About a month ago, I stopped working on my novel Bringing Estella Home because I hit a roadblock. Basically, I realized at the end of the second part that I had failed to work out all of the secondary characters and their duties and responsibilities in the mercenary group that the protagonist hires. I had a pilot and a navigator but no engineer, no medical officer, and no difference between the officers and the enlisted men. When I came up to a battle scene, I realized that most of the characters I’d be killing off were either invisible or nonexistent, and that didn’t help out the dramatic tension very much.
Well, after the last post, it seems that my two most interesting projects (according to my friends) are Bringing Estella Home and The Phoenix of Nova Terra. Bottom line: as much as I want to avoid it, this is probably one of my most promising projects and I really should revive it.
So today I opened up my outline for the story (I’m not very consisten about keeping outlines while drafting a new novel, but I usually have at least a couple of notes here and there in them), and I diagrammed out the mercenary organization. I figured out what all the important officer roles are, reassigned/added new characters to fit those roles, figured out how many enlisted men there would be and who would be in charge of them, and figured out everyone’s responsibilities. Here is what I’ve got:
* Captain — Commanding officer of the mercenary unit. Lead missions, accept contracts, look over welfare of the crew, etc.
* Chief Petty Officer (NCO) — Provide link between officers and grunts, relay commands from the captain to the enlisted men.
* Astrogator/Pilot — Navigate routes, pilot during combat.
* Cybernetics and Intelligence Officer — Provide useful intelligence to captain, infiltrate enemy networks, general cybernetic espionage.
* Chief Engineer — Maintain, repair, and upgrade the ship, keep inventory of ordinance, foodstuffs, and other supplies, maintain shipwide computer network.
* Chief Medical Officer — Maintain the health of the crew, perform surgeries and medical operations as needed, etc.
* Wing Commander — Remotely pilot and command fighter drones, monitor enemy movements within the field of operations.
So, that’s seven officers, including the NCO (I’m not really a military person, so I’m not sure if you’d count the NCO with the officers or the enlisted men…man, I’m so ignorant when it comes to the military). On the enlisted side, I’ve got two sergeants commanding two squads of twelve soldiers each.
Did I miss anything? Please let me know if I did.
I’ve got to admit, the structure of this mercenary unit comes from my own very, very limited understanding of the military, drawn mostly from 1) conversations with my military roommate over the Jordan 2008 study abroad, 2) the Schlock Mercenary webcomic (which is a lot more space opera than military sf), 3) Joe Haldeman’s Forever War, and 4) Wikipedia.
You know, I really should join the military before I attempt to write military science fiction (no, really, I’m only half joking–it is a temptation). But yeah, that’s the best I can come up with…so, really, this is pseudo-military sf, or the best space opera imitation of military sf that I can come up with.
But the cool thing is that as soon as I had everything diagrammed out like this, it all clicked together and the roadblock was gone. Gone! A month ago, when I started hitting the rough patch, I really didn’t have a lot of motivation to keep working. It was broken, I knew it was broken, and I couldn’t really move on until I’d fixed it. Well, now I know exactly how to fix it, and I really want to get back to this project and do it right.
Except…this is such a dark story. It’s so tragic. Just as I started to come along and really like my characters…but it’s better that way. You’ve got to torture them, cause them pain. It makes the story much more interesting and engaging, raises the stakes.
But first, I’ve got to finish Genesis Earth. And go to bed. Probably not in that order.
Yeah, I haven’t the first clue about military organization. I’m assuming that most readers of space opera aren’t too concerned about it…from what you’ve got there, it looks fine to me. In fact…it feels very familiar to me, like Star Trek or something; many readers will relate to something like that more than they’ll relate to the actual military.
I never posted which projects I thought were most promising, but I agree–Estella and Phoenix sound the best. In fact, I think Phoenix sounds really awesome; but my advice would be to tackle that when you’ve got more experience: It’s an ambitious project, and it would be a shame to write it when you’re not able to do it justice.
A couple thoughts, coming from someone who has no more knowledge of military ranks than you do:
1. I would think the engineer would have his hands full with maintaining the ship. Digging in the bowels of a ion-propulsion system doesn’t give you much time to manage “inventory” and flip breakfast sausages for the rest of the crew (not to mention it would probably be insulting to his abilities). You might want to think about hiring a dedicated Quartermaster/Mess Sergeant.
2. “Cyber” is different from “Cybernetics”. I think in common understanding, “cybernetics” usually refers to robotic-type stuff, while “cyber” is a more general hacker-style prefix buzzword meaning “online”.
3. “So, that’s seven officers, including the NCO (I’m not really a military person, so I’m not sure if you’d count the NCO with the officers or the enlisted men)”
The “O” in NCO stands for “Officer.” 🙂 (Full acronym: Non-commissioned Officer, often called non-coms.) I’d throw him in with the officers.
Interesting. Thanks for the feedback, guys.
Is the quartermaster typically enlisted? Did I miss out any other roles?