Ways to Wage War

[MadPrinceLegion]

I have two families fighting for control over a city.
So my question is
What are some ways these families can wage war against each other?
What i had in mind was do it the way mob families would rage war against each other by trying to kill off the other family. They can come up with different ways to kill each other but how repetitive would that be.

For example:
John tries to kill Matt. It fails and Matt tries to kill John. It fails, so now John attempts to kill Matt wife since she seems like an easier target.

Just a bunch of back and forth until either: 1. One family kills off the other family. or 2. One family gives up and leaves the city. or 3. The families decides to work together and end the war.

I'm going to create methods for how they try to kill each other to make it crazy and interesting. i just think people would find it repetitive.

So i was wondering what are some other methods they can wage war against each other.

 

[Gonk the Insane]

Well, I guess some of this will depend on the genre and what kind of book you're writing. If it's a bloodthirsty romp, then you might like to focus on altercations between the factions, for example. By the sound of it (I took "fighting for control of the city" literally) that's certainly an option, but it might be nice to add another dimension. So, if prior to their fighting they both ran businesses (legal or otherwise) then you could add in conflict along those lines, whether it's bribing officials to do inspections, damaging property, or perhaps something like leaning heavily on suppliers to not supply the other family's businesses.

Or perhaps there's an intelligence war, with family members from both sides trying to find out the other's plan. Or you could add a political element to it - for example both families have town councillors in their pocket with the two of them trying to outfox each other's plans.

Some of it might depend on what started the war between the families - is it a small thing that escalates, or did one kill someone from the other family? The inciting incident and its severity might determine the initial response.

It sounds interesting.

 

[The Judge]

You don't say what era this is, ie whether it's present day, the future or the past, albeit a fantasy past, but that will surely in part govern how the war between the families is advanced. With the advent of formal policing, it's harder for murder to be ignored now than, say, five centuries ago, and as forensic techniques have become more sophisticated, it's harder for the murderers to escape justice -- not impossible of course, but it's a factor your families must consider when thinking of using murder as a strategy/tactic.

Personally I'd got for something more sophisticated, as per Gonk's intelligence war, ie each side attempting to undermine the other in less bloodthirsty ways. So if one has control of a particular trade/industry eg meat processing, the other uses political and legal contacts to create problems over health and safety, pollution, air quality and that kind of thing. You could still have murder, but not of the principal members of the other family. To my mind, that's something of a nuclear option, in that you only do it if you're convinced the first strike will be successful, obliterating the other side's ability to strike back, otherwise you're just opening yourself up to your own close family getting killed, which is the last thing you want. That happens of course. In 1478 the Medici family held political and economic power in Florence, so their rivals in the Pazzi and Salviati families banded together to assassinate Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother (in church of all places!), but the assassination was bungled, so all the conspirators executed, the Pazzi family was effectively destroyed and the Medici ended up more powerful than ever.

It might be worth reading around about how the Mafia gained control of places, and how opponents were dealt with. I'd suggest true stories, though, rather than the many fictionalised accounts.

Anyhow, I think this is rather more of a writing issue than a reading one, so I'll move the thread over to GWD.

 

[EJ Heijnis]

I have two families fighting for control over a city.
So my question is
What are some ways these families can wage war against each other?
What i had in mind was do it the way mob families would rage war against each other by trying to kill off the other family. They can come up with different ways to kill each other but how repetitive would that be.

For example:
John tries to kill Matt. It fails and Matt tries to kill John. It fails, so now John attempts to kill Matt wife since she seems like an easier target.

Just a bunch of back and forth until either: 1. One family kills off the other family. or 2. One family gives up and leaves the city. or 3. The families decides to work together and end the war.

I'm going to create methods for how they try to kill each other to make it crazy and interesting. i just think people would find it repetitive.

So i was wondering what are some other methods they can wage war against each other.

If they're fighting for control over the city, that implies they have considerable power already, but what kind of power? Influence over businesses? Friends in politics? Access to sensitive information to use for blackmail, or to publicly discredit opponents? All of these are assets, and each can be vulnerable. If a local business pays you for protection, but your rivals come and trash the place, you look weak. Your friends in politics can be swayed to the other side through bribes or threats, and end up acting against you. Sensitive information can be used against you, too, and what happens when you try to blackmail someone with information that proves to be inaccurate, because your enemies allowed you to find out? Power exists on many levels, and opposing powers can clash at all of them.

 

[Biskit]

I think you also need to take a step back from the mechanics of how they bump each other off and consider a few story structural things:

1: Who wins. At the end of the book you need a winner and a loser, and perhaps hooks for a sequel or such like, where it is clear that the loser is primed for a comeback, or the winner has been severely weakened by the conflict etc.

2: What is going to be the clincher for the win/lose? It's sort of traditional in these things that the stakes, level of violence and diminution of honour/morality increases exponentially to the climax, so you need some rough idea what the clincher is going to be, which might help pick out the best sorts of incidents to get there.

3: Who else is involved. I know you have said you have two families, but they aren't going to be the only players in the game, even if everyone else is out-matched. Other families might be looking to take the number two slot if the loser is sufficiently damaged. Other families/factions/forces-external-to-the-city will have an interest in the outcome. So lesser groups/forces are likely to seek alliance with one side (or both!), or at least do favours for their chosen side in the hope of recognition later. And then there are the incidentals - those who seek to take advantage of the chaos and settle scores of their own, disguising murders etc as the work of the warring factions. This is also a way of twisting the plot and springing things that neither side could expect - something dire happens, apparently their fault, but done by one of these third parties.

3b: How are the various third parties going to react to the conflict? e.g. Jo the wine merchant doesn't care who wins, until Family A kill his/her beloved-family-member-of-choice as collateral damage in one of their skirmishes. Now Family A gets a good slug of arsenic in every cask of wine Jo supplies. (note 1: Jo might well then be taken as collaborating with Family B. note 2: traditionally, none of this goes well for Jo in the long run.)

 

[The Big Peat]

It sounds like you basically want some unusual/interesting ways for one group of peeps to murderise another group of peeps in an urban environment - am I correct?

What sort of setting are we talking here?

 

[Coast]

It depends entirely on what type of story you're trying to tell, but I'm a fan of stories like The Count of Monte Cristo, or The Prestige, where what starts as competition escalates inevitably towards murder/death.

With those sorts of stories you have the escalating action/consequences that builds towards something (usually a death). If you start with tit for tat murders, I think you need to be asking 'how can I escalate?' Maybe with each reprisal, it draws in more powerful people or families? Or their fighting affects the city?

As for waging war, there's health, wealth, family, reputation, business. Like The Judge says, there's probably as many examples from real life as there is in fiction...