THANK YOU!! I'm a consulting engineer with extensive experience in designing and installing control systems (mostly for amusement parks and other entertainment facilities, but also for some industrial plants). It drives me crazy when books or movies have plots involving someone taking control of a computer system and doing ridiculous things by typing a few keys. Michael Crichton is the primary sinner at this. Look at Jurassic Park. The computer is down, so now the doors don't lock? The computer is down, so the phones don't work? The computer is down, so the electric fence is off? Sheesh. NOBODY DESIGNS SYSTEMS THIS STUPID! There are bypasses, manual overrides, emergency stops, etc. for EVERYTHING. Letting a dangerous prisoner out of jail by hacking a computer is just silly.
The Tourist: Thank you for your thread I also use S&W Revolvers in my stories as well I fact i have a specific J-frame that i like to use in a lot of my writing projects, the the J-frame that is use is the S&W Model 60 .357 magnum revolver with a 3 inch barrel and i use .38 special ammunition in it instead of the .357 magnum ammunition.
Books filled with these kind of sentences make me want to close them. When authors use unnecessary technical jargon I find it disruptive and boring. Just my taste i guess. You have to examine if that level of detail is crucial to the plot or not. If it isn't, like anything else, cut it out.
Generally, I don't advocate writing like this. I was just saying that if you ARE going to specify the gun, make sure you get the specs right. I liked how it was done in the James Bond film Dr. No. The killer comes into the bedroom and fires at the pillows on the bed he thinks are Bond, but Bond is waiting for him behind the door. He just says, very coldly, "That's a Smith and Wesson, and you've had your six." Then he shoots the killer. The line works because, even though it doesn't specify the exact model of gun, it tells the viewer that Bond recognized the gun, knew its capacity, counted the shots, and knew the killer was out of bullets, so he could kill him at his leisure. You don't have to specify everything; you just have to say enough.
I spent some time researching the best guns for a group in my story to carry, and having selected it making sure I knew it's appearance, operation and capabilities. But I didn't really share any of this information with my readers - it just made sure I had the detailed picture of the scene and wrote anything involving the weapons realistically. You generally will want to report to the reader the details your point-of-view character would pick up on. A gun-shop owner will see the make and model and maybe even notice the condition of the weapon. He'll probably instinctively look to see if the safety is on. Someone else would just see "a pistol". Writing the correct one is part of making your narrative believable.
