo, as he truly – though begrudgingly – goes above and beyond his role as ‘thief’ in Thorin’s company, and as a result, changes the course of history in Middle Earth. Each of these conflicts also advances the narrative. They serve a purpose beyond mere spectacle.

Make the battle a personal struggle

As always, establishing empathy for your character will prompt your reader to invest in whatever perils you put them through. This is why – with the exception of sequels – starting your book in the middle of a battle is seriously risky. Without your reader knowing who any of the characters are or what the stakes are, there’s no way to make them really care about what’s happening.

The easiest way to heighten the stakes of a battle is to make them personal to both the protagonist and antagonist. Combining internal and external conflict grounds the fighting in something relatable. Huge explosions and thousand-strong armies are exciting, but they aren’t enough to fully engage us. Warring families, grudge matches, vengeance missions, and separated lovers, on the other hand, imbue a battle scene with emotional resonance.

The Battle of Hogwarts in J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a fittingly epic climax to the saga. Even though the reader knows this is a classic clash of ‘good’ vs ‘evil’, the emotional center of the drama rests on a long-awaited grudge match between two established enemies.

“Protego!” roared Harry, and the Shield Charm expanded in the middle of the hall, and Voldemort stared around for the source as Harry pulled off the Invisibility Cloak at last. The yell of shock, the cheers, the screams on every side of “Harry!” “HE’S ALIVE!” were stifled at once. The crowd was afraid, and silence fell abruptly and completely as Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and began, at the same moment, to circle each other. “I don’t want anyone else to try to help,” Harry said loudly, and in the total silence his voice carried like a trumpet call. “It’s got to be like this. It’s got to be me.” – J. K. Rowling,  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Use perspective to your advantage

Writing an epic battle scene can be a tricky task for one simple reason: it’s a chiefly visual  event. Of course, as an author, this doesn’t need to hinder you. Rather, it should make you even more creative when you sit down to write your battle. Sure, the sight of blood splattering across a camera lens and the clashing sound of steel blades is a potent experience, but narrator-less battles can also be repetitive, confusing, and exhausting to watch. The ‘ Bayhem ’ of the Transformers movies is a good (or should I say ‘bad’) example of this.

Shifting perspective is a key tool, here. In the following action scene from John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold , Le Carré uses the third-person point of view to show us not only what’s happening around Leamus, but his own viewpoint on it.

Leamus was blinded, he turned his head away, wrenching wildly at Liz’s arm. Now she was swinging free; he thought she had slipped and he called frantically, still drawing her upwards. He could see nothing – only a mad confusion of color dancing in his eyes. Then came the hysterical wail of sirens, orders frantically shouted. Half kneeling astride the wall he grasped both her arms in his, and began dragging her to him inch by inch, himself on the verge of falling. – John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

We are able to clearly visualize each action as it happens through Le Carré’s economical sentences, and understand the emotional weight of them through Leamus’ reactions – aided by Le Carré’s focus on sensory description. Totally immersive, even without a single robot vs. alien smash-fest.

Keep track of your characters

If your character has to get from A to B via a war zone, you need to know how. After all, it’s probably not going to be a straightforward journey for them, and if it is, you probably haven’t thrown enough hurdles at them. Tracking your character’s path through the battle will stop you (and them) from getting lost or missing out key details, which is especially essential if you’re going to be jumping between different characters’ perspectives. How should you track them? Draw an actual map of the battle. It doesn’t have to look pretty, just functional.

This should also help you keep track of where landmarks are in relation to your characters at every point in the battle. Landmarks can be used as anchors for your reader as you move your character around the scene. If there’s, say, a castle to the north-west of where your character starts, where will that castle be when they’re at the half-way point, or at the end? How many yards or miles away is it? You may not end up including all of these details, but clear planning will help with clear description. You might want to convey a sense of chaos to your reader, but you don’t want to lose them in it.

The perfect battle scene

The major mistake that most authors make when writing a battle scene is to treat the battle itself as the focus. In written works, battles are about results, and these are far easier to communicate through individual characters.

Don’t try to communicate the chaos of warfare head on, but have it happen to your characters. Blow up their escape route, drop a building on them, and bombard them with trouble. If you want to show the battle on a wider scale, split them up, or spread them throughout the battle scene before it starts.

