Anyway, here is the first 13, let me know what you think.

Here you start with "The assignment" as a abstract reality which the POV character explores. That can work, but you definitely have to consider that you're writing a fantasy (at least, that's what I think you said). This opening would naturally lead me to assume that the setting was contemporary or perhaps SF. It shouldn't be a huge problem, if your cover has a picture of a bunch of pre-modern soldiers, it would be fine.

However, while the structure is workable, the content is jarring. "Then again, "civil unrest" didn’t mean what it used to." Once you say that, everything before that point becomes obviously moot. Actually, I was already a little nervous about Orion's casual attitude towards the potential dangers of "civil unrest". But when you reveal that he already knows that there's a lot less civility in the unrest than used to be the case, it makes all his previous thoughts seem downright foolish.

I'm going to sort of bend a personal rule here and rewrite your content to illustrate what I mean. Substantial changes in the meaning of the text will be italicized.

quote:

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The assignment was simple enough. That certainly didn’t mean that it would be easy, but after eleven years in the Adiran Enforcers, Orion was an expert at calming people down--settling civil unrest. As far as the mission being dangerous, a few of his men might get killed, but probably not if they were careful. Their adversaries weren’t soldiers like they were. There wasn’t much need for concern over the succes of the mission. Then again, "civil unrest" didn’t mean what it used to. Orion remembered his very first assignment had been described the same way. Civil unrest, his captain had said, and what that meant, mostly, was that people were scared.

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I tried to keep the changes minimal, since the point isn't a rewrite but a contrast between two different meanings in this opening. In my version, Orion is a bit more hard-bitten, he knows that there will be real fighting and real dying, even though he doesn't realistically doubt the outcome. Thus it is a bit more revelatory to say that things weren't like this when he first joined.

I didn't feel that the Orion in your version was quite serious enough about this. He comes across as a bit too optimistic, like the soldiers would even be going in if there wasn't any real danger. I immediately know we're setting Orion up for a nasty surprise, and thus that surprise will fail to surprise me. The more callous version is harder to surprise, and thus if we do surprise him, the reader will be a bit more shocked as well.

quote:

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I immediately know we're setting Orion up for a nasty surprise, and thus that surprise will fail to surprise me.

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Also as for the difference between "civil unrest" and what civil unrest *used* to mean, as referenced in these first 13 lines, that matter is clarified in the next 1-2 paragraphs, so hopefully any confusion about that is solely due to the limiting nature of a 13 line opener.

(note: edited to put Survivor's quote in the actual quote script)

Also, the sentence starting "Then again, "civil unrest"..." Shouldn't this be a new paragraph?

And finally...

quote:

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Civil unrest, his captain had said, and what that meant, mostly, was that people were scared.

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quote:

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It doesn't seem to read correctly to me. Did you mean:
"His captain had said that civil unrest meant that people were scared"?

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Actually this is a good point and gets me thinking. This is correct. The effect I was trying to give was that Orion was looking back, years before, at his first assignemnt, and the words of wisdom his captain had told him back then. So how do I structure dialogue that takes place solely in the MC's head, as a memory? Did I do it correctly, or should there be actual quotations even though no one is speaking? The effect I was going for was Orion looking back and remembering the following line of dialogue:
"Civil unrest," his captain said, "for the most part, what that really means is that the people are scared."

Actually, Orion's memory of his captain's words go on in the next paragraph to elaborate, and then Orion compares what civil unrest "now" means to what his captain once said. I think maybe the confusion of the sentence you mentioned is simply because I tend to be a fan of the "blah blah," so-and-so said, "blah blah blah." format of dialogue. Would it be more clear if I simply changed it to:

If the mission is going to go smoothly, just like every other mission, you might want to start just when it's not going smoothly any more. Start where the odd thing happens. Let us see that this isn't what they expected at all, which will let us know what they did expect.

I find myself frequently telling too much back story all at once, and I believe it's because I'm telling myself the back story as I write, as a way to reinforce in my mind what I'm doing and where I'm going. I then have to go back and edit the heck out of things, to only tell the reader what they need to know then. I can get to the rest later on, when it's more appropriate. I'm not sure if this is what you're doing, but it feels that way.

quote:

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Civil unrest, his captain had said, and what that meant, mostly, was that people were scared.

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It works fine as it is. Because the important thing isn't that his captain had said it, but that it was true.

