Tips on how to choose weapons for characters in fiction.
Sue Coletta is a crime author and writer bud of mine with a new book out this November worth your time, Marred. I’m interested in how Coletta approaches the weapons in her work, seeing as how she came up with a primer called 60 Ways to Murder Your Fictional Characters. What follows is her guest post on how she chose the firearms for one of her law enforcement characters, along with a terrific example of how to load and shoot a semi-automatic pistol. Enjoy!
~Ben
This is a Raven Arms P25 MP25, a good example of a .25 caliber handgun. But is it a bad example of a handgun for writing fiction? (Image via Wikimedia, public domain)
TLDR: If you can help it, a character might be better off with a handgun with more bite than a .25 caliber.
Last week’s post about the .25 caliber “lady’s gun” used by James Bond kicked off some interesting feedback from followers of this blog. Some agreed with my take that the ability to be accurate matters more than firepower (a perennial debate in the gun world, too). Others felt .25 caliber handguns are flat out a bad option despite how easy they are to shoot.
Characters in fiction can get away with plenty those in the real world can’t, so neither POV is completely right or wrong. It’s up to writers to make the final call.
Still, I feel like I didn’t give enough time in that post to why it might be a bad idea to go with a .25 caliber, especially since there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence. Continue reading
The Beretta Model 418 is so small it’s considered a “pocket pistol,” meaning it could slip inside a pocket. Its .25 caliber ammunition is barely cut out for popping varmints. So why would a character like James Bond use it? Writer Ian Fleming had a good reason. (By Bob Adams (http://www.adamsguns.com) (Adamsguns.com) [Attribution], via Wikimedia Commons)
When it comes to handguns, it seems to me there’s a tendency to assign fictional female characters smaller calibers than males. I’m here to tell you that’s a mistake, and ironically I’ll use one of the most famous womanizers of all time, James Bond, to explain why.
The following is excerpted from my book, The Writer’s Guide to Weapons: A Practical Reference for Using Firearms and Knives in Fiction. It’s an abbreviated version of the list of “golden tips” (but not golden rules, because that’s just asking for it) found in the book.
Enjoy!
~Ben
This is the second of two posts from “Adam,” an active duty law enforcement detective in California. Adam offers writers advice about depicting police work on his Writer’s Detective website and Twitter handle. You may want to read Adam’s first post about handguns for detective characters here.
Enjoy!
~Ben
The Writer's Guide to Weapons 