How to Write Battle Scenes
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Get it right and a battle scene can be the highlight of your novel. Get it wrong and the battle scene can be your book’s biggest letdown.
Welcome to part 12 of my series on scene writing!
If you’re just joining in, here’s a quick recap of where we’ve been: I started with an introduction to the basics of scene writing. Then, I worked through the eight essential elements of a scene.
You can check out each of those articles at the links below:
1. Character – who will be there?
2. Setting – where are they?
3. Goal – what do the characters want to accomplish?
4. Event or Situation – what is happening?
5. Action – What will each character do or say?
6. Emotion (Reaction) – How will each character react to what is done/said? Why?
7. (Incomplete) Resolution – How will the event/situation end? What will make readers want to keep reading onward?
8. Purpose – How does this scene move the story forward, develop characters, and/or add to the conflict?
Now that we’ve covered the essential elements of all scenes, we’re going to talk about three types of scenes that require some additional consideration: opening scenes, closing scenes, and battle scenes.
Wondering how battle scenes made the cut for this blog series? Simple—for many authors, battle scenes are the climax of the entire novel or the entire series. We’ve spent hundreds of pages building up to this fight and it has to satisfy readers. Otherwise, the entire book and/or series can become a letdown. They’re also difficult to write. For most of us, war is (thankfully) outside our everyday experience. Add in dragons or magic and it becomes even harder to think through the mechanics of the scene.
Let’s dive in to the techniques that can help you create a battle scene that pays off the tension you’ve built and leaves readers wanting to read more of your work in the future.
Instead of trying to capture the entirety of a battle, start with a single character’s point of view and use that to draw readers into the horrors of war.
Writing An Epic Battle Scene
For starters, battle scenes are still scenes. They still need to have the same eight elements as all other scene types. The difficulty in writing battle scenes comes from the scale and the inherent chaos of warfare.
Soldiers, horses (or elephants or dragons), ships, chariots, axes, guns, swords, wands, gamma-ray blasters—battles are made up of moving parts. If you’re anticipating writing your battle scene as much as readers are anticipating reading it, you may be tempted to throw everything and the kitchen sink into those pages, hoping that simply adding more, more, more will boost intensity and engagement. But, with chaos can come confusion. If you put too many elements into your battle scene, you can lose readers. Instead of engaging them, you’ll leave them floundering at what should be a high point in your story.
Here are four tips that can help you create an epic battle that engages readers without losing them in the melee:
#1 - Choose one POV character per scene and establish what the battle means to them.
Each scene needs a to be told from a specific point-of-view. Then, clue us in to that character’s goals and motivations. What are they hoping this battle will accomplish? What are they hoping to avoid in this battle? How does this battle support or get in the way of their overarching story goal?
More importantly, how do they feel about fighting? Are they eager to prove themselves? Chomping at the bit to rack up more kills and the accompanying glory? Or, are they scared to death? Do they want nothing more than to survive and make it back to their onion farm and the family they hope is still waiting for them there?
Even if you’re using an omniscient narrator, I recommend focusing your attention on one character at a time for the majority of the scene. Humans have a limited capacity to comprehend violence & destruction on a massive scale. If you focus on the entirety of the battle, we’ll feel very little. If you take us deep into one person’s head, we’re likely to feel a whole lot more even though we’re seeing a whole lot less.
#2 - Identify the crucial action & reaction moments. Then, use those moments as your guideposts.
Before you jump into drafting or revising your scene, make sure you know what will happen to the point of view character, what they’ll do in response, and what their reactions will be. If you already know what the battle is building toward for them (a significant injury, the death of a love interest or best friend, a crushing defeat that will make the story goal seem hopeless) then note that ahead of time. Then, make a list of the actions that will occur prior to that point.
If you are narrating combat within your battle scene, consider blocking out the action to make sure it’s physically possible. YouTube videos of fights can also be a great resource for figuring out if your scene makes physical sense.
If you’re not sure what to do with the entirety of the army, look to history as a guide. Read up on historical battles in settings that match your own and use those conflicts as a starting point.
