But is it cheating?

Edit: Did I ever mention that in addition to a couple of English degrees I had an undergraduate minor in history? lol

Is it cheating? Well, in a way, because you didn't make up the battle yourself. You didn't do all the research into tactics and strategy and come up with your own battle. But, so what?

As you say, it was a good battle. Just don't use someone else's words (plagarism) to describe it. It's not cheating to describe it your own words.

Edit: I have done quite a bit of reading and research on strategy, I should say. But sometimes the real thing just seems to me to FEEL more real, maybe just because I know that it worked. Actually, it's necessary to tone down some of the dumb decisions the English made. No one would believe it in fiction. LOL

And my battle does involve the use of magic, which I'm told the Scots did not have access to.

It was one of those serendipity things. I wrote early on in the novel that there was a bridge that somewhat resembled Stirling Bridge although it's a bit wider. Then later I decided there would be a battle at the same town. Sterling has always been one of my favorite battles. (Too bad Gibson made such a hash of it in the movie. They took out the bridge! Blech!)

Further edit: Is it normal for someone to have "favorite battles?"

[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited November 26, 2007).]

But you do need SOMETHING. So yeah, some battle scenes I've written have been 'borrowed', at least a little, from history. So what?

However, I think creating strategy is much more entertaining than rewriting previous stratagies . I agree that if 'feels more real' to use strategies that WERE real. But with your own ideas, it makes it feel real if you consider all of the options and really know that it would work if this were the situation. You as the writer are omnitiant after all.

I try to think outside of the box, above and beyond and use all dimensions. If there's magic in your battle, then something like...

the Brons sent an agent into the Crons ranks, and he carried with him a special stone that when placed on the battlefield erupts into flames, or opens a portal from which the Brons can pour into the enemy's formation and reak havoc.

One thing that's nice about fantasy and the use of magic, is that you can think in three-dimensions -- that is you can consider aerial battle in a time setting you normally couldn't.

I'm sure the Scotts and Brits couldn't send people soaring through the skies on giant eagles to drop bombs on the enemy.

This would be considered strategy -- it's not just how troops move on the field, but the ingenious ideas behind it as well.
Just a couple thoughts.

-Jayson

Besides, readers who realize this on their own will probably pat themselves on the back and think well of you. The ones who don't realize it... well, they'll think it's your own battle.

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I'm sure the Scotts and Brits couldn't send people soaring through the skies on giant eagles to drop bombs on the enemy.

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Neither can the people in my battle. I keep the magic in my worlds at a very modest level. It can affect battles but is a long way from over-powering.

Thanks for the comments. I rather enjoy rewriting actual battles. Sure I have enough background in strategy that I can (and have) written my own. But there was that bridge there just ASKING for a nice battle. lol

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I'm sure the Scotts and Brits couldn't send people soaring through the skies on giant eagles to drop bombs on the enemy.

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Sure they could, think air force.

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As a writer, I'm not a military person, but I've managed to write battle scenes in my HP fanfiction that has soldiers in Iraq asking me where I served, because I got it so "right" (and due to the gender-free pen name I use, they usually think I'm a man, not a woman). I understand some basic concepts of tactics and strategy, although I've never studied them, so I use air support (in my fanfics, people on brooms, in my novels, people on winged horses or people with wings of their own), pincers movements (although I don't call them that), ambushes, whatever I can think of that will add to the general chaos - but I view it all through a very limited POV, so the reader is seeing how one or a few characters, people they should really care about by this point in the story, are doing throughout the battle.

I don't care about tactics - I care about PEOPLE. So to me, no matter what the tactics, I want to see what the people I care about are doing, and how they're doing. I want to feel their pain, their fear, their joy at finding someone safe they'd feared for, to see them make themselves defer the pain due to the ongoing battle around them when they see a friend hurt or killed.

The most powerful image of war I've seen lately was a clip from a film called "My Boy Jack" that was on British TV on Nov. 11 (and will air on Masterpiece Theater on PBS on April 20, 2008 from 9-11 PM). It stars Daniel Radcliffe (yup, "Harry Potter" in another pair of glasses) as Jack Kipling, the only son of Rudyard Kipling, who was a "king and country" man and very much in favor of the war (WWI). Jack's vision was so poor, he failed the physical when he, like nearly every other young man at that time, tried to sign up for the military. Jack was as gung-ho to go to war as his dad was for him to do it, so Rudyard pulled strings to get Jack an officer's commission in the Irish Guards despite his thick glasses and the poor vision he had even with his glasses. Two weeks after he arrived at the front, Jack is shown (in this clip that's part of the DVD interviews with the cast - which is online somewhere - go to www.danradcliffe.com and look for it if you're interested) leading all these men who are older than him into battle. His own fear is plain, but he does what he's supposed to and leads them out of the trenches and onto the battlefield in an absolute downpour of rain. At some point, he's shown helping a man to his feet, and when he straightens up, Jack's shot in the shoulder - a wound that shouldn't have been fatal, IMO. His glasses fall off, and he's shown fumbling around in the mud searching frantically for them - and they're only inches away. What a heartbreaking scene! I suspect he was shot again, but that wasn't shown in the clip. Jack Kipling was one day past his 18th birthday, and that was his first battle - and his last. His body was never found. Focusing on that one young man, who looks much too young and small to be even carrying a gun, in this battle is much more gut-wrenching than seeing anything to do with "strategy." And that's what I'd rather read.

I've read a lot of military stories/novels and seen a lot of military films. It wasn't until I saw the interviews on the "My Boy Jack" DVD (available online, as I said) that I learned that 20,000 men A DAY died in that war. They also said the war ended because they ran out of bullets! I don't know how accurate that is, but because I cared about that character, I paid attention to those details and they were burned into my brain.

I don't think what you want to do (using real battle strategies in your story) is cheating, but if it were me, I wouldn't focus on the strategy. I want to write things that are as powerful as that brief scene in "My Boy Jack", so I focus on one or two characters most of the time, especially in battle scenes. I don't really want to read about overall strategies. I want to see how the characters I care about are coping. JMO.

Even the Macedonian Phalanx, which was the most practiced and solid of its kind, was based on the older Spartan Phalanx, which may have been imported from Egypt as early as 2500 BCE.

Considering these situations, as well as the evolution of most military strategies, I can't imagine that you would even need to worry. And it sounds like you are providing an historical fantasy of the battle, so what difference does it make if the battle itself is as accurate as possible. The setting and other plot and milieu attributes won't make anybody think that you're doing more than paying homage to the past.

That's MHO, anyway.