What to write in times of war.

Violence is a tricky thing to write. Especially large scale violence. The massed intricacies of battle are stifling to write and no fun to read. The small scale combat that takes place between infantry for example can be interesting to read but can only be used in small doses or it quickly dulls the mind to the horror of it. Personal combat gives no scale either. The whole, ' One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic', is particularly relevant to writers. Irrelevant if they get it badly wrong. I think that the increase of death by range is what draws people to read much more deeply into the realm of personal combat. I know many people who are fascinated by either unarmed combat or the chivalric world of personal comabat. Maybe because it is more personal. I think the finest account of a war is almost certainly Homer's Illiad. It has the touch of personal and the carnage of war, somehow without being repetitive. I remember being struck by the deaths of Xanthus and Thoon, (That is Thoon with an accent, an accent that I have no idea how to recreate on this keyboard), Homer introduces them through the story of the father, Phaenops I think, who is elderly and who will never welcome them home again. The passage itself is full of the glory of war but the last line sweeps your feet from under you with the callous nature therein.

"Relatives divided up the estate."

DR