I'm writing a sci-fi war/spy novel. I'm done writing the prior event, prologue and first part of the novel, which pretty much cover the 'spy' part. Now I'm at the point where I should start adding the 'war' part, but how should I handle it? The 'war' part follows the adventures of a young nurse. I pretty much have a general idea on how I should manage this section, but the scenes are kinda all jumbled up in my mind, without any kind of connection whatsoever. I though I would start off by describing her journey to the war, from when she leaves the naval school of medicine on Earth to when she reaches a hospital behind the front lines on a frontier planet. The problem is, how do I describe it? And which means of transport should I make her use? Civilian trains/airplanes/vessels (starship) or military ones? What would a real navy officer use to reach the combat zone?
If she's a nurse, she could see the war only through the soldiers that come through her hospital. She may not have any first hand experience with combat but being a nurse she would be intimate with the horrendous effects and injuries. Her interaction with the broken and wounded soldiers could be an effective way to illustrate the war's progress. My first suggestion regarding transport: don't make a big deal of the futuristicness of things when describing them. She will have lived with whatever they use for most of her life the same way you've known about planes since you were a child. Whatever they use will most likely be cramped and uncomfortable because the same rules of comfort will apply in the future as apply now: the company can make more money if they don't waste their money on luxuries. And, in the future, room to move may be a highly desired luxury. A real naval officer would be transported, in all likelihood, by the navy. Either a ship (or spaceship) or via publicly available transport to a port that is more convenient for the officer to be collected from.
Hm, so if I make her use a train and an airplane to reach port, it shouldn't sound too strange... (that's basically what I've written yesterday). Thanks, all of your advice will be a great help to me!
A combination... You could use both commercial and military transport. Former military, I would often use commerical airlines to get to one base and then take a military transport or charter from there. Doing so would allow you to get imput from both civilians and military characters if you want.
Yeah, I guess this is a good way to handle it, too. Now, how should I describe her arrival on port? It'll be a spaceport, but I don't want it to look too star-wars-alike. I'd like to make it a mix of both civilian and military, with a military zone opposed to the civilian one. Would that work?
