Accuracy

Are you one of those film buffs who take great delight in catching the continuity team out by spotting lamp posts in medieval movies or wristwatches on historical characters? It makes you wonder how these things manage to make the set. 

One of the situations that amused me for years were the number of bullets fired by John Wayne from his six shooter, before he needed to reload. The issue is somewhat more complex these days. Hand guns have various sizes of magazines holding from about 9 bullets up to a massive 33 by a Glock 19. The latter described as the ‘grandaddy of them all’. Having watched many cop movies I have concluded they all have these huge beasts as standard issue. 

Having always been interested in guns this was part of my writing research was never a chore. I furnished my hero, Patrick A Steele, with a sniper rifle as well as a Glock 19 and the totally fictitious, non-metallic Glock 23. Well they were fictitious when I wrote the book but that was before the advent of 3D printers and other such 21st century innovations. The rapidity with which progress has been made in many aspects of technology means that researching books needs to be constantly updated. 

There are many instances in TV land that I don’t believe translate into the written word. The example I had in mind when writing Inceptus (Steele 5), was the affect on the human body of being shot, not fatally, but wounded. You know the scenario where a perpetrator is shot in the hand to disarm them. Quite often they shout in pain then are back on their feet swapping hands with their weapon and continuing to fight! Consider the hand. The human hand is made up of a total of 27 individual bones: 8 carpal bones, 5 metacarpal bones and 14 “finger bones” (also called phalanges) are connected by joints and ligaments. About one quarter of all our body’s bones are found in our hands. 
Not only bones but skin, blood vessels, nerves, muscles, tendons and ligaments. A bullet striking a hand is going to make a colossal mess. If you are struck by a missile travelling at around 500mph the bullet will almost certainly pass right through your hand and that is when your body will begin to react. There is going to be pain, blood, and shock; and, those three factors will probably immobilise the average human being. Not so the superhero!
This is where accuracy and artistic licence probably need to take slightly different paths. If every superhero fainted the moment they were shot the genre would be less popular than it is and the films would be considerably shorter. It is the writers’ task to maintain realism while engaging the reader/viewer with action and excitement. That is a matter of choice and it is your skill as a writer to attain a level of truth and fantasy with which readers will be engaged. Too many facts can produce a yawn!
Obviously, what you write about is personal as is the level of realism/excitement you are trying to achieve. You are the first reader that you have to satisfy. Tread carefully you are entering a different world and need to return to the real one, occasionally. 

God Bless