Spectacle is drawn from consequence – if a city the reader has never visited is overrun, they’ll struggle to care, but if they’ve been there in peacetime and know what’s being destroyed, or understand the city’s tactical value to the protagonists, then they know exactly what its loss means. The key to a great battle is in quantifying the events within it; the reader needs to know what’s at stake, what’s being lost, and what each specific event means for the overall outcome .

Why is the arrival of the cavalry always such a great moment? Because it completely alters the stakes and outcome in a way the reader understands (usually bringing the ‘good guys’ back from the brink). If you want to guarantee an epic battle scene, start with the goals of the protagonists and extrapolate moments that put those goals under threat. You’ll have a tense, exhilarating battle scene before you know it.

Do you have a favorite battle scene that’s inspired your writing? Let me know in the comments! Or, for more advice about writing combat in your story, check out Here’s How To Write A Damn Good Fight Scene ,  The 5 Immutable Laws Of Writing A Good Action Scene , and  How (And When) To Kill A Character .

• Action , Alternate history , Antagonist , Case study , Fantasy , Fiction , Plot , Point of view , Protagonist , Science fiction , Story settings , World building , Young adult

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Hannah Collins

6 thoughts on “how to write an epic battle scene”.

Thank you, Hanna, wonderfully concise and understandable. Love that you used LeCarre to illustrate; one of my favourite scenes. You explained why, beautifully.

Thank you very much for the kind words! Yes, any opportunity to reference LeCarre has to be taken, IMO.

Thanks, Hannah

Hanna, this was good. I particularly liked (and took notes) about sketching the battle site/city/planet/dungeon. The point you made of “consequence” is spot on. Your example author, Tolkien wrote some epic battle scenes; Battle of Pelennor Fields comes straight to mind. He did just as you recommend, narrowed the viewpoint to only a few main characters and let their experiences reveal the action. One thing I’d add, if your battle comes before the Grand Kablooie, then it must have its own significant plot consequences. Main characters have to die. A battle for the sake of adding drama or action to an otherwise dull sequence will only make it worse.

Thanks for the comment and the kind feedback. Yes, Tolkien really was a master of his craft. I don’t think Peter Jackson’s adaptations would have been as strong as there were without the source material being so good.

I agree – without reason and consequence, a battle scene is all empty spectacle. A battle scene preempting the climax would – as you said – have to contain something as significant as a character death or bring closure to a subplot in order to avoid that trap.

Thank you Hanna, this was well made and everything I had hoped for. There are really good points to take away from this. Especially the thoughts on personal struggles, consequences for the reader and keeping track of your characters.

But I have some questions for my own story. My story starts with a battle scene, even though this is risky. It will be fairly short and not an entire intricate battle. Even though the reader does not know the character, or the stakes, I figured this a way to show what the character has gone through before he returns to the place where most of the action takes place. And it shows there will be battles and blood.

What do you make of this? Is this a viable “start with action”? Or should I keep some things in mind?

Hi Francis,

Thanks for the comment – I’m glad you found the article useful.

Starting a battle is a risky thing to do, as you said, but by no means impossible to pull off. I think keeping it fairly short – as you mentioned you would – is a good idea, just so you don’t risk losing the reader’s interest. If I were you, I would consider focussing that battle around your main protagonist(s) and use it as a device for your reader to get to know them. Personally, I don’t usually mind if I’m thrown into an action scene (or just any scene) and don’t immediately know what’s going on and what the stakes are, because there’s a kind of pleasure in discovering that as the scene continues. But what I do think is essential is connecting with the characters as quickly as possible. You want the reader to want to keep following them, even if they’re not sure of the destination yet.

Try and inject your protagonist’s personality into all of their actions and dialogue, and keep in mind how they’d be feeling during the battle – excited? Nervous? Scared? Angry? Once the battle is over, you can move into a ‘quieter’ section to reflect on what’s just taken place, which is when some key exposition will probably be needed to contextualise everything – including the all-important stakes.

I hope that helps.

For further advice on starting a story, you might find these articles useful too: //www.standoutbooks.com/how-to-write-first-chapter/ //www.standoutbooks.com/four-story-openings-put-people-avoid/ //www.standoutbooks.com/should-you-always-start-with-the-action/

Good luck with the writing!

