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| graphic found on Facebook |
Nottoway Wildlife Association, LINK called "Personal Protection in the Home," following NRA curriculum.
These are the same folks who taught me about rifles in this article: BLOG LINK.
You are writing a kick ass heroine. Woot! And while everyone loves a beautiful, smart, effective heroine, and I have one as the main character in my Lynx series, it also adds dimension and reality if she struggles a little bit. One of my writing coaches told me that if things are going well for your heroine, you're writing it wrong. Your girl should be constantly struggling.
Well if I were a template for a heroine in a dynamic gun situation, believe me there was a whole lot of struggling going on.
Before your heroine even brings a gun into her home she:
* Understands that using a gun or any lethal weapon
is a tool of last resort - though your heroine doesn't believe this
standard applies during a zombie apocalypse.
* Understands that gun laws and her decision making is
based on locality; she should know her laws and have made her
decisions in advance. How your plot advances depends on the
reality of those laws.
The focus of this first blog in the three-part Dynamic Handgun series is take-away plotting gems that I picked up through hands on practice and lecture.
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| Found on Facebook |
Things I learned: Or, Why your heroine can't go out and buy a gun today, and blow away the bad guy who jumps out of her closet with a machete in his hands tomorrow.
* Firing on a range and
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| (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
(moving/situational) firing
are vastly different.
* Firing on the fly without
lining up the sites and
having time to
check stance, breathing, etc.
will definitely effect your
heroine's ability to hit the
mark dead center.
Her goal is merely center-
mass. As a range shooter, I
hit bulls' eyes. That day?
Eh, not so much.
* I am a dancer/MA fighter; you'd think that I had control over my
body. When my focus was on the "bad guy" also known as the
little piece of paper in front of me, my coordination was off. Way
off.
Watch this video that was taken on the archery range.
Here you can see the technique while focused on a single task.
My right elbow is down and back. Then I was asked to perform a
memory task and a speech task with the second shot. Even
moving with plenty of time and deliberation, you can see my
practiced body mechanics shift; my right elbow went above
my head. The point here being - your heroine must practice
situational, all components put together, tactics if you are going to
write her a successful outcome. Doing it first time on-the-fly
just won't fly with your readers who know anything about tactical
shooting.
* Past injuries can effect your character's ability to move fluidly
into certain dynamic poses. For example, as I tried to follow the
instructions to go down on my right knee, I felt like and old rusted
gate. My ACL (central knee ligament) is made from a cadaver
ligament after a fight that did not end in my favor. Who knew this
would impact anything? In MA practice and dancing, I simply
don't make that move. For me everything was very crunchy
granola, and I lost my balance on the way down. So think about
your character's past injuries and how they could effect her
present-time shooting scenarios. Did something happen in the past
that could trip her up now? Remember, nothing should come easy
for her
Brian Coates, whom you will see in the ThrillWriting
inset video at the bottom of this article, is a U.S. Marine Corp.
veteran. He moved into place and dropped to his knee smoothly.
(I'd say gracefully, but I think that would paint the wrong
picture.)
Video Quick Study (3:46) Shooting on the move
Practice makes perfect. Practice on this specific move - not just a
generally fit/sportive heroine. While being an active person might
make the learning curve quicker, there will still be a learning
curve.
* In my mind, switching to non-dominant hand shooting was no
big deal. When I was actually asked to perform the task, I had to
stop and look at my gun and figure out how to change my
fingering, my left finger on the trigger felt really odd and pulling
the trigger with my left index finger felt even odder. Did your
heroine sustain an injury to her dominant arm/hand
necessitating a switch? It's not going to be as easy or effective as
it is in the movies unless she trained this action.
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| ) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
you're thinking, no duh. But
what if your heroine wears
glasses or contacts? Does
she have time to grab her
glasses and her gun?
What if there is low light/no
light? Did she practice
aiming with her eyes
closed? Does she have
a light attached to her gun?
A laser?
Consider not just eyesight
but visual dexterity.
How quickly can your
heroine spot and decipher a
potential threat especially
in an adrenaline impacted
situation? This is a trained
response. Maybe not
necessarily combat training
but some discrimination training
Did her past job/conditioning make certain eye patterns difficult?
Let me give you and example:
One of our tasks was to not aim the gun with sights but merely to
look at the center of the target and pull the trigger. My paper had
bullet holes neatly placed all the way around the outside of the
target circle not a single shot made it to the inside.
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| Image found publicly on Facebook I feel his pain |
When my instructors talked to me about focus, I realized that I
could not perform this task because I have done neuro-plasticity
training that required me to look at a center point and focus on
the periphery. Something I will now train to overcome. Gamers
might have this kind of reaction and certain sports.
