Nothing makes an epic fantasy epic like an epic battle! I am an absolute sucker for a well done large scale battle. However, writing a good battle is extremely tough. There are so many complex things to consider when choreographing the movements of thousands of moving parts. When you add the difficulty of translating choreography into the written form, it is understandable why so many authors take the easy way out and “fade to black”, even amongst traditionally published authors. My mission is to help elevate your stories by never taking the easy way out.
By the end of this article, I will break down my process for writing battles and give you all the tools you need to write spectacular battles of your own. I will create a mock battle as we progress with each step that you are more than welcome to use as a model for your own.
Disclaimer
This article will pertain mainly to fantasy battles inspired primarily by the middle ages and the renaissance period. I do not write sci-fi and have no expertise in modern warfare.
This article will only be talking about the worldbuilding building that directly relates to the battle itself and not the worldbuilding that surrounds it.
This is not for historical fiction. That requires a whole different level of historical knowledge that frankly isn’t necessary for a completely fictional world. Plus battles in those books are cheating because its practically written for you BY history! We are using just enough historical knowledge to make a believable fantasy battle without having to take a damn college-level course.
1. Determine the Tech Level of Each Side
Before anything else, you must have a firm understanding of what level of tech is available in your world. I know I said I wasn’t going to go into worldbuilding, but this is too important to leave out. The inventions, and perfection, of gunpowder in the middle ages changed the face of warfare forever, so you cannot hope to approach a battle when cannons are involved the same way you approach a battle fought with only spears.
Be sure to consider how much armor each side will have access to, what their weapons are made of, to include or not include gunpowder/explosives, and how the officers communicate with one another. Be careful with this. If one side is way ahead of the other when it comes to technology, you could end up with The Battle of Endor from Return of the Jedi on your hands. If your goal is to be campy then do as you please, but if you want to write in a serious tone, the Ewoks will all get wasted by Stormtroopers.
However, having one side be superior technologically could be your strongest tool in creating tension if both sides are equal in numbers or if one side has greater numbers than the other. Imagine a thousand cavemen vs a modern tank crew… First person to write that story and send it to me gets free books for LIFE. No joke.
Count your magic as technology for now. Think of fireballs as cannons and magic bolts as guns. How magic can effect battles could make for an entire article in itself, so I will focus on writing mundane battles for now and reserve magic battles for part 2!
For our example battle, I will be keeping it simple with a battle between two rival houses within the same country. This means their technology level will be nearly the same with one side perhaps having more of a specific piece of tech, such as armor, than the other; however, the other side will still have access to said tech.
Normally I write in a world with the same tech level as Europe during the Early Modern Period, but to keep things simple and familiar to the largest amount of fantasy fans, I will stick with the medieval period around the 13th century where gunpowder was present in some parts of the world, but not globally used just yet. Here, you have full plate armor, longswords, heavy cavalry, wooden seige weapons, and castles. No rapiers, unfortunately. Cannons were present in the world, but not as much in Europe. This is where most fantasy stories take their inspiration.
2. Determine the Numbers of Each Side
You hear it in movies all the time.
“Numbers don’t win battles!” says the plucky protagonist.
Yes…Yes, they do. Are there famous exceptions to this? Of course, there are. That’s why they are famous, but the vast majority of battles were won before they were fought if the battle ever happened at all.
Determining which side has the advantage of numbers is crucial to set up the tension. By making it known that the enemy has more fighters, you force your protagonists to be clever in order to pull through. I typically use ratios to determine just how outmatched one side is than the other. I would highly recommend that you do not exceed 5 to 1 unless it is a relatively small battle. 50 men beating 250 is believable under the right conditions but 50k beating 250k is straight-up insanity. I have personally fought in reenactment battles where we were outnumbered 2 to 1 and it felt so overwhelmingly hopeless that we could not help but break rank and flee even though we were using stick weapons.
When it comes to raw numbers, be careful how many fighters you place on each side. Most battles throughout history had armies that numbered in the tens of thousands with rare exceptions in the hundreds of thousands. The largest battle to take place pre-19th century was the Battle of Changping where an army of ~ 400,000 men faced an army of 550,000 men all in a single battle. If you are going to write a massive battle inspired by medieval or renaissance technology, try not to exceed 500,000 per side if you are wanting to have a hint of realism. An army of 50,000 is huge and will no doubt put the epic in epic fantasy.
For our example battle, I will have House Good Guys amass an army of 5000 warriors and House Bad Guys amass an army of 7000 warriors. For now, imagine two massive groups standing in a completely flat empty field getting ready to mosh into each other.
3. Determine the Assets of Each Side
A 2000 fighter difference is pretty substantial, but this fight is still winnable by House Good Guys. What if they have 5000 heavily armored knights and House Bad Guys have 7000 naked peasants? Funny, but anti-climatic. However if those naked peasants have access to ballistae, and canons, that 2000 fighter difference is going to matter much less.