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19,890 quotes, descriptions and writing prompts, 4,964 themes

war - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing

• a war veteran
• angel of war
• antisemitism
• apocalyptic battles
• arms dealer
• asylum seekers
• battle frontier
• battle ready
• colonialism
• conspiracy theories
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• The General
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Killing innocents kills innocence and all that remains is guilt; war is not a 'catch all' excuse.

In war let us keep a warm heart and a cool head, remembering always the humanity of the 'othered' or else lose our own.

"In war," said the commander, "it is foolish to put effort into gaining ground you'll never keep. All it does it does is put at risk what you have. If we can't maintain a gain in good health and order, defend it properly, we alter our path."

Let our art of war be a love song. Let us tell the oppressed peoples of totalitarian regimes that we love them and their cultures. Let us show that we defend not attack, support not suppress and bring freedom squared.

The pope made the invaded country consecrated ground. The entire nation became the same thing as a church. One cannot murder in a church, and so we waited to see if the war would be over.

We actually do expect the literary inquisition because it happens in periods of war and instability. We expect the rounding up and "shooting" (literal or figurative - depending on where you are) of literary intellectuals because we have the power to make the world anew. The question I would like to pose though, is why? We can make a heaven on Earth. We can bring dignity and a powerful sense of sacredness to every person in the world, we can bring a good future for all mankind. We can bring the love-nexus. We can show that we care for every nation. We can make war a thing of the past. We can solve the problems that are creating poverty, misery and sickness... So, dear leaders of the money-nexus, we should be welcomed as friends who can solve your problems, provide answers and bring societal calm and cooperation. We are the solution, not the problem. We are the cure, not the disease. We have the ability to bring lasting order through positive neurological healing of populations. So... I get it... there are millions and billions of people to care for... that's a huge responsibility... so, let us help. Let us help. Because we will work all our days for that end, for every human, for all of creation. We were born for this. Not for power, yet for service and support. The pen is more powerful but we have the same objective... peace ... thriving cultures... a sustainable world... a future for everyone that has a great standard of living. That said, dear young writers, dear young intellectuals, please stand back and let the grown ups get on with this. By all means comment, make your opinions heard, it is the leaders are who are always targeted. This is the war of your parents generation. We have the life experience. We have the duty to protect the young. You own the future; let we old ones own the now. For in this battle is the truth of Generation X. Your truth will come later. You will continue the fixing of Earth long after we have passed on. Be safe, we love you. xxx

Here at the W.I.N. we show the correct techniques for release of populations from harmful elements of culture and control. Freedom is best! They must break the harmful loops and route the new comprehension via the creative empathy elements of the brain. Thus, the brain is built better and their own problem solving ability is enhanced, thus society moves toward peace! The opposite is what many politicians and conspiracy theorists have done for generations, they seek to either make harmful loops with fear, or break them but route the new comprehension via emotional indifference, anger, greed and such. While this gets fast "results" it causes long term damage to the neurology of the population - thus it tilts the axis of history to social decay, war and devolution. Yikes!! So, come be our students, dear wordsmith of talent. We are the best there is.

The drive toward variation meets the drive toward conformity for group safety in opposite directions. The relative power of these forces in the neurology of each organism and the society will determine the strength of each. Variation is favoured by safety and has the power to drive creativity and discovery. Conformity is favoured by adversity in all forms, a recipe of negative factors combined. It is, however, worthy of note, that these forces are not equal. The history of humanity is a bloody tale of genocide. Thus only the survivors are our collective ancestors. Thus the drive toward conformity is a preparation for war and is amped in power by comparison. Thus in times of fear the proper leaders must have an upper brain (PFC) capable of dominating their primitive drive and converting that amped power into solution finding over war strategy. It is a simple switch, yet all leaders must possess the ability for such.

In the love-nexus there is no war, because we evolved passed it. Until you are willing to see the role the money-nexus plays in suffering, you can't get to where we are, to the kind of society we have. We wish you well, Earth, we do. But you have all the information you need. You have all the technology you need. Do you want to save yourselves and your planet or not? It's up to you. We're going home now, back to our world.

There are better and worse versions of loss. We are aiming for the better version because then we have the strongest base possible for rebuilding. That is our victory, it is the only one on the table, and it is a painful, sad and desperately awful form of success. Society can fall a hundred stories, seventy, thirty... whatever happens, however much we win, it will be measured in how much more we could have lost than we did. I'm sorry the news is that bleak. But, there you go.

