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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43223
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43223
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

+1 DPT, +1JBiggs. Remember battles are _local_ and personal. What I mean is that in a fight, there is no big picture, there is your picture, a tight focus, the people around you, the immediate enemy you are fighting, moment to moment.

Lines are short because thoughts are short, description and metaphors and analogy are definitely used, but quick and simple and direct, because the mind is working in hyper speed trying to survive, it has no time for reflection or convoluted thoughts, it has little time for emotion other than flight or fight. Some soldiers freeze in terror, others can become analytical machines. Although one might become the other, there is little room for in-between those states, and the freezers usually die.

This is precisely what military battle-field training does for you, just like martial arts training. By repetition in practice it makes your moves automatic second-nature, instinctive, so you can literally perform and do your job when you feel like you can't think at all. What the trainers want is that you don't need to think, you just react and fight.

An example:

> I get hit in the chest with a hammer, I slam my hand against the wound and fall. _That's it_, I think. Dead. I'm falling in sync with Barry ahead of me. Barry is dead. I'm not. The bullet went through him, sternum and spine, slowed it down before it hit me.
> 
> I have to move but I'm frozen. Machine guns chatter in fast bursts. I can't stand up. Afraid to stand up. My mind flashes on Barry. Had a nine millimeter in his pocket. Wasn't supposed to bring it. I grab him by the collar and pull him up on me as a shield, I blank but suddenly his gun is in my hand, short thirteen round clip, I'm firing at the closest machine gunner, fast.
> 
> I hit him in the hand with the sixth round. I empty the gun on the right gunner. Too far. All misses. He stops ducking to get back on his gun. Barry takes three bullets for me. Two others hit the pavement, spraying asphalt.
> 
> Someone else fires on the gunner; pop pop pop. Right gunner's hit in the throat. Spine hit. Drops like a sack of dirt. Troop fire changes direction to the other shooter. _Shot like that gotta be Marco._
> 
> I drop Barry's empty niner and run for it. _Stupid. Should of kept it._ By some miracle I reach the warehouse without getting shot.

Now the battle is over for the MC; pull the focus back out to include others.

> The other shooter was not Marco, it was Rebecca, she made it on my tail, with a bad calf wound. We tear out of there doing a hundred miles an hour, the half that's left of us.
> 
> I'm binding Rebecca's calf in the backseat of a Honda with two other wounded, using my shirt. Thank god they didn't bring copters.

But that is just an example of style, from my imagination, I'm not trying to write your story for you. The advice is stay in the mind of the POV character, do not try to describe the whole battle and all engagements and what every person did, describe what the POV can see and do and process.

Original score: 0