wiki update #2: guns

Writing about gunfighting has always been a problem for me because I am one of those guys who needs to be specific about what the heroes and villains are packing. It's annoying for a motorcycle buff to watch a movie and see bad guys on motorcycles suddenly taking their left hand off the clutch lever to open fire with an Uzi (What, is your bike automatic?). It's just as annoying for somebody well-versed in the poetry of Shakespeare to hear somebody flub the inflection on one of the bard's lines when they quote it in a movie ("wherefore art thou Romeo?" has got to be the single line in history most hated by drama teachers).

So my problem: How do I go into the specifics of a weapon without interrupting the flow of the narrative and inducing eye-rolls among those in the gallery who don't care when I (and other people) surely DO care about it?

While perusing one of my earlier incarnations of the Last Clerks, one friend of mine got to the paragraph where I went into Howard's armament and he saw a block of exposition that likely looked something akin to:

At his hips sat blah blah blah blah blah in .45 ACP blah blah blah Colt Python blah blah blah blah blah .38 Long Colt blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah single action...

and he said "This is WAY too much about his guns," and he would be absolutely correct.

It's a legitimate concern: My brother was once reading a book where the author only said "gun" in every instance, maddeningly never specifying if the broad term used for projectile-based weaponry referred to a rifle, or a pistol, or a shotgun, or an isolated soliton wave disruptor, or whatever. My brother had just cause to be pissed, because there are readers for whom a detail like that makes a huge difference - it would also seem to betray some ignorance on the part of the writer if they can't be bothered to look up just a little bit about firearms.

Author William Sanders, the source of my knowledge on the Nagant Model 1895 used by Patrick Lake, rather cogently vented his frustration in Hardboiled Magazine at authors who betray firearm ignorance in their works. Follow along on that last link and Sanders will even give you a crash-course on some basic firearms facts which for some writers is sure to be enlightening.

For me, a person who doesn't own a gun but can't get enough of writing about them, a wonderful solution has presented itself: The convenience of the Internet and hyperlinking has allowed me to easily link to detailed descriptions of the hardware a particular person is carrying while at the same time not throwing away a paragraph of writing that will bore the disinterested and at best interrupt the flow for those who actually care about the specifics.

I love progress. It's one of the ways I'd like to think web-based fiction can get a leg up on books. In that spirit, I've added some firearms specs to the wiki, including one on Howard's pistols and documentation on the shotgun of the as-yet-unseen Spencer LaSalle. More gun facts to come.