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| Image copied from Facebook |
* While revolvers are predictably reliable, automatics fail. My gun
needed oil, so it failed quite a bit. (Lesson learned.)
` Stove pipe - when a bullet sticks straight up in the chamber
` Two bullets in the chamber
Video Quick Study (10:37) malfunctions and clearing
instructions notice he says to practice at home with snap caps.
Your heroine must practice to be effective.
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| graphic found on Facebook |
* They ran a drill that demonstrated a knife wielding villain can get
to and injure your heroine before she could get a shot off (with
the gun already in her hands). This might be good news for a
heroine who attempts to flee a gun scene. It might be bad news to
your heroine if she is all that's standing between the bad guy and
the future of the world as we know it.
* Being shot is not as effective as one might be lead to believe by
watching video games, movies and the like.
^ It is typically not bloody or even visible. If you need a bloody
crime scene try a knife. (Homicide Scenes Blog Link, Blood
Spatter Blog Link)
^ The person does not blow backwards as if there was a bomb.
They collapse if the bullet was well placed like a shot to the
head.
^ Often the person who is experiencing adrenaline will not even
realize they've been shot ( read about that under scar story at
bottom of this interview Blog Link)
^ Multiple, well-placed shots must occur in order to down your
villain.
^ It will take several seconds for the impact of those shots to take
effect. In those seconds the villain is still functioning and can
still harm your heroine.
^ Your villain's physical response will be effected by drugs or
alcohol use. (Illegal Drugs 101 - choosing a drug for your
villain Blog Link)
^DOWN DOES NOT MEAN OUT
- was he wearing a bullet-proof vest and merely stunned?
- is he faking the collapse so that he can get your heroine to
lower her guard?
- Have your heroine cover the guy with her gun, stay vigilant,
and wait for the police. She shouldn't go up and frisk him - he
may grab her, take her down, and take her weapon --or maybe
that's what you want to happen next. Or maybe she's in a
remote area with no hope of help. Now she has to make some
darned hard choices.
* Knowing that an attack happens quickly, and your character
needs to get her bullets in even more quickly, I shot my entire
extended cartridge (16 count) of bullets as fast as I could with
some semblance of hitting central mass. I knew I was being taped
and therefore could time it. 10 seconds and I was empty. I was
fortunate that I didn't have any malfunctions while firing those
rounds.
Brian Coates demonstrating a behind barrier strategy discussed in
Prt 2 of Dynamic Handguns. Fiona Quinn emptying her mag.
Prt 2 of Dynamic Handguns. Fiona Quinn emptying her mag.
You were not a very benevolent author and decided that your heroine would not be attacked by one but several assailants all at once. What's your girl to do to save her skin?
* She should engage the most hazardous threat first.
Things which might inform her assessment include:
Things which might inform her assessment include:
^ How close are the attackers to her and which is closest
^ What kinds of weapon are they wielding?
^ How fast are the attackers coming at her?
We know that the police with all of their training only have a
20% impact rate. And we know that you can survive and act
after being hit by a bullet. Since the guy with the machete is
barreling towards her, she might chance the bullet hit to stop
the machete-swinger.
* How many bullets does she have? If your girl is unloading on
thing-one, then thing-two ran round the corner, she's left with
a not particularly useful empty gun.
Another strategy would be to try to put a
bullet in each of the ogres and then assess. Was she successful?
Yes? Call the police and wait. They're still attacking? Shoot
another round into each and so forth.
* Remember, even the best of the best get tunnel vision and train
strategies to prevent this from happening. While she has the ogre
in her sights his troll partner could be sneaking up behind her and
she'd never know he was swinging his club - lights out.
Some of my articles you might want to review along with this information -
About guns:
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| Found on Facebook |
Choosing a Handgun
Shotguns and Rifles
Shooter Simulation
(tunnel vision)
Carrying Concealed (interview)
About forethought/preparation:
Home Invasion - Hard v. Soft Target
Home Invasion - Setting Up a Safe Room & Creating an Escape Route
Thank you so much for stopping by. And thank you for your support. When you buy my books, you make it possible for me to continue to bring you helpful articles and keep ThrillWriting free and accessible to all.
As always, this is a non-political site that is geared to help writers write it right. I am presenting information to help develop fictional characters and fictional scenes. In no way am I advocating any position or personal decision.
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Fiona, Wow, very informative, as always. For a fellow crime fiction writer like yourself
ReplyDeletethis is a treasure trove of information, especially since I live in a state without a single shooting range in sight.
Thank you for what you do, I'm following you on Twitter.