I Was an Elite Sniper for Three Months.
February 13, 2020 7:58 am Leave your thoughts
I write fiction. That means I can do whatever the hell I want.
Fiction is amazing. There are fantasy books about elvish creatures and magical powers that come from the furthest corners of an author’s mind. There are what I call “regular” fiction books, where the author writes about a court case, divorce, some other dramatic occurrence that takes place in a lot of people’s lives but the characters in the book are made up. Hard Sci-fi isn’t really my genre, but same as fantasy, you find far off worlds and things that do not exist and probably never will which is still interesting.
I like the Urban Fantasy vibe (King of Spades isn’t Urban Fantasy but if you’ve read it, you’ll know what I’m getting at.) I find it believable and engrossing because it’s instantly relatable on levels the reader probably doesn’t even realise, “Hey, I have a car! Hey, I have a pet dog too!” “Hey, I have to go to work every day like a drone!” I like a reader to believe my world easily so when I throw out a super soldier (oops spoiler, coming soon, but not in Red Cowboys 😉 ) they won’t have a problem believing it.
I mostly like “sci-fi,” eg: advanced technology and concepts like body acoustics/augmentation, weapons and medical. In King of Spades and Red Cowboys, we’re introduced to the CRONE, the RAVENEYE, the TERN, collapsible cell phones, invisibility suits and advanced aircraft with no name.
The agency in King of Spades is fictional but, if you don’t let the first few sponsored pages of Google do your thinking, you can get deep into a rabbithole search and find history which includes “clandestine” or Top Secret agencies. MDS is based on the Majestic 12 group who apparently formed after the weather balloon/aircraft crash in the much-famous Roswell, New Mexico 1947. MDS was also inspired by the Bavarian Illuminati. Yes, before the last few years, the “Illuminati” wasn’t just some joke an edgy teen made on some other dickhead’s Instagram post.
Are all “Secret Agencies” spooky? Probably not. Some operate “secretly,”due to security issues or (my favourite-not!) potential ethical concerns should their experiments or beliefs become common knowledge.
The Darkrose Novels began a long time ago and seemed “farfetched” but now feature concepts that are uncommon but available…(think DARPA and the projects they pretend they aren’t working on anymore.) Early drafts of KOS featured drones disguised as insects etc. Nowadays, a lot of what I write about is on our doorstep, not decades away, and most likely already exists somewhere we don’t know.
Trent Starr’s first side arm. Hand drawn, researched, specs noted almost 2 decades ago
I believe in imagination, but also in researching your subject. Getting the mix right for your book might just kill you.
Agent Trent Starr is an elite Red-Tag, MDS Agent. Being approx 25years old(when we meet him,) having the upbringing and seeing what he has, is not too common in the western world.
He’s one of my favourite characters to write because he challenges me in multiple ways. One path he lead me down was reading a lot of discharged army personnel memoirs and stories on various sites, watching interviews and even having chats with a couple who saw combat and live with the effects every day. It’s something that’s now close to my heart and I strive to meld all those stories together to insert them into Starr’s psyche so the real stories aren’t lost and can reach people who wouldn’t know about them.
I also research more things about his arc than any other character at the moment. There are probably only one or two other characters who make me buy secondhand medical text books and trauma unit recounts/books describing how certain projectiles damage human tissue and things of that nature. Trent Starr’s MDS career is centered around being a kickass sniper. I’ve used firearms, but nothing like a sniper would. So guess what I did?
Yup, me and my third grade-like grasp of mathematics painfully researched a shitload of sniper stuff; memoirs/books, youtube videos, documentaries, interviews, weapons, weapon specifications, lives of a spotters, drop rates x distance, targets, verbal calls/instruction, Density Altitude cards, industries which employ snipers, mathematical formulas, world records, even the much-debated, theorized, believed by some and hated on by others, Coriolis factor. What is that? Look it up, I didn’t know those words before I met Trent Starr either.
I probably know too much about -this- beast because Trent Starr likes to drive it .
I could write an essay on what I know, I think MAYBE I could walk into a shop or gunshow and select something based on specs of similar brands etc. No, I don’t know everything, not even close AT ALL, but I probably know all I can without owning a similar rifle and living a lifestyle I have no way of living in my current location.
The hard thing is inserting this into the story.
I don’t want to bombard a reader with facts that are (mostly) irrelevant to the story. Yes, Trent Starr has a kickass hybrid, fictional sniper rifle and you should know it’s awesome, but I’ve read books where the author goes into meticulous detail about things I don’t have to care about in order to appreciate the scene or story. I try not to do it unless I think it’s completely necessary and it doesn’t make me think less of the author or story, but I’m not a fan.
Sometimes all that great research has to be stomped into a single sentence. Some people find it hard to let go because it was grueling earning the knowledge. (#murderyourdarlings)
But you need to stay true to your story…
I don’t change my art/books/songs to suit trends or rules, at least not to anything that differs much from the original. I’ve taken out parts of violent scenes in some books, not because I care about offending anyone (fuck off,) but because sometimes the writing became quite technical without me realising, particularly hand-to-hand combat scenes or describing preciseness of a murder due to my knowledge of anatomy/trauma/homicide cases. No one wants a step-by-step lesson on how to cut off the circulation to someone’s brain…unless they do, in which case Google is your friend, not me. I’m not writing an instruction manual here.
Excerpt from King of Spades.
If you’ve never had a martial arts/self-defence training session or read about the intricacies of some techniques, (or aren’t a UFC/Bellator or general MMA fan,) stating where you need to have the crook of your elbow and how many seconds it takes for you to slide your hand up your other bicep and send your opponent to the Shadowrealm isn’t vital to the story. The end game (above example; an attacker is unconscious because Cleo Darkrose made him that way) is all you need to care about right now, give or take a few hints for visuals to see it in your head.
But it’s important to research your topics because it makes more information accessible to select what you think is effective.
Don’t make it one of those books where the female lead is 115 pounds but miraculously takes down a giant man with a spin and some sort of punch to his throat that’s two feet above her. It seems like too much artistic license. It depends on genre, but unless it’s a fantasy novel where magic powers exist, that stuff is sometimes waaaaayyyy too unlikely. A quick search into combat sports (for eg) might get the author to think about weights/weight divisions, why “reach” is considered an important factor with betting odds between two boxers etc. They might watch some instructional kickboxing vids or random youtube vids showing just what it entails to execute a tornado kick…which looks amazing in the movies but here’s what it’s really like.
Research all you can so that your books can weave in and out of reality and fiction and not disrupt the immersion.
TLDR:
* research until your eyes bleed. In order to squeeze out the one sentence demonstrating your ply of knowledge on the subject – you need to have potential to unleash more, you just don’t.
*Don’t write an instruction manual, you’re creating fiction.
*Take that artistic license, fam, but unless it’s fantasy…I dunno if you should go nuts…
*Banner art model/Starr-eyed look alike; the sexiest man I know. #bannerman
*For another post on my thoughts about Cleo Darkrose being able to do some crazy fight moves, you can click here. Also…that is where I brag that I met THE Meisha Tate. <3