All lifeforms compete when needed resources are in short supply, the money nexus creates both artificial scarcity and concentrates need in already deprived areas. Thus both conventional war and social wars (decay) are direct results of the money-nexus system.

"It is odd, is it not?" said Lucy, "that they are so keen to socialise the funding of war and not health."

Negative actions create negative chaos, and negative chaos is destructive. Positive actions create positive chaos, and positive chaos is constructive. And when we look at the history of war and peace we see these simple truths at the heart of the matter.

For one nation to control another for their own selfish purpose, through war or intellectual domination, is a form of barbarism; the divine gifts which we have been given are there for the purposes of loving and supporting each other. Thus with love as our "supreme first principle" we will find the roads to peace and global freedom.

To promote peace, to prevent war, to bring societal health, we must reverse the artificial shortages of essential resources around the world. Food suppression must end, the technological advances that can bring an age of abundance must be developed for the benefit of the entire species in the spirit of cooperation and love.

Grandpa sighed and rocked back in his chair, his eyes showing the sorrow of the years. Emily, love, all you ever need to know about most wars is to follow the money and power interests. The stuff about religion and race is a smokescreen. The side who want the wars only use that to subdue a population, it's a variation of mind-control. Once your emotions are engaged and you're afraid, you will keep going back for more of the same, making a cage for your mind. If the public discourse is about anything other than money or power it's bullshit, sorry, pardon my french. Let's look at Afghanistan, it's all about money and power and the side who start all this they had no ability to love, and that is the mark of the devil's pawns. The war boosted sales of weapons, the population of Afghanistan became psychologically devastated and vulnerable - the exact condition the evil side wants humans in, in this state they can be made to grow drugs and be fodder for the drug trade. They are easy to exploit for human trafficking in all the various forms that takes. And they are easy to radicalise and thus extend the cycle of money and power going into the hands of the evil side. So all anyone really needs to do to solve this is to follow the money, follow the power dynamics and it'll all be over. Anyone with a good heart would have put all that money into food, education, music, dance... into reestablishing the healthy Afghan culture. War, power, money - they were all manifestations of the same thing, all of them devoid of the only thing we know keeps mankind safe - the ability to love.

Artificial resource restriction is a weapon of war, a way to cause stress in a population and enough tension to bring conflict. Restriction of any need or ability to lead a happy life will lead to war... even the most healthy of cultures will become toxic if basic needs are refused. When we see control of food, restriction of production and flow, that is a tool of war and we must be clear in our hearts and heads that it is such. To put any population into "survival mode" in their brains is to inhibit proper brain development, stopping creative thought and the development of spider neurones - (the neurone that is needed in all socially complex species). Thus the answer to war and peace once again is in the monetary system.

What is war, but the slaughter of our finest at the devil's command? How can we evolve when our best are taken? So let's stop being fooled into blind hate and rancour and reach out with the only arms God gave us in full love, in the name of, and with the bravery of, our fallen heroes of all sides.

It is when we love our enemy that they become our friends, and this is the death of war itself. When we see their children and feel the yearning to put food in their bellies and hear their laughter ring, infusing with the laugher of our own children, we make a lasting bond, a pact with love itself. This is when truth comes, and the silence is all the words we will ever need, for this is the intelligence of the heart, the language of the universe.

"Lucy, if you want sheep in a pen you need barking dogs outside. In our world, war and terrorism are the barking dogs, the pen is capitalism. And no, don't speak of communism, there is no communism as Marx envisaged, only totalitarianism and oligarchy. So, the question I ask is, who benefits from all this?"

"The roots of war are in how we communicate, from there the path is set. We fail to comprehend that language is just a crude tool to communicate a concept. Often the reply to any question is not a reply but the ruminations of the brain of the other, dealing with what was said. Most of the time our dialogues are simply different ways to express the same ideas. If we communicate like two closed fists, we are doomed to repeat history. If we open our hearts and minds our ideas can come together to create peace and harmony, like open hands coming together to overlap, the fingers weaving together. Perhaps we can't agree on climate change, but we can agree on the need to protect the ecosystems we all depend on, and doesn't that give the desired result for all? Perhaps we can't agree on abortion, but we could work together to make a society where every child has enough food and good shelter - making abortion an illogical choice unless the life of the mother is at stake. If we think that debate equals argument and success is standing your ground, we'll never turn this ship around before we hit the iceberg, and then what? Will we fight over the arrangement of the chairs as we sink beneath the icy brine?"

