Weapons mix and descriptive language

[ralphkern]

Bob pointed his polymer framed 9mm semi-auto pistol at John?

My experience is that people like a bit of detail threaded naturally into a story - especially if your seeking the military Pron fans. It helps give authority to your writing. The key is it has to be natural.

For example, I have one scene where a character is taking a long distance sniper shot. The POV has time to think things through and ensure its right. I wanted to deliberatly slow the pace, giving a fair amount of detail on the set up and equipment involved to show the readers it was a carefully engineered and considered act.

In other scenes where the fighting is more frantic, I lose that detail and concetrate on the actual action and character experience rather than the toys involved. Crucially though, by that point, the reader has built up trust that what I am showing is accurate.

As a slight aside, I'm a former firearms officer in the Police. Without sounding big headed, I would say my knowledge is a bit better than the layman. I would really struggle to identify different pistols at a glance. Rifles are a bit easier, being bigger and more distinctive but even then, it can be tricky.

 

[The Big Peat]

Given people's tendency to nickname, acronymise, and generally avoide saying as many words as possible, how likely is it that someone would refer to said polymer framed 9mm semi-auto as such anyway? Admittedly, the weapons were about the only thing not nicknamed in my brief TA existence, but even so, all the weapons would be referred to by their acronym rather than their full name.