Since I am at FantaSci this weekend, your regularly scheduled Sunday article has been replaced by a question. Mil-sf writers who serve(d), I have a very important question for you. How much of what you write is based on real-life? I don’t necessarily mean your MOS but situations and people. How much of your writing is based on the people you served with and the everyday situations you were in? How much are you filing the serial numbers off of real life and putting into your fiction? If you want to elaborate, please do so in the comments.
So I'm adding to the, "Some of it," percentage on this poll, and I'll elaborate.
I know what it looks, sounds, smells, feels like to be shot at, I know what it's like to be under mortars, and to be directly caught in an explosion from an IED, and I know what shock feels like from being wounded. So when things get violent in a story that experience does help.
I also can understand the tension between the explicit authority of a character's position and the implicit authority of another character's experience, competence, and character. Not just in the super-dramatic unit-on-the-edge-of-mutiny way that you often see, but in the day to day, how do things actually work in a unit. The person making the unit functional may not be the person occupying the commander's slot on the Table of Organization.
But what REALLY gets through (I think), is I try not to reduce military characters to simply their archetype. Even some pretty good military fiction will reduce their characters to, "This is the Good Officer, who only cares about duty and his men," and, "This is the Bad Officer, who only cares about self-promotion." A LOT of people fall in between those extremes, and some people occupy multiple places on that spectrum at various points on their career. Corruption and Redemption Arcs abound.
None of my characters are an exact translation of any one individual I served with or myself, but all of them share DNA with us.
Spent my 4 years mostly in an office too. Config mgmt, tech interchange mtgs. Most of what I write from that time is office stuff, bureaucracy, forms, office banter.
When I wore AF blue, my butt sat in an office for 95% of the time, so if weapons are involved, it involved range training day (revolvers back then) or watching a Major fumble loading said revolvers in front of the accidental discharge barrel. Mostly what inspired my one MilSF short, so far, were the personalities and relationships I found on active duty and as a contractor for the other services. Weapons can change. Training can change. People remain people in their gut responses and motivations, IMHO.
So I'm adding to the, "Some of it," percentage on this poll, and I'll elaborate.
I know what it looks, sounds, smells, feels like to be shot at, I know what it's like to be under mortars, and to be directly caught in an explosion from an IED, and I know what shock feels like from being wounded. So when things get violent in a story that experience does help.
I also can understand the tension between the explicit authority of a character's position and the implicit authority of another character's experience, competence, and character. Not just in the super-dramatic unit-on-the-edge-of-mutiny way that you often see, but in the day to day, how do things actually work in a unit. The person making the unit functional may not be the person occupying the commander's slot on the Table of Organization.
But what REALLY gets through (I think), is I try not to reduce military characters to simply their archetype. Even some pretty good military fiction will reduce their characters to, "This is the Good Officer, who only cares about duty and his men," and, "This is the Bad Officer, who only cares about self-promotion." A LOT of people fall in between those extremes, and some people occupy multiple places on that spectrum at various points on their career. Corruption and Redemption Arcs abound.
None of my characters are an exact translation of any one individual I served with or myself, but all of them share DNA with us.
Spent my 4 years mostly in an office too. Config mgmt, tech interchange mtgs. Most of what I write from that time is office stuff, bureaucracy, forms, office banter.
Most is based on the real. While my imagination is a bit twisted, the real is far more twisted than my fantasy.
When I wore AF blue, my butt sat in an office for 95% of the time, so if weapons are involved, it involved range training day (revolvers back then) or watching a Major fumble loading said revolvers in front of the accidental discharge barrel. Mostly what inspired my one MilSF short, so far, were the personalities and relationships I found on active duty and as a contractor for the other services. Weapons can change. Training can change. People remain people in their gut responses and motivations, IMHO.