Photo by Florian Weichert on Unsplash
“Have fun storming the castle.”
Yeah, right. Castles are war fortifications, often surrounded by walls, on top of a hill.
Most likely, any action will be a siege, not a storm.
Aaron Miles provides some basic Sieges and Siegecraft information – Part One: Attackers (3/31/2017) and Sieges and Siegecraft information – Part Two: Defenders (4/25/2017) – at Fantasy-Faction.
The central thing to take away for a fantasy or science fiction novel is sieges are brutal. They may be short or long, but they are always brutal. The defenders have retreated as far as they can, and the attackers have an impossible shell to crack. Bringing the mentality of either side alive on paper, alongside the tactics and strategy, for it to feel real to the reader, is as difficult as scaling a cliff with hot oil pouring down.