It was well known from the monsters of history that people didn't react to death tolls if they were too high to comprehend. One death can mobilize a community, even a nation. Many deaths, hundreds or thousands, can make a lasting impression to be used for good or bad intentions. Millions of deaths were the ticket, make it bloody enough and people will keep on eating their cornflakes and pouring their coffee. We just aren't wired to cope with that kind of devastation and so we don't, like a safety shutdown. So the path for the warlords was simple, make sure the death tolls are as high as possible. For those freaks that are able to react - shut them down with fear of the "enemy." Wicked fun. Worked every time. The only antidote was to shine a light on one dead child at a time, just one. Let the world see each God's child killed in the name of war, in the name of money and greed.

When the war came it was Goliath against David, only this time Goliath had all the toys. It was no old fashioned battle with the young men of the enemy coming to fight the fathers of our homeland, the ones who would die for their families. The smart bombs were only as smart as the person guiding them and no amount of collateral damage was too much. If generations were wiped out as they took their "surgical strike" then so be it, even of their target wasn't even home at the time. As warfare becomes more modern those who chose to kill remain isolated from the horror, and the trigger pullers are heavily trained to follow orders; yes sir, yes marm. Only the lowest ranks see the blood, the dead children and their parents, bodies lined up like fallen dominos. They have the ruined lives and the PTSD. The higher ranks live out their fantasies of power like some hollywood blockbuster "shock and awe." But I can tell you that here on the ground we live out your worst nightmares daily.

Central banks fund all sides of every war. They never lose.

Authored by Unknown , here .

Peace cannot be achieved in a system where there are people who make profits on war.

It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.

Authored by Ron Paul , here .

The engineering of the war is something I'd like to take credit for, it wasn't easy. In this day and age it would be so easy for the populations to communicate directly, understand each other's points of view and heaven forbid, become "friends." They had to hate one another, human nature helped of course. They all wanted to be "right" and "superior." Religion was such a wonderful vehicle for all that, a way of using the best parts of their natures to boost the worst parts instead of suppressing them. I'm telling you it was genius. I guess that makes me a genius. What? Am I ashamed? Not at all. We're still on top aren't we? Life is cruel. Get over it.

War was always problematic. People just didn't want to fight. In their hearts they're all namby-pamby traders who want to take junior out to the ball park on the weekend. Even with the finest psychologists it was near impossible, those "Your country needs you" posters just wouldn't cut it anymore. We employed ivy league graduates to tell us what it would take to raise the population against our "enemy." We didn't like the answer. But what was the alternative? We needed war for our economy, to maintain our global position, but you can't rally a population around that flag. They needed to be "educated" on why the enemy is bad and fear that they or their families will personally suffer if action isn't taken. It takes years of course, but so long as the lie is big enough no-one suspects a thing - apart from the crazies. But then they also believe in UFO's and dress up for Star Trek conventions, so in a way, the louder they shout the better. It just solidifies the "normal" opinions.

The war ended when people refused to fight. The religious leaders and academics stood as one and said to turned off our media streams. They asked if every weekend we cold spend at least ten minutes meeting someone new from somewhere else on the globe - mostly on Skype - just meet them, exchange recipes and learn their children's names before we choose to drop another bomb. How can you kill people you know? Most of us aren't psychopaths. It took time of course, nothing is instant, some of it happened over YouTube. But the most powerful connections were live conversations between families. After the pleasantries we talked of the details of our every day lives, how we work to put food on our tables and survive. It was crazy, you know, but they were right. I can't kill my friend.

War came over the horizon like a slow moving tank. We became anxious, scared. Violence once confined to the television was playing out on our streets. The drama of hollywood was written in blood on the sidewalk. We choked on the liberal progress we had made to be multi-cultural, to accept different faiths and cultures like it was acrid air. No longer could we see muslims as human, only enemies, threats. Then we did what every generation has done since the dawn of time, when push came to shove we were easy to manipulate into war. Propaganda is so easy to see from the lens of the future, we think it's blatant and those folks long ago were wicked and stupid. But it turns out we haven't evolved at all. Our culture put up some resistance for a time, perhaps if we had caved to the will of the government sooner they might have stopped some of the carnage on our own soil. But we had to “learn.” So in came the brown-skinned men to slaughter our children until we bayed for the bombs...

