When I began writing military thrillers I was eager to use my past experiences to breathe some realism into a genre I felt was sorely in need of it. I quickly found out that it was a double-edged sword. Let everyone know you're a subject matter expert, and boy, you'd better back it up - except my knowledge was secret, preventing me from the very realism I was trying to achieve. I never want to put another American's life in jeopardy by revealing classified tactics, techniques or procedures.
After finishing my second novel, "All Necessary Force," the juxtaposition is like an old hat. Something that had to be dealt with, but not insurmountable. I might have to make up a widget here and there, but I wouldn't be reduced to writing action scenes that defy the laws of physics.
You know what I'm talking about. Those scenes that cause your jaw to drop at the sheer audacity of the author/director in insulting your intelligence. You do, don't you? Tell me I'm not the only one insulted by these scenarios:
- The Bullet That Causes a Body to Fly Across The Room: You know this scene. A guy gets hit in the chest by double-ought buckshot, and then proceeds to fly backward with such force he crashes through a wall. That doesn't happen in real life, but don't take my word for it. Take Sir Isaac Newton's: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". In other words, the guy who pulled the trigger should be flying back in the opposite direction, through the other wall. In the same vein, bullets don't have anything other than kinetic power. Usually, in a cinematic gunfight, you see bullets slicing through buildings with small explosions or chopping down trees like a magic buzz-saw. Trust me, you could work on a single sapling with a belt-fed machine gun for quite a while and never make it fall (yeah, I tried it once on an Army range. Shhh...).
While I'm pretty sure I'll never feel the need to use any of these devices to advance my plot, I have found the hardware and weaponry more difficult to manage than I thought it would be, precisely because I can't talk about anything classified. Luckily, I write fiction, so I can back up and re-write in order to make the situation work. Along with that, I have a healthy understanding of technology, having used it to track real targets, so I can create widgets that are technologically feasible, but not something I have ