Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Rachel: I found this guide so incredibly helpful, and I’m sure our readers will too! Can you tell us a little about the book? What made you decide to write it (and was it the Rings of Power battle scenes)?
Suzannah: I’m absolutely thrilled to hear that so many people are finding the book to be helpful!
The book had its genesis in my writer’s group near the end of 2023, when a friend was tearing out her hair about the climactic battle scene in her WIP. I suggested scheduling a video call wherein I would give her a crash course on how to write a battle. I started making notes for what I wanted to cover, and the more I wrote down, the more I thought of. It was all gushing out of me at once. I remember being at the casual day job the day before the call, intensely making voice-to-text notes on my phone, and one of my co-workers asked if I was OK. What do you tell someone when that happens? “Yeah I’m good, I’m just advising my friend on how to go to war.”
My friend really appreciated the call and left me in no doubt that something like this, expanded into a book, could be super helpful to a lot of people. I took the notes I’d made for the call and expanded them into the first draft of How to Write a Fantasy Battle. Afterwards, I got hit by imposter syndrome. Was the tone too snarky? Did I really know what I was talking about? I’d been reading academic-level crusader history books for ten years and following the current Russo-Ukrainian war since its beginning, but I didn’t have any formal training in either history or strategy – all I’ve got is a law degree. Plus, if I published a book on military tactics as a woman, would anyone take me seriously? It wasn’t until early this year, when the whole author group demanded to see the draft and then unanimously agreed that it needed to be published, that I felt I should move ahead.
How to Write a Fantasy Battle contains exactly what the subtitle suggests: Medieval and Modern Military Tactics for Authors. I mainly discuss the basics of how battles were fought in the high middle ages, which is my area of expertise, but I also include stuff that I’ve learned about war from other periods, especially the present day in Ukraine. There are certain commonalities across history, whatever kind of technology we’re talking about, and it’s these commonalities that I think fantasy authors will find most useful to know about. The fantastical and magical elements in your work might not exist in real life, but chances are that they’ll fulfil a similar role in your fantasy battle as some modern technological innovation does today.
Rachel: What’s an example of a battle scene you think is done well? How about one that isn’t? And why?
Suzannah: I spend a lot of time in the book discussing the battle scenes in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which are impeccable. Tolkien had a strong grasp of medieval history, plus he had witnessed two world wars and fought in one of them. This doesn’t just affect his grasp of military tactics; he also uses military logistics to complicate the narrative, and of course the whole book is a profound examination of trauma.
Apart from The Lord of the Rings, there’s also the John Woo movie Red Cliff, which is one of my favourites. It isn’t perfectly realistic as it uses certain heroic tropes suitable to an adaptation of the Chinese classic The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. (If you do watch Red Cliff, be sure to find the original, two-part cut for Chinese markets, which combined is nearly 5 hours long, and every minute counts). Still, despite its romanticism, Red Cliff is a deliciously well-informed depiction of an ancient war that also depicts a lot of the topics I cover in the book.
Probably the worst battle scene I have ever witnessed is the one in Disney’s live-action Mulan. The army leaves its nice, safe, cosy fortifications to go face the nomad army in the field, which they do on very thin justification, but okay. Once they are within range of the enemy, though, they don’t hide behind some of the available hills in order to execute an ambush—they just hang out in the open, half-heartedly concealed behind a smokescreen. They don’t even send their cavalry off to hide out as surprise reserves. Then, as the crowning idiocy, the nomad army of light cavalry wheels out siege engines. Where did the siege engines come from? How did they get transported to the battle scene by the light cavalry? How did the nomadic light cavalry-based army, who do not seem familiar with siege warfare, develop the specialised expertise in ballistics necessary to design, build, and operate these siege engines? How do they bulls-eye the good guys first time, with no bracketing shots? For that matter, how come the good guys are stupid enough to form tortoise formations against the magical siege engines? Do they want to maximise their own casualties?
I’ve seen a lot of crazy things but this one takes the cake. There’s a reason we call them siege engines, and it’s not because they were super useful in a field battle against moving targets.
Rachel: Flaming arrows: Yes or no?
Suzannah: You know, flaming arrows are a lot less common in history than fantasy books and movies will lead you to believe. Incendiary weapons go back a long way – notably the Byzantine Empire’s closely-guarded Greek fire, which ignited on contact with the air – as well as its imitators. But I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of these incendiaries being delivered via arrow. Hollywood will show a star dragging an arrow through a torch’s flame before shooting it, but in reality if you want an arrow to catch and stay alight, you probably want to add some oil-soaked fuel to it, and that’s going to affect both your aim and your range. Nope – most of the time incendiaries seem to have been delivered in a small sealed jar via siege engine, and would smash and catch light only on impact. The exception is the use of fireships, for instance in the Spanish Armada campaign. And, of course, the Byzantines actually did develop other ways to deliver Greek fire: including a sort of flame-thrower.
Rachel: You’re anticipating defending a fixed location against a superior force. What do you prepare in advance of their arrival?
Suzannah: First: Supplies, supplies, supplies. Food, water, medicine, vehicles, and weapons. Stockpile everything you can get your hands on, and make sure you’ve got more than you need, because you’ll probably have a massive influx of non-combatants who need to take shelter with you. Even better, secure a resupply route if possible, through which you can bring in more supplies, evacuate your wounded and bring in fresh fighters.
Second: Communications. Send for help to anyone who might come to relieve you. Again, if you can secure an open line of communication with your allies, it’s even better, but at least send some messengers to find reinforcements.
Third: Fortifications. This might mean positioning yourselves with a cliff, river, or bog at your back, and a makeshift barricade of carts at your front. Or, it might mean tucking yourself safely inside a nice stone castle and refusing to come out until your reinforcements arrive.
Fourth: Outposts. At the least, you need scouts watching the enemy as they approach, counting their numbers and ascertaining their approach route. Better still, manned outposts – small fortified points – can delay and complicate the enemy’s approach, buying you that all-important time as you prepare your main position for defence.
One last note: make sure you bear in mind the tactical purpose of defence, which is to hold out until reinforcements arrive. If you have friends who will come to help you out, it makes sense to fight defensively in a siege. Even today, the rule of thumb is one fighter on the defensive is worth three on the offensive – so you can hold a fortified position quite capably if you have just one-third of the fighters your attackers have. That’s a powerful advantage to the defenders. But it comes with a corresponding disadvantage: fighting defensively will cede the initiative to the enemy. It’s the enemy who has a chance to grab a victory while you are slowly bleeding out on the defensive. Now, if you know your friends will come for you before it’s too late, this is a no-brainer. Go on the defensive. However, on rare occasions there is no hope of outside help, and in this case you need to fight differently: ideally, you should set up an ambush long before your enemy even reaches your fortifications.
Rachel: Any advice for street-to-street fighting? Either when the citizenry is with you or against you?
This is called urban warfare, and it isn’t something I deal with in the book at much length because it is such a specialised field. But let’s put it like this: in medieval warfare, if you are attempting urban warfare when the citizenry is against you, you are dead, and if you are attempting urban warfare when the citizenry is with you, then your enemy has just made a very helpful error and you’ll be able to collect a shiny new medal and be home in time for tea. Urban warfare in a hostile environment is a suicide mission, unless you have overwhelming numbers pouring into the city at once, eg at the climax of a siege when half the population has fled and the other half is demoralised and starving. The only reason urban warfare isn’t a suicide mission these days is because fighters are specially trained to survive it.
Why so? One of the most important factors in war of any kind is the terrain, and in a city the terrain consists of walled buildings – that is, places that are easy to hide in and fortify. Lure an enemy into even a modern city, with its broad streets, and they will be easy to isolate, trap, and destroy. Medieval cities were even more defensible because of the narrow streets that could funnel enemies into a trap – during the Seventh Crusade in Egypt, a force of three hundred elite knights were trapped and annihilated in the narrow streets of Mansourah when the citizens threw beams of wood into the street to form barricades. In the mid-nineteenth century, whole neighbourhoods of the city of Paris were levelled to create the famous boulevards, specifically to prevent the populace being able to barricade the streets when they wanted to protest the way the government was treating them. The boulevards also allowed government forces to move around the city more easily in order to crush popular uprisings.
Rachel: Thanks for sharing this amazing resource with us. Where can the Night Beats community find you and your book?
Suzannah: Thanks for helping me spread the word! I really think this book is going to be super helpful to a lot of authors. I can be found around social media, but at present I’m most active on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/suzannahrowntree.bsky.social) and Instagram (@suzannahsnaps). At present How To Write a Fantasy Battle is available for pre-order as an ebook on Amazon (https://books2read.com/u/bO7Q5J ) for a mere USD4.99, but I’ll be uploading it to other ebook retailers as soon as I get the chance.
You can also visit my website and sign up for my author newsletter at https;//suzannahrowntree.site if you want to hear about my historical fantasy set during the medieval crusades and the late 19th century.
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