This post by Chuck Wendig originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 10/14/14. Note that it contains strong language.
[NOTE: The below post is not meant to be an endorsement for or a prohibition against guns in the real world in which we all live. It is a discussion of firearms in fiction. Keep comments civil… or I’ll boot you out the airlock into the silent void.]
Guns, man. Guns.
*flexes biceps*
*biceps which turn into shotguns that blow encroaching ninjas to treacly gobbets*
CH-CHAK.
Ahem.
If you’re a writer in a genre space — particularly crime, urban fantasy, some modes of sci-fi — you are likely to write about some character using some gun at some point.
And when you write about the use of a gun in your story, you’re going to get something wrong. When you do, you will get a wordy email by some reader correcting you about this, because if there’s one thing nobody can abide you getting wrong in your writing, then by gosh and by golly, it’s motherfucking guns. Like how in that scene in The Wheel Of Game of Ringdragons when Tyrion the Imp uses the Heckler & Koch MP7 to shoot the horse out from under Raistlin and Frodo, the author, Sergei R. R. Tolkeen, gets the cartridge wrong. What an asshole, am I right?
You can get lots of things wrong, but you get guns wrong?
You’ll get emails.
As such, you should endeavor to get this stuff right. If only to spare yourself the time.
Read the full post on terribleminds.