Military science fiction, often shortened to military sci-fi, is a subgenre within science fiction that focuses on things like warfare, armed conflict, and the impact of technological advancements on war. A lot of military sci-fi is based around the traditional ways war stories are told, but military sci-fi combines those elements with things like advanced tech, aliens, war in space, and more. Military sci-fi is, in my opinion, quite an underrated subgenre because it’s been unfortunately tainted by less than stellar movies out there. However, there are great ones too like Edge of Tomorrow and Spectral which served as big inspirations for my series, The Fallen Age Saga and the elements of military sci-fi in my books. So, for today’s post I’ll be talking about how to write an amazing military sci-fi story!
What is Military Sci-Fi?
Military sci-fi is a subgenre that combines military fiction with science fiction and emphasizes the military aspects of the story. Military fiction typically revolves around soldiers in war, with themes of heroism, duty, honor, brotherhood, sacrifice, and the horrors of war. Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction that explores the advancement of technology, the future, space travel, and the interactions between humanity and the technological world. Science fiction likes to explore themes of what it means to be human, as well as morality and the idea of control. Combined, the two make for a fantastic subgenre of fiction.
How to Write Military Sci-Fi
Start With a Concept
The first thing that you want to do for your military sci-fi story is to start with a concept for the story. Military sci-fi involves some level of war or tactical situations in a story so you need to come up with an idea that will work for this subgenre.
In my series, The Fallen Age Saga, there is a war that sparks when two alien superpowers begin to attack each other on Earth with there being a deep-rooted conflict behind the war that has been going on for millions of years between ancient demons. This is a concept that I built the rest of the story off of.
There’s another military sci-fi story that isn’t a book but is a video game: Halo tells the story about humanity and its struggles against the Covenant, an alliance of powerful aliens.
Work on the World Building
The next important thing to do in military sci-fi is to create a world that is compelling and interesting and will serve as the backdrop for your story. The world building elements of setting are a very important part of the military sci-fi formula and helps to set things up for the reader.
Firstly, you want to think about the way the technology has evolved in order for this to be considered sci-fi. What sort of advancements have been made to technology in general, not just military technology. However, in military sci-fi, most of your advancement explanation should focus on the idea of military technology. Think about how these advancements have changed things for soldiers and for the balance of war.
An extremely important part of the world building of military sci-fi is politics. The countries or planets or societies that are involved in the war need to have developed governments and developed conflicts and there needs to be descriptions on the politics of this world. You as the writer need to show the reader why there would be a war or some sort of conflict in the first place. It wouldn’t make sense for a conflict to just randomly spring up out of nowhere, and there needs to be a precursor.
You want to also work on the country or planet itself where most of your story is going to be taking place. The world building on this part is very important and you need to give a backdrop for the readers to see why the stakes matter in this story. The main character being a soldier doesn’t change the fact that he or she likely had a life before joining the military and there is a whole world out there aside from just the military.
You want to also think about things like where the fights will take place. Are there multiple planets? Will there be space battles? Will the fight be on one planet or in one city? Think about this when designing your world because the way the battles will be played out matters depending on the scale and the scope. It also depends on how destructive everything is going to be.
You want to also work on things like the religion and the culture because there are many influences on the idea of war and soldiers based in these things. For instance, the Ones Above are a race of militaristic aliens in my series, The Fallen Age Saga. Their religion is basically just war and death and their goal is to make everything fall under their control either through financial dominance, destroying planets that disobey them, enslaving populations, etc… They believe that they are meant to rule everything and that their word is law. Obviously their society and culture thrives off of war and the economics of war.
If you want more information on world building, then you should definitely check out this ultimate beginner’s guide so you can get a better idea of how to world build if you’ve never done it before.
Create Interesting, Memorable Characters
Characters in military sci-fi matter a lot because most of the stories in this subgenre are heavily character-driven. They allow for the reader to connect with the story so that it feels more human and less like just a history of war.
You want to think about who your protagonists will be in the story. The protagonist doesn’t need to be a soldier, though most military sci-fi stories fall under the idea of a soldier as the main character. The main character can be anything you want so long as it fits the goal of your story.
The antagonist is the character or the thing that opposes your protagonist and can be the villain or even the hero of the story. The idea is that the antagonists should serve as the obstacle for the protagonist and the protagonist’s growth. The antagonists also need real motivations for why they oppose the protagonists of the story, not just being evil or just wanting to exterminate everything. There should be some sort of rooted, grounded and real motivation for this behavior.
For all your characters that matter to the story, you want them to have clear and complex motivations. The readers should be able to understand why the characters are willing to go through all of what they’re going through and why they are even motivated to care.
Furthermore, you want to show the character arcs and how the characters are changing over time. It helps when you’re working on creating a well-rounded character that is also very memorable because a flat character that has no significant arc will be boring to read about.
Plan an Interesting, Intense Plot
When I hear the term “military sci-fi,” I’m expecting to see some intense military action, combat, high stakes, and a battle for survival. War in general is a very dark subject and concept and just because it’s being done in a sci-fi scene doesn’t change how dark it is and how horrifying it can be.
You also need to work on creating tactical and strategic elements to decisions that characters are making. A military leader is likely going to be analyzing each decision made a hundred times over because of the high stakes involved in each decision.
You want to have battles and fights of all scales occurring in your story. Personal, hand-to-hand level fights are great and open, giant and massive battles are great as well. You should mix both in to add some variety while still having tons of action in the story.