I'm afraid that the naivete thing isn't going to work for me. I'd put down the story if Orion's casual attitude goes unchallenged without extensive justification. You'd need to convince me that a "dangerous" mission for the Adiran Enforcers would mainly mean a risk of minor injury for the incautious, and that things had been even less dangerous in the past.

I'm not saying it can't be done, though. I just don't believe it now, is all. If I do believe it by the end of the mission, then all well and good.

About the setting, you cannot use this opening and then have him turn out to have been on the march all along. Marching is very intrusive on your consciousness, it isn't like strolling along and it certainly isn't like looking out a window or lying in bed. There are also military requirements...er, I mean that I would instantly lose any remaining respect for the man if I found out he wasn't paying attention to the local environment while he is leading a column of troops into a potentially dangerous situation. He needs to be completely aware of his men, the road, the surroundings.

That being said though, isn't it possible for the human brain to do two things at once? What I envisioned in my mind's eye is that even though he IS "completely aware of his men, the road, the surroundings" but even in doing so, he has time to contemplate the task at hand. Granted, I have a complete lack of military experience of any kind, but I would imagine that keeping an eye on the environment while travelling along a road from point A to point B with a group of soldiers would be the kind of thing that a trained soldier just does on instinct, without having to really think about it (at least to some extent) leaving at least some time to think about the mission at hand.

Also (I suppose if you're asking the question I didn't convey my meaning correctly) but the idea behind Orion's optimistic outlook isn't necesarrily that he is underestimating the danger of the current mission, but that, in comparison to the other assignments he usually gets, this particular mission is an "easy" one.

Also, could you clarify what you mean by

quote:

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Orion's casual attitude goes unchallenged without extensive justification

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After looking at my opening again, I think the biggest trouble I get into is the sentence "There wasn't much need for concern." Even with Orion's optimism, that simply isn't true, and he shouldn't be thinking it.

Here's a slightly reworded first 13 lines:

I still don't have any idea that they're marching. I imagine that Orion is in a camp, tying up his boots, while he thinks about what's going to happen later.

As far as you having little military experience, I imagine that if you want your story to ring true, you'll need to read up. I don't have any real military experience, and things seem a little off to me.

Before an engagement, I expect a leader to be fully engaged in what he's doing, getting his men ready, keeping up morale. The impression that I get is that either the engagement is a long way off, and Orion has the time to think about this kind of thing casually, or that he's a disillusioned and careless leader if he doesn't have his mind in the game, so to speak.

Maybe you could start just after the successful mission. I can imagine Orion having time to contemplate more then, and what happened could be explained in a briefing to a commander, or with discussions between soldiers. Just a suggestion for a different approach.

I think your current one can work, but I still want to see more setting, both location and time frame, and I want more details about the "local uprising." Is it a mob? Riots? Looting? Are people burning houses and lynching the local government, or is just a bunch of townspeople in the central square yelling at each other?

quote:

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I still want to see more setting, both location and time frame, and I want more details about the "local uprising."

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I don't know if this is just a cop-out or not, but more details on the setting, location, time frame, and more information about the uprising all come within the next few pages. The first time I wrote the opening to my novel I made what I considered the mistake of trying to say too much too fast so it seemed cluttered. To include all of what you mentioned in the first 13 lines seems like it would do so again. That or I'm just not talented enough to include all that info and not make it sound like just that--an info dump.

As far as the uprising, the idea is not that he's marching his men into a warzone, or even a horribly violent, rioting town or anything so serious. It's more akin to a town refusing to communicate to the authority of the land, and lack of contact is automatically assumed to be some kind of opposition to authority, so they are sent in to deal with whatever problem there may be and reestablish contact.

I definitely understand what you both are saying about how his mind shouldn't be wandering on the way to the scene, but if that's the case, I guess I have a broader question to ask. The problem is that I need to put what happens on this brief mission into context, and the best way I could think to info dump what is needed without making it seem like an info dump (or not as bad as it could be anyway) is to have Orion contemplating the ideas in question on the way to the mission.

It's possible that the information I include in the beginning could be moved to after the mission, on the way back, except on the way back Orion is having a conversation with a friend of his about what they learned DURING the mission, so he wouldn't really have any time to contemplate all by his lonesome about the state of recent events. Essentially I split up the essential information the reader needs to know right away into two sections. Right before and then right after the mission, as Orion contemplates things, and I thought that compressing the information together would make it seem more dry/boring/long. But I don't want to make him sound incompetent either.