We had enough food for the most part, housing and healthcare. We had resources and good infrastructure. So why did our young go to war? Why did their parents demand that an army be sent? They say that back then the bombardment of bad news was delivered many times a day in “news stories.” The “enemy” had to threaten our own homes, well-being and culture. They were repeatedly dehumanized and debased in our eyes, shown to be barbarous and cruel. We lost respect for them, and deep down felt glad when they died; glad because the threat to the ones we held dear had been lessened. Who benefited from this war? Not us tax-payers and not the “enemy.” We lost good people, so did they; but they lost far more. They were like David with the sling-shot and we took them back to the stone-age. I've heard people say that with pride, but I've done my own research and I know how many of their civilians died, children included.

With each bullet fired I felt nothing; my brain just shut down. I prayed the kids were alright with their mother, my love. Had I stopped for a moment to consider the awfulness of war I can't say I would have made it home at all. Every death was a man I could have loved as a brother in another time or place. The bombs we dropped killed folks I would have laid down my life for had I been given the chance to know them. But that is war. You fight and win or you die. On wintry nights when my wife sleeps, I creep out to the porch and let the bitter wind bite at my skin. It's real. It keeps me grounded when I think the memories will drown me from the inside. On bad nights I hear the screaming, see the blood, smell the gun powder. One time I saw a toddler at the end of my bed dressed in an enemy uniform. We aren't meant to kill each other, we're supposed to protect, to love. What kind of sociopaths get us into wars anyway? Kids aren't collateral damage, each one is as precious as the ones I lo

In war they say “To the victor go the spoils,” but that phrase has been out of date for so long. In war to the ammunitions and bomb makers go part of the spoils, the rest is handed out in contracts to rebuild what was blown up. Yet more is made from the harvesting of resources. It is a simple business model: the country is selected, fanaticism is sown, encouraged and trained with money that comes convoluted roots from our own elite. Then the young go of their own free will to commit the terrorism that will end their own lives, their state, their culture. They die to protest the wrongs committed to them, but ultimately only play into the enemy's hands. If I could go back in time I'd tell them that the only way to win is to show your humanity, your goodness, your love to the world. I would say the enemy dehumanizes you in order to rally their armies of ordinary citizens. I would say don't talk to the generals or the governments, but ordinary citizens with no vested interest in war.

Gordon raised his silver brows. "You are so naive. In a world with such weapons as we have there can be 'no all-out-wars.' It would be suicide for us all. Instead we win by undermining the economics of the other countries - war by another name. Once undermined, the citizens are stressed and easy prey to fundamentalism. They are "on the ropes" with their national mental health: drinking, taking drugs, or starving. Soon they are at war with one another, citizen X will kill citizen Y over a small difference of religion or perhaps a loaf of bread. Who will be our competitors then? No-one! They'll be lining up at the boarders just to be our road sweepers. So don't look at me like that you idiot, war always causes death, only this time we just supply the weapons, every shade of dogma and hold back on the things they need for basic living. Now get out; I have a war to win."

The war was fought by turning the strengths of opposing societies into the tools of their destruction. For the west their greatest strength was their liberalism, their will for all to feel welcome and included in society. All it needed was a shove into politically correct anarchy with the needs of the many being subverted to the needs of a few. For the middle east their greatest strength was their devotion to God and their enemies found it all to simple to set religious factions against one another. Why kill your enemy when it is far simpler to have them kill one another? For the poor countries it was simple to corrupt their leadership with money and power, selling the populous into slavery. But finest strategy of them all was global finance, everyone wanted money and its supply was controlled by the real masters, the ones who thought nothing a few million deaths here and there...

We solved war when we saw the simple flaws in our thinking. We thought religious tension was the cause and war, the spending on weapons, was a symptom, or result, of that tension. In reality, the war, the spending on weapons, the desire for power and money was the cause... and religious tension was the symptom. A doctor can never cure a patient if he is trying to fix a symptom, the patient will only become well after the cause is discovered. To find peace, to cure war, you must first properly diagnose the cause - money and power. So, soldiers of peace, ignore everything else except the trail of money and the power dynamics, because then solutions will become obvious. These solutions will require new and creative thoughts and ways of being loving and kind, for the only way out of a tangled mess is a new thread, be brave enough to follow it into a new and better world.