As you write or revise, keep the crucial actions in mind and try to make the sequence of events as clear as possible. Battle scenes aren’t necessarily the time for flowery language or ambiguity. If the love interest dies brutally in front of the POV character’s eyes, you want readers to know what happened and grieve appropriately. If you obscure that character’s death in a bunch of unneeded description or metaphoric language readers may miss the action and find themselves dumped into a funeral a couple days later. That’s a recipe for confusion and disappointment.
#3 - Prioritize immediate visceral reactions by establishing the participants & history ahead of time.
This is technically advice for the scenes that come before your battle, but it still bears mentioning here. When the battle begins, readers should know exactly why the battle is occurring and what is at stake for the opposing forces. We should also know approximately where the battle is taking place. You can convey that information in a scene that precedes the battle by having characters plan their strategy ahead of time. If you’re worried that the preceding scene will be boring, don’t be. That set-up scene can still be imbued with tension, especially if there is disagreement about how to proceed or if the heroes are preparing to face impossible odds.
When it comes to the actual battle scene, time spent narrating the history of the conflict or giving readers the lay of the land is time that we are taken out of the narrative. In the midst of the chaos, we want to be knee deep in the muck & mire, we want to hear the battle calls and feel the sweat dripping down the main character’s back as she rushes into the fray. We want to know her thoughts on the battle as it unfolds, her reaction to ending lives and potentially losing her own. Setting up the historical and/or sociopolitical context ahead of time allows us to experience the intensity of battle as it happens without the need to backtrack and fill in gaps along the way.
#4 - Use other scene elements to enhance the scene conflict and raise the stakes.
All of your scene elements should work together to create a battle scene that engages readers. You can also use those scene elements to raise the stakes. For example, choosing a POV character who is ill-equipped to fight can raise the stakes by putting readers in the head of a character who is unlikely to survive. Alternatively, putting us in the head of your story’s best fighter could give us a chance to lead the charge, embedding us in the fiercest action. Choosing a character who is on the outskirts of the fight in one scene, then switching to a character who is in the middle of the action in the next scene can provide different emotional experiences as the battle rages on. You could also use shifting POVs to create dramatic irony by cluing readers in to a danger (or a means of salvation) that your other characters aren’t aware of in the heat of battle.
The battle’s setting can also enhance your scene by raising the stakes. Treacherous terrain can add obstacles and make it harder for your characters to survive the fight. Different environments can also provide different ways for your characters to hide or gain an advantage over their enemies. Also, keep in mind that the terrain will largely determine how the fighters operate. Depending on the cultural background and experiences of your characters, they may be more or less comfortable with certain types of terrain. If your desert-dwelling main character has to fight in the forest or on the snowy tundra, they’ll have to overcome a significant disadvantage to survive or win the day.
You can also use unexpected actions or reactions to surprise your readers. If your heroes have a linear path to victory, your battle is unlikely to engage. If they have to react to changing conditions, new threats, and overcome unforeseen obstacles to win, you’ll hook readers from start to finish.
Finally, play with pacing. Your fight scenes don’t have to run at a frenzied pace the entire time. Adjust our sense of how quickly things are moving, speeding up and then slowing down for crucial moments of the scene. Consider what would feel slower to your character and what would pass in a blur. Which memories will linger in their mind forever, haunting their nightmares after the battle ends? Just note that you aren’t bound by reality here—think about what you want readers to linger over and what you can speed up to keep them turning pages.
I hope these tips help you write the epic battle scene that you’ve been dreaming of for your novel! After twelve weeks talking about scenes, it’s time to move on to one of my favorite writing topics: world building!
Next month, I’ll be talking about ways to world build successfully whether you’re a plotter, a pantser, or somewhere in between. I hope to see you there.
In the meantime, happy writing!
References / Further Reading
Fight Write by Carla Hoch
5 Keys to Writing Epic Battle Scenes by K.M. Weiland
How to Write Fight Scenes and Battle Scenes that Grip Readers by Jordan at Now Novel
How to Write Battle Scenes by Ciele Edwards
How to Write Powerful, Exciting, and Realistic Battle Scenes by FreelanceWriting.com
Worried your battle scenes aren’t living up to the hype?
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FYI: This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission. For more information click here and thanks, as always, for your support!
