Technical Mistakes in Novels

[Coal Creek Griff]

I may be alone, but I find it particularly maddening when authors can't seem to get technical details right.  I notice it particularly with guns, but there must be may more mistakes as well. 

I understand the desire to change some things (particularly terminal ballistics) to make the story more exciting, like having someone hit with a bullet getting lifted of his feet and thrown backwards 20 feet through a saloon window.  It would be more realistic if he showed no reaction to the first few hits, then fell like a marionette with the strings cut, but that's pretty boring.

What really bothers me, though, is the writer who doesn't seem to understand how single-action revolvers work or other similar mistakes.  I've read a few books recently, where the US Cavalry during the Indian Wars seems to have been issued with lever-action rifles.  In another book, the badguy is stuffing cartridges into his Walker Colt.  The goodguy was constantly swinging out the cylinder on his Colt, checking his ammo, then snapping it closed (this is in the late 1870's).  In another book, a character fires a shot from his lever-action rifle, then cocks the hammer with his thumb to fire a second shot.  More examples abound.

In movies, I am a little more forgiving—sometimes they use what they can get.  In books, though, it wouldn't take much to have someone who knows check the details.  I'm sure that anyone from this board would do it for free.  Why can't authors find someone to check the facts?  I have stopped reading some books simply because I was getting frustrated over this kind of stuff.

OK, I vented now.  I feel better.

CC Griff

[Forty Rod]

I've busted my hump to get all the details right in my stories, even to researching weather on a certain day and grass conditions, whether the rivers were high or low at that particular time, etc. 

I'm like you: it drives me nuts when a writer thinks so little of his "audience" that he slights them on details.  I'm proud of the fact that if it's in my yarn, it could have happened just the way I wrote it.

[Delmonico]

Well heck, modern newspaper reporters can't even get right what happened an hour ago, .9mm pistols, 40mm pistols, 12 calber shotguns.  The one I liked recently was the local paper doin' a story on a friend and said he wears a sweat stained suade leather hat.  Pack a lies it was, I sold him that hat and do the maintance work on it, it's a real beaver felt.  Kent wouldn't wear no suade leather hat, Wayon Jennings is dead so he couln't go to one of his concerts anymore.

Besides that, it would fry yer brain on a 95 degree day when mowin' hay with horses.

Forty Rod my friend, as always you and any of your friends are welcome to my knowledge any time, you know how to find me.

[Forty Rod]

I appreciate that, Del.  I may take you up on it one of these times.

[piebiter]

If I'm going to pay good money for a book I expect it to not insult my intelligence. I've come to limiting my reading to "known"
authors that I can trust. There's nothing worse than sitting down and starting a novel and then finding out that the author doesn't know what he's writing about. There are a lot of publishers that don't care what they put out as long as it sells. It seems that people just don't care anymore...anything goes. That goes for books, movies, newspapers, the web and TV. I recently posted a review of a Matthew Braun book that I tried to read. Braun took the liberty of re-writing history to suit his own purpose.
If he truly loved the West he would treat it with more respect.

[Coal Creek Griff]

If I'm going to pay good money for a book I expect it to not insult my intelligence. I've come to limiting my reading to "known"
authors that I can trust. There's nothing worse than sitting down and starting a novel and then finding out that the author doesn't know what he's writing about.

Amen, brother.

CC Griff

[Outrider #72622]

I picked up a book the other day that had won the Spur Award or something.  It was a great story. 
It was 1868.  The main character carried a colt peacemaker in .45, a 30-06 rifle and gave his buddy a 30-30 Winchester he had taken off a bad guy.  I know no one is perfect but stuff like that bothers me.  Other than that, it really was a good book!

[piebiter]

I hope that it wasn't a Spur Award winner Outrider, it would be a sad thing to see. I just re-read a Spur Award winner "Gold In
California" by Todhunter Ballard from 1965 that is still one of the best books I've ever read. The Spur Award use to mean something...I'm hoping that it still does.

[Drayton Calhoun]

For as odd as some of his westerns are, at least J.T. Edson tries to be technically correct. So correct in fact that he describes the firing of an Army Colt from the moment the hammer drops till the slug hits the bad guy.

[Bow View Haymaker]

That's why I miss Louis LAmour so much.  You can pick up any of his books and know that the details "could" of happened that way.  He usually had some first hand knowledge of the area he was writing about and he knew weapons and the west ( and the other areas he wrote about)