Impudent Upstart
Interesting concept!
Really it would depend on what sort of a writer your character is. Since the story is going to be told as a diary, I'd say that you would describe the raids the way the diary writer remembers them. It would depend a lot on their personality and perspective, and especially on their state of mind at the time of writing. Maybe some entries would be mostly curt, to-the-point tallies of gains and losses, while others might include a description of an incident that really affected them. Either way I imagine it would be sort of an abridged version of events, only the stuff the writer felt worthy of note.
Nobody wants to be a pawn in the game of life. What they don't realize is the game of life is Minesweeper.
Aussie Tolkien freak
@Billy: Thanks. It's basically colonial desert punk with a bit of steampunk and some biopunk. I say "desert" because I plan to put a lot of emphasis on the desert setting.
The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
The basic premise of one of the drafts that I'm working on is a response to one particular work (The Desert Song) and Orientalist novels in general.
Here's the concept:
The Red Shadow, whose real name is Anwar Khattabi and who's the teenaged youngest son of the previous Caid, has the ability to change his appearance and mannerisms at will. If he observes a person frequently enough, he can also automatically pick up their knowledge, leading to a perfect disguise and general success in raids so far. This ability's one of the reasons for his nickname, along with his red burnoose.
In order to ensure the chances of a successful campaign, our hero infiltrates the Neustrian fort by adopting the form of the General's son Pierre, who feels that he can never please his father, secretly sympathises with the Riffs, and loves to write poetry, getting the real Pierre involved with the cause by showing him how to create illusions in order to throw his father off on the hunt for the Red Shadow by taking the leader's place on raids.
As raids are a huge part of the plot, I'm faced with a problem as this piece is written in diary format. How could I describe something like a raid without compromising the sense that this is someone's diary?
edited 10th Sep '13 4:42:45 AM by MorwenEdhelwen
The road goes ever on. -Tolkien