Orsdxy

As I've mentioned before, I'm working on a military sci-fi novel.

Here's the trouble with the military: you don't spend all of your service, start to finish, with the same people. Not all the people you've done Basic Training with will proceed to the same Advanced Training as you. Not everyone who completes Advanced Training with you will be assigned to the same unit as you. In effect, after each transition, one is meeting new people and making new friends, keeping in touch with only a small sub-group of the friends from before. Like transitioning from middle school to high school, and from high school to university, only on a significantly shorter time frame. And that's before I so much as touch on drop-outs (and I do need those for tension - it could, theoretically happen to the MC).

The result of the above is I'm asking the reader to get to know a set of characters, only to lose sight of them several chapters later. The characters the MC was closest to in each stage do get further involvement in the story, but most drop out of sight. Similarly, in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, we don't hear about Bishop Myriel, his sister and his servant after their scene with Jean Valjean, nor about Félix Tholomyès and his friends after he abandons Fantine. Only, I can't think of more modern examples, which troubles me.

I would like to give my first-quarter-of-the-novel characters as much loving attention as Hugo gives Myriel and Tholomyès (and it's the recommendation I receive here), but I fear to lose the more impatient modern reader's attention. Much like the MC, I expect my reader would be eager to get out of boot camp and into real battle. How do I balance making the boot camp part interesting by way of having the MC develop various relationships with well-rounded characters, against the fact that most of those characters disappear from the story after the MC leaves boot camp?

1. Realism is just a style: If it serves your novel better to have your MC serve with his buddies from bootcamp --or at least some of them --just make it happen. Lampshade it, or explain it away if you must, but don't be a prisoner of realism. In fact, even according to what you say, it's not unrealistic for there to be at least a core group that progresses on together. It might strain a tiny bit of credibility if all his best friends and worst enemies "just happen" to be in that core, but I don't think that's really much of a stretch for the reader. (And if there are one or two well-developed characters that only appear in one section of the book, I don't think that asks too too much of the reader, either.)




2. Interweave the narratives: As suggested multiple times in answers to the earlier question, you don't have to run all the bootcamp scenes and then all the service scenes in chronological order. Weave them together and you solve both problems at once.




3. Bring some of the characters back later: Even if they don't all go forth together, it's not out of the question that some of the characters from the first part might reappear later in minor or major roles. Most stories with a large cast do this to at least some extent.

There are some very successful books and movies that do move from one largely self-contained world to another --Full Metal Jacket seems like a particularly relevant example --so if you want to do this, you can. But in that case you really have two or more complete stories connected by a common character, and will need to make sure that each piece is capable of basically standing on its own --of being satisfying to the reader in of themselves.

Keep the characters relevant by having the MC spend his down time writing letters or otherwise trying to keep in touch with these characters.

Alternatively when the MC faces a tough challenge you can have him think back to some aspect of the other characters. Maybe he wants to get past a challenge because another character he felt was his rival failed on it and dropped out and he wants to prove he's better.

+1 to both suggestions.

In addition:

1. Play with an alternating viewpoint. There can be rich potential in viewing the same scene or battle from two different perspectives.




2. Have the MC develop a relationship with a staff secretary or pilot or supplies transport chief or other non-boot-camp stable and recurring character.




3. Have a boot-camp friend defect and the MC meets them in battle. Ooooh.




4. Have the main character be so gob-smacked by one of his early days friends, that thereafter he makes regular comments like, "Horatio always said (this)" and "Horatio wouldn't have done it that way,' etc. Your MCs new friend would understandably be annoyed or amused and ask about this amazing Horatio fellow.

Just have him say thanks and goodbye and wish them luck.

I spent many years in my career as a consultant, everywhere I went I made friends, often for less than a year. These often began with lunches (everyone eats). I did my best when talking about my life and career to point out my stay was temporary, I would be moving on, and I liked it that way.

It is no different working in companies, at least in modern times. People come and they go; you stop seeing the people you've seen every day, even though you were friendly with them. Some that were particularly compatible still communicate with me; 90% of them have given up.

Friendship includes a healthy dose of shared experiences; when those end, the friendships tend to end. When I knew what people at IBM were talking about in reference to the internal politics and jokes about upper management, that was fun for me and my friends there. Once I disconnected, it is not fun for either of us; I am not up to speed on why the jokes are funny; and they would require too much explanation.

But that isn't a hostile end; I don't mind if an old lunch friend shows up and wants to visit and catch up.

A way out of that, to sustain a long distance friendship, is to focus on shared interests or experiences that we can still both experience despite being physically separated. Writing fiction is the first example of a shared interest I should mention (since we are on this site); pick the right person and you could have a remote friend, critique each other's work, talk about new fictions, etc. You might even collaborate!

Other interests might be politics. Finance and what is going on with the stock market. Sports. Movies and/or celebrity gossip. Developments in science and physics. Funny or viral YouTube videos! Music (and music celebrities).

Almost anything that has something new going on every day or every few days would count.

There is a psychological theory of friendship involving synergy. The basic idea is if you like music Type A, and I like music Type A, and we both search for good music of Type A, then by partnering up and sharing what we find, we double our search strength and increase our finds of good music of Type A. So we enjoy that partnership and call it friendship; as long as my other traits don't irritate you too much, and vice versa. Even better if you like my jokes, and I like yours.

That dynamic is maximized when there is a lot of stuff going on for the interest we share; otherwise you and I are finding the same things and little connection is created. Which is why I say something new every day or every few days, that is when the synergy can kick in and we become valuable to each other.

So your character lets friends go when all they shared was the ordeal of boot camp. He tries to keep them in his circle when they turned out to have shared interests and shared opinions, and a long distance friendship is viable (and you have some means of sustaining it). Otherwise, it's just "Man, you helped me get through this. Thanks for that, and good luck in your post."