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How to Describe a Soldier in Writing

By Isobel Coughlan

Are you writing a war novel ? In this post, we’re going to help you by explaining how to describe a soldier in writing via 10 great adjectives.

Someone that’s very passionate, fearless , or aggressive.

“The group battled through the jungle together, but the fierce soldier took the lead.”

“Only a fierce soldier can take on this challenge. Are any of you ready to step up?

How it Adds Description

“Fierce” is a powerful adjective as it describes someone who is passionate to the point of aggression. This can show your soldier intimidates other characters, and it can also mean they’re difficult to be around. “Fierce” will also show your soldier’s commitment to their job or their cause.

Someone very nervous or anxious.

“The tense soldier backed away, and his hand ghosted over his gun.”

“Before the war, he didn’t have a care in the world, but now he was a tense soldier with the weight of the world on his shoulders.”

Fighting and completing missions as a soldier is a stressful job. “Tense” shows the pressure and anxiety your soldier feels. This adjective can also point to an awkward body posture, as you can have “tense” muscles when you’re stressed. It can also demonstrate to your reader the nervousness of your solider.

3. Agitated

Someone who is upset or worried and shows it through their behavior.

“The agitated soldier couldn’t stop fidgeting with his coat zipper. His hands trembled at the thought of the mission.”

“She glanced at the agitated soldier, and her heart sank. His worry and stress were obvious.”

Nervousness and stress can manifest through physical actions, and “agitated” shows your soldier can’t stand still due to this. If used by another character in an inner monologue, “agitated” shows that your soldier’s worries are being noticed by others. You can use this to show other characters feeling sorry or pity for the soldier.

Someone who does things that are dangerous or that will shock others.

“You must drop out of a plane, swim 5 miles, fight through thick jungle, and scale a 10-foot wall. That’s why only the most daring soldiers finish this course.”

“She dreamed of a daring soldier to rescue her from her prison cell.”

“Daring” shows your soldier is willing to go the extra mile and perform dangerous duties to get their job done. This word works well for hero characters, as “daring” shows they have less fear in comparison to the average person.

5. Methodical

Someone who does things carefully with meticulous order.

“The methodical soldier pressed his pants, laid them out on his bed, and obediently waited for the inspection.”

“They had no signal or ways of communication. But the methodical soldier had studied the map and knew how to work a compass.”

Soldiers are known for having meticulous organizational skills, and this is a staple trait for any character who works for the army. “Methodical” shows your soldier has logical thought patterns, and you can use this to show how they navigate difficult challenges. If you have a particularly unorganized character, their behavior can contradict a “methodical” soldier’s. These differences might cause a rift between them, making for interesting fictional relationships.

6. Frightened

Someone who is afraid or anxious .

“The frightened soldier continued marching, despite his inner desire to run away.”

“We don’t have time for frightened soldiers. Everyone needs to put their game face on!”

If you want to show a soldier’s fear for future plot points or of certain characters, “frightened” provides a glimpse of your soldier’s feelings. “Frightened” can also highlight that your soldier is inexperienced or scared of the unknown. This can further build suspense for upcoming parts of your plot.

7. Enchanting

Someone very charming or attractive .

“What an enchanting soldier. I’ll get his number by the time the dance ends. Just you watch me!”

“He was tough, but he was also an enchanting soldier. Both the troops and the ladies loved him.”

Alongside being brave and organized, soldiers are sometimes known to be flirtatious and charming. “Enchanting” can show how other characters are drawn to your soldier due to his personality and good looks.

Someone that’s good, tells the truth, and doesn’t break the law.

“He was an honest soldier who followed the captain’s orders, no matter the toll.”

“To be an honest soldier was the goal, but the troops were breaking under the pressure of boot camp.”

The word “honest” shows how your fictional soldier takes their training and missions seriously. This shows they’re a good person and one other people in the story can trust. If a soldier is “honest,” they may have trouble taking part in gruesome or violent missions.

9. Accomplished

Someone very good at their profession or hobby.