You also want to include interesting plot twists and unexpected moments as well as plenty of suspense in the story because war is full of suspense. There’s no telling what will happen next in a war and there’s no telling who is going to start attacking and from where. If you want to learn more about how to create suspense in a story, check out this post.
Research Realistic Military Elements
Before I started writing The Fallen Age Saga, I was completely unfamiliar with the way the military functions. Now, I took a lot of liberty in designing the militaries present in my story, but I still incorporated a ton of realistic things that I found while researching the military and I didn’t just research the United States military, but that comprised most of my research seeing as the main characters are Americans.
I watched videos of war and tried to understand what roles different soldiers played as well as what the special forces units are, what the infantry is, what soldiers do in war, what squads are like in war, etc… I also played a lot of war-based games to get the emotional immersion down to capture and convey in my story. I know that war games are not super realistic all the time, but games are helpful in letting you try to immerse yourself in something so that you know what works for immersion.
I also researched the idea of hierarchies in the military as well as how training regimens are and how strict different countries are in training. For instance, the mercenary group Blackridge in The Fallen Age Saga is more based on tactical expertise and so their training relies a lot on CQB and clearing buildings while in Book 2, Soldat, the Soldat branch is more focused on basically just being a disposable armada so most of their training is on-the-ground combat and less close quarters.
Ethics and Philosophy
Military sci-fi tries not to glorify war necessarily, but what it tries to do is present ethical, moral and philosophical dilemmas associated with war. The idea of justifying war, justifying destruction, and the cost that war has on society are all big things that are asked about frequently in military stories and that applies to military sci-fi as well.
Personally, in The Fallen Age Saga, I wanted to show characters that were almost in-favor of what they were doing because they genuinely believed that everything they did was for the betterment of humanity even though they were causing so much destruction and horror. However, their ideals and their belief that it was all the “good fight” led them to not care much about these things.
Furthermore, if you want to try and present something interesting in a military sci-fi story, then you want to show how ordinary people are affected and impacted. I tried to do this a lot in my series because ordinary people are always impacted by war and the destruction caused during war destroys a lot more than just infrastructure.
Fight/Combat Scenes
Another major element of military sci-fi is to ensure that your combat scenes and the fighting in your story is realistic, but also exciting and intense. It’s a big thing in military sci-fi because a lot of the story is based around action and being a military story, there’s a lot of combat. I recommend that you work to create fights where it’s clear who’s doing what and that the pacing is a mix between fast and slow moments. It’s important to keep the readers engaged and to build tension in these fights.
Furthermore, when it comes to fighting and combat scenes, you want to use as much sensory imagery and detail as possible. You want to give the reader a glimpse of what’s going on, how intense it is, and you should be detailed. Military science fiction readers know precisely what they’re getting into when they pick up a book like this, so it’s expected that you’re going to have scenes that will make them shocked and scenes that will make people feel a bit grossed out, but that’s war. Be realistic and don’t shy away from it.
Combat needs to have an emotional impact on the readers and the characters alike. If I’m reading your story, I should be feeling pretty much everything your character is feeling emotionally. The stress, the anxiety, the fear, the adrenaline, etc… are all things that your character is going to be feeling while they fight to keep their life.
Try Out Using Multiple Perspectives
One great thing about military sci-fi and a lot of other speculative fiction stories is the fact that you have a lot more room to deliver the story since readers tend to expect longer stories within things like science fiction and fantasy. So, you have a lot more space to expand on multiple perspectives if you want.
The multiple perspectives can be of any characters that you find are relevant to the main plot of the story, including the protagonists and the antagonists. You can also create an ensemble story where the different viewpoints eventually come together at the climax of the story.
If you want to learn more about how to write multiple perspectives, then check out this post.
Realistic Dialogue is Important
Dialogue and the military is often something that I find a bit… bad in some stories, I’m just going to keep it serious here. Most soldiers are everyday people like you and me that are fighting in war. They’re not all going to be profound philosophers, but some can be. Additionally, soldiers swear and curse a lot in war. Watch one combat video and you’ll know what I mean, it’s like 90% of their sentences. If you’re writing for an adult audience, then you can throw in swear words. If you don’t, it’s going to feel unnatural, I’m just telling you that from now.
You can also use military jargon, but you don’t need it to sound like a Call of Duty campaign with characters saying “ten-four,” “we’re Oscar Mike,” and such things all the time. You can throw that in there, and I do that because I like to nod to these sorts of little cliches since they helped me get into this subgenre, but you don’t need to make every sentence sound like a generic military action movie.
Soldiers will also talk to each other like normal people do. They’ll discuss life. They’ll discuss feelings. They’ll discuss their thoughts. You want to show these scenes because you want to make your characters feel like humans. If you want to learn more about how to create realistic dialogue, then check this post out.
Conclusion
Writing a great military science fiction story requires a bit of work, but if you use these tips for your story then you’ll be able to craft something really engaging and interesting. I think that military sci-fi is criminally underrated and most people think that it’s only about bad aliens vs good humans, but if you go in-depth in this genre, you’ll find a lot of amazing stories written and if you decide to write your own military sci-fi, then try and make it stand out so that you can create an amazing and memorable story.
Before you head on out, be sure to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga, and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to get updates on all my latest book releases, WIPs, posts, and more!