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So You Want To/Write a War Story: Difference between revisions
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War, [[Fallout|war never changes.]]
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* [[Hollywood Atlas]]. Do the research.
* [[Hollywood Tactics]]. No, just no. This also goes for [[General Failure]].
* [[Mary Tzu]]: Very few real life generals have ever gone undefeated throughout their whole careers. Just as [[General Failure]] will quickly frustrate the audience and set expectations for what will happen whenever anything is done that has his name on it, [[Mary Tzu]] will quickly exhaust the shock and awe of her spectacular brilliance, and the story will lose any sense of tension.
* [[Purple Prose]]: Nothing sucks the energy out of a battle like forgetting the [[Law of Conservation of Detail]]. If you graphically describe the deaths of people a character kills, then the action grinds to a frustrating halt. Save the detailed death descriptions for executions and suicides.
* [[Rare Guns]]: There are reasons why the [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|rare guns]] are so rare. Typically, rare guns are that way because they were impractical, too expensive, not so good as the competition, absolutely dreadful weapons, or because their production was halted by either something better coming along, or because the country producing them was invaded.
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* [[Cool Guns]]. Different from [[Rare Guns]] in that many of these weapons are [[Awesome Yet Practical]] while being produced in numbers great enough to be issued to whole militaries and therefore plausibly show up in a story.
* [[Drill Sergeant Nasty]]. While most modern drill sergeants have to turn civilians into killing machines in the space of about three months and they have to be hard on recruits to do it properly, don't go overboard with it. It is perfectly reasonable for a D.I. to shout himself blue at a character who is sloppy, but for a character who is a bit sluggish in P.T. to get the stuffing beaten out of them is another thing entirely. This was a case of [[Truth in Television]] in the past, and even into the modern era, but if you are writing in the here and now it is a symptom of something deeply wrong in the service.
* [[Gun Porn]]. While it is a given those reading a war story will like accuracy in their weapons descriptions, try not to go overboard on it. Be accurate, but not gushing unless it is in-character of course, some soldiers do get a little more attached than is healthy (although unless it is a "war is hell" type of story this will be treated with suspicion by their senior officers). Few readers will thank you for page after page of minutiae on firearms when a story could be being told.
* [[National Stereotyping Tropes]]. Be very careful when dealing with armed conflict between nations, especially if there well known and negative stereotypes about the peoples and or countries involved.
** [[Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys]]: This is a rather exaggerated and unfair characterization of the French to begin with. If French Forces are involved, then play them as [[Gauls With Grenades]].
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Write A War Story]]
[[Category:So You Want To]]
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