“She dreamed of becoming an accomplished soldier, but she knew she’d have to start working harder at school.”

“The accomplished soldier donned hundreds of medals, making his uniform glisten in the sun.”

The adjective “accomplished” shows how your soldier is very talented at their job, and this can imply they’re one of the best in the novel. This might mean other characters look to them for advice or help during tough times, and they could make a good hero.

Somebody who is moody and quiet.

“She could feel the sullen soldier staring at her from across the room. His grumpy gaze made her feel self-conscious.”

“Ever since he returned from duty, he was a sullen soldier. He’d lost his lust for life and trademark smile.”

If your soldier has experienced traumatizing events while working, they might be described as “sullen” after they return. This adjective shows they’re quiet and miserable, and these behavioral traits often make other characters anxious around them. You can also use “sullen” to show the effects of active duty or previous battles in your fictional world.

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Creative Writing- war

Subject: Creative writing

Age range: 11-14

Resource type: Worksheet/Activity

Last updated

22 February 2018

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Thank you for this great resource .

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Thanks for this, I used it as a differentiated ww1 assessment for a year 8 girl with severe learning difficulties.

Thank you. I used with Y9 intervention group to develop language and writing skills. It fits really nicely with the History curriculum too.

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Battlefield Description

The Moment Before the Battle

Dusk is approaching but the heat does not retreat. The stagnant air still hangs loosely under the lambent sun. Weak rays of sunlight ignite the clouds, and burn across the sky, turning it into a sea of flames. A vast expanse of emptiness stretches underneath the alit clouds. The land is hot and dry, no seeds are germinating; no plants are growing; no animals are living. The sunrays have penetrated deeply into the ground, leaving huge cracks, splitting the land into millions of pieces. Nothing is in sight, apart from two fronts drawn between the Spartans and Persians.

On one side, valiant Spartan soldiers stand uniformly. They are highly disciplined, but their growing impatience is becoming more and more apparent. Through their eyes, fierce anger and uncontrollable hatred is building. They seek revenge from the opponents whom stole their family’s lives; insulted their religion; pillaged their country’s wealth. The stallions are becoming restless, stamping their hooves loudly on the hard ground, eager to tear a gap in the enemy lines. Every man and animal is garbed in shiny armor, which, even in the dim sun, glitters. The morale of the army is building. The soldiers and steeds are hungry for blood.

This is a preview of the whole essay

At the very front of the troops, erects a man and his steed. Clad in gold lustrous armor, his battle horse neighs loudly at the sight of the enemies. It had lost one of its pupils during one of its ferocious battle, but the other is glaring and burning. Its thick muscular legs matches well with its rider. And like his malicious steed, the man is coated also in thick armor. Underneath the armor, his body is scarred with wounds acquired from countless battles and skirmishes. His eyes - like his soldiers - are full of hatred and anger, eager to slaughter the enemies. The piercing stare seems to penetrate the opponent lines, and none of the enemies dare to meet his gaze.

The atmosphere on the other side is entirely different. The armors are still polished, and the swords are still sharp. However, fatigue and plague has swept across the entire army. Everyone is tired and exhausted. The wounds are coming back and hurting more than ever. They seem eager, but it is merely a mask. Behind the mask is nothing but fear. They fear the enemies; they fear death; they fear this fight. They are fighting an impossible battle, and it has ended before it has begun.

The general’s sword hisses as he draws it out of its sheath. Him, the knights, the cavalry, are all thinking as one—cut; kill; crush. They will hack through the enemy lines and mow down every single body standing in between them and victory. He signals and a prisoner of war is brought forth. The general calmly brings his sword up and bellows his ritual. The deep strong voice quakes the earth, and the enemies shiver uncontrollably in fear. Suddenly, he slices downwards with force and accuracy at the neck of the prisoner, blood spurting out as he soaks his sword in the enemy’s blood.

The soldiers behind him erupt in cheers of approval and the horses neigh loudly. The ritual is done. The enemy will pay with blood. Every friend and family they have lost by the cruel invaders will be avenged with no holding back. Minutes later, the tumultuous uproar dies down, and only silence remains. It is time for battle.

The general shrieks his war cry that pierces the eerie silence, and the cavalry charges towards the enemies.

Document Details

• Author Type Student
• Word Count 590
• Page Count 3
• Subject English
• Type of work Coursework

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