It is imperative that you garner an appreciation for the various tools of war and what they are capable of. Cavalry opens up flanking maneuvers that simply cannot be done on foot. Having armor when your enemy doesn’t gives you the ability to weather normally fatal blows and fight several unarmored men at once. A castle can make 200 men deadlier than 2000 without. Cannons can reduce ramparts to rubble if they aren’t specifically designed to face them. Use your tech level as a guide to outfit each army accordingly.
Let’s outfit our example army using 13th-century tech as our guide.
House Good Guys 5000 Warriors
- 1500 mercenaries with light cavalry
- 800 heavily armored mounted knights.
- 1200 footmen
- 1500 archers
House Bad Guys 7000 Warriors
- 1600 heavily armored mounted knights
- 1700 mercenaries on foot
- 2700 footmen
- 1000 crossbowmen
You can easily add far more types of soldier to the mix, but this is a simple example. As you can see, House Good Guys have to rely far more on hired mercenaries than House Bad Guys. Their questionable loyalty could be a point of tension throughout the entire battle. It puts extra tension on House Good Guys to assure the battle does not take an ugly turn, for the mercenaries are far more likely to flee or turn on them if their lives are on the line. House Bad Guys also has twice as many knights as House Good Guys meaning they will be able to cut a bloody path through the ranks of lightly armored footmen.
However! If we give the footmen of House Good Guys super long pikes, they will be able to use formations inspired by the Swiss to counter the heavy knights. They also have way more archers than House Bad Guys. This leaves room for House Good Guys to use clever tactics to believably still come out of this alive.
4. Determine the Location of the Battle
Right now House Bad Guys are pulling ahead in both numbers and assets. Things aren’t looking good for our heroes. If both sides were to bum rush each other in the middle of our empty flat field, House Good Guys would be toast no matter how much they believe in the power of friendship. But we aren’t quite done yet…
Let’s add a few hills to the field with the tallest being at its center. The rolling hills are bordered by a dense wood filled with healthy timber. Then, let’s say House Good Guys gets to the field first in anticipation of this grand battle. They take the timber from the forest and fashion together some battlements along the tallest hill and even a few simple towers for their superior archers to station themselves in. There is a river that runs east and west along the northern edge of the battlefield that blocks any hasty retreat in that direction.
The difference in numbers and assets starts to meld away. The battle is far from won, but now there is a glimmer of hope for House Good Guys to win on their home turf if they use the terrain to their advantage.
5. Play Chess with Yourself
Though most battles in real life are pretty one-sided, fictional have permission to be too close to call. The best battles in cinema and the written form always tip from one side to the next. Avengers Endgame had one of the most spectacular final battles I have ever seen. One second Thanos was toast and the next he was toasting people. It was a constant flow of power.
Battles in which one side is clearly getting spanked until a single lucky shot completely turns the tide out of nowhere are awful and downright lazy. I’m looking at you Battle of Winterfell… I’m still bitter about that…
Anyways. The best way to assure your battles will maintain this constant flow of power is for you to play chess with yourself. Have one side come up with several strategies that work and the other side comes up with strategies that thwart the other side. This makes both sides seem competent while keeping the tension high. Have the bad guys begin to thwart one too many of the good guys’ plans and make things seem hopeless as the balance tips in their favor, and then have one foreshadowed trick up the protagonist’s sleave that turns the tide just enough in the good guy’s favor for them to pull through.
Let’s start with a gameplan from the very get-go. This is where you set up everything that could happen in the battle during some kind of war council or debriefing. If you want your protagonist to be the center of this battle, you can have them make some key decisions or suggestions.
Our protagonist makes a suggestion to the lord of the house to position the bulk of his men in the west in the morning and in the east in the evening so that the sun is never in their eyes. Using his knowledge from his previous life as a farm boy, he also warns the lord to steer clear of the river should it rain because it will flood into the field and muddy it. He says the mud will win this war for them. Keeping cavalry far way is a must. Lord Good Guy agrees and implements Protag’s plans. Using his own military expertise, Lord Good Guy positions his pikemen in square formations to lure the superior enemy cavalry to the muddy riverside with the help of strategic archer fire from the towers. With the heavy cavalry distracted by a muddy riverside, House Good Guys cavalry can scare off the enemy mercenaries. The light cavalry mercenaries led by Protag is charged with flanking the enemy crossbowmen and putting them down. Its a sound plan… assuming everything goes well.
Of course it won’t. Lord Bad Guy didn’t become top Bad Guy for nothing. He knows full well that fighting with the sun in your eyes is a huge disadvantage, so he attacks during midday. From his vantage point. He can see the clear path being drawn towards the river and decides to hold his cavalry back. He uses his own superior numbered footmen to occupy the Good Guy footmen, ruining their plan. The archers rip into them from their towers, but House Bad Guys are not exactly as worried about the casualties of their peasants as they are their knights. By the time Protag has taken care of the crossbowmen, they are charged by the superior heavy cavalry of House Bad Guys and are quickly routed as his mercenaries flee for their lives. The large unit of knights is gearing up to flank the heavily outnumbered footmen.
Things are looking awful for House Good Guys. Lord Good Guy orders a full retreat into the battlements to make their last stand. Most tower archers make it back to the battlements as the superiorly trained Good Guy footmen stall for time in a heroic standoff with superior numbers. Lord Good Guy trained his men well. With everyone fully retreated into the battlements, the large amount of Good Guy archers keep the enemy at bay as their cavalry is useless against their well-designed fortifications. Just as Protag predicted, rain begins to fall, but instead of being their most powerful weapon against Bad Guy cavalry, the rain has become their worst enemy as it crushes the effectiveness of their arrows. The downpour is immense. A deadly frontal assault is imminent and the remaining warriors of House Good Guys surely don’t have the numbers to hold them off without archers. This may be the end.
7. Find the Perfect Place for Your Final Confrontation (If this is your final battle)
In many cases, a battle may in fact be the climax of the story. It can be very challenging to justify having a one on one duel in the middle of a large scale battle, and you are by no means required to have one. However, I am a sucker for final duels/final confrontations and will do whatever I can to make sure they happen in my stories.
The easiest way to have a final duel is to have it happen before the battle even starts. In some cases throughout history, each army would send their strongest warrior to fight. The winner demoralizes their enemy. This method is easy, but anticlimatic if the main antagonist dies before the big final battle. It isn’t unheard of for a challenge to happen mid-battle, but it would be awkward to write and awkward to read without some seriously set up circumstances.
A harder but much more fulfilling way to have a final confrontation is to meld it into the battle itself. Unlike modern times, generals and kings often rode into battle with their men. It would not be so strange if your protagonist and antagonist met on the battlefield for just long enough to duel, though it would be surrounded by ranks of soldiers and quite the tight fit. The best places where a one on one duel is most likely to happen is during a rout or during a skirmish.
During a rout, one side is retreating while the other side is pursuing. There are no ranks getting in the way and the chances of your two combatants ending up in a final struggle as the battle is winding down are believably high. Skirmishes are smaller confrontations that are spread throughout the battlefield in isolated groups. Two small groups containing your protagonist and antagonist could run into each other and have their final fight there.
It is important to consider what will happen when your antagonist is brought down. The higher up the chain of command they are, the more chaos is spread to the rest of the army. Killing the general is a lethal blow that can be capitalized on to great effect. Perhaps your antagonist was just a captain in a much greater army and his death only means something to the protagonist but has little to no effect on the outcome of the battle as a whole. The movie, The Patriot starring Mel Gibson, did this insanely well when he dueled his enemy in the middle of a chaotic charge.
Let’s see what I can come up with for the ending of this battle.
Protag luckily survives the heavy cavalry charge. His mercenaries have abandoned him and now he is trapped behind enemy lines. He denies the temptation to run away when he sees a sliver of hope. Lord Bad Guy is lightly guarded as he sends nearly his entire army to charge the battlements. Protag comes up with a new plan that may be House Good Guy’s last hope.
Stealing a horse from a dead mercenary, he rides in towards Lord Bad Guy. He makes a huge fuss as he challenges him to battle, but Lord Bad Guy has no desire to risk his victory. He sends most of his guards after him keeping two knights at his side. Protag flees on his horse but jumps off into the mud. The knights pursue the empty saddle through the deluge.
Protag covers himself in mud and sneaks back to Lord Bad Guy. Using stealth to kill the two knights, he is able to render Lord Bad Guy nearly helpless. In one final duel between the exhausted Protag and the armored Lord Bad Guy, Protag beats the odds by flinging mud into Bad Guy’s eyes and stabbing him in the throat. Without their leader, the army is stalled until the rain clears. The archers return with a vengeance and House Bad Guy flees upon discovering their lord without a head behind them. House Good Guys have won the day thanks to Protag and mud.
Do you see what I did there? I foreshadowed earlier that mud was going to win the battle for them, but it didn’t happen in the way it was planned. A well-designed battle is great, but a well placed final confrontation is the luscious cherry on top.
Conclusion
Writing fantasy battles is hard. Even when you don’t include magic, there are tons of things to consider. First, you must determine your technology level, army sizes, assets, and terrain. Then you must play chess with yourself enough to make the battle have a natural ebb and flow. This is a bare basics version of only one of the many methods I go through when writing my own battles. I will be writing future posts soon explaining other ways to write fantasy battles as well as posts on how to incorporate magic into your battles in a believable way. This is my absolute favorite part when it comes to writing fantasy and I hope you found this little guide useful. j
Now get out there and write an epic epic fantasy battle!