I'm not sure if any of that is a question or just a rant lol. In any case, thanks for the feedback. It's given me something to think about.

edit:
One last thing I thought I would clarify, that the reader learns a few pages later. I don't know if this makes any difference, but Orion and his men are travelling through friendly territory (their own land) when the novel begins. His internal dialogue ends when they approach what he would consider essentially the end of safe territory. They already have scouts in the area of town, gathering information unseen, and when they reach some proximity of the town (say, an hour or two by foot) one of the scouts appears to give him what information has been gathered about this specific uprising.
It is at this point that his internal monologue ceases, because, in his mind, it is no longer time to ponder over things past, or the changes in public behavior, etc, because now they are entering "enemy territory." Assuming you get this information in a few pages, does that make any difference? He wasn't paying 100% attention to their surroundings yet because advance scouts were already keeping tabs on the town and they weren't in range of any possible threat yet. Would this get rid of the "this guy is incompetent" effect? Or not? Or should I include this kind of "we're safe until we reach point X" information early on so the reader knows he's not just being incompetent?

Simply keeping step and staying dressed and covered (not referring to cloths or lack of same ) isn't terribly difficult. Anyone can do it pretty much on automatic. But the point of being able to do it automatically is so that you can pay attention to the local environment, even for the individual soldiers (not that they always do). And the commander of the forces absolutely must remain alert and aware not only of the local environment but of his soldiers.

Besides, his current situation is intimately connected with his thoughts about the assignment. For instance, consider if he thinks that the situation isn't all that serious because of what he's observed during the march? If his assessment of the danger being minimal comes from personal reconnaissance of the territory he's entering, then I'm more willing to accept his optimism as being grounded on experience and judgement. By opening with the abstraction, you make it seem like this is how he would judged any similar assignment without even looking at conditions on the ground.

Are his troops ready for action? They're right there, he can look and see. Are the locals more distressed than hostile? Well, he's currently closer to them than whoever briefed him.

You lose a lot of credibility for this character by assuming that his thoughts about the mission should have nothing to do with what he's seeing as he approaches his objective. There are various reasons that a town could have dropped out of contact with the regional authority, some of them very, very dangerous to the first suckers told to investigate. If he's ruled out the worse case scenarios, give me plausible reasons why. That way, his optimism won't be blind. It will still be optimism, which is frequently lethal to soldiers (it's not paranoia if people are really trying to kill you).

But from what you say, he hasn't yet recieved any information that would justify his confidence. He doesn't even know whether his scouts are still alive and uncomprimised, he could be heading towards an ambush rather than a rendezvous. I'm sure that he thinks his guys are smart and tough enough that it would be unlikely they would get caught and forced to give up information. "Unlikely" does not equal "impossible".

The commander can take the scout's report, which gives him both an opportunity to discuss things with the scout, and also gives him the information he needs to form the opinions you want him to have about the relative safety of the mission.

I'm not in the military myself, so that this for what it's worth, but I might suggest "The Art of War" for general procedures. I know that the US armed forces have field guides for just about everything, so you can probably find a lot of information in there.

Of course, the best and easiest way would probably be to speak with someone who's been in the military, or possibly a military historian to give you an idea of how troops on foot, with horses might have behaved. I imagine the historians have written numerous books on the subject as well.

Military training concentrates a lot on how to avoid being killed. The underlying assumption there is that someone will be trying to kill you. Most of the rest of military training is concerned with how to kill. The underlying assumption there is that you might need to do so. There are other elements to military training, like leadership and subordination training. But the parts that make it military training are the bits about killing. Theories of leadership and command both carry over into civilian life and change over time and across societies. But the notion of resorting to ultimate force is central to the concept of having a military.

Trying to search online has lead to a decent number of sites about actual combat using these weapons, but even though my MC is a soldier, the main plot of my story doesn't actually involve a large scale war in that sense, as much as it involves maneuvering around a "headquarters" type area (is headquarters even the right term? It sounds too modern) and making it seem realistic. Even though the majority of the story takes place away from any large group of soldiers, the portions that DO take place there are very climactic, and anything that sticks out as too modern, or just plain wrong is just going to ruin the mood / the story.

That being said, does anyone have advice on what site / book / movie / TV show / anything displays a credible setting for soldier life and soldier encampments for a fantasyish setting?