| Re: Bored of battle scenes
I think you have to be very careful with combat scenes, or a lot of other action type stories. Once you've read one set of 'parry, kick, thrust he's dead' you have pretty well read them all. If you have got bored with them, then your reader will too!
In any battle, very few (relatively) are actually fighting, nor does any single battle, or skirmish, last more than a couple of hours. Which in anybodies terms doesn't warrant more than a page.
Break up the fighting: Create lulls where you characters have become too exhausted to fight further, or is sickened by what he has seen.
Pull away from the local battle and explain what is happening on the larger scheme.
Add background, perhaps your characters are hiding in a trench while the enemy looses a massive artillery bombardment.
When going into detail, make sure there is some humour; Dry black wise cracks are not uncommon, make sure your characters aren't in a world of their own, they are fighting with hundreds, if not thousands, of others!
Help your reader to read and feel it. Pace the story with your sentence structure.
Use short sentences, so it can be read quickly, when there is a lot going on, you don't need much detail, because the reader should be reading so fast he he has read the next sentence before the last has sunk in. Which is probably exactly what your character is feeling!
Longer sentences when you are in a lull to build the atmosphere and describe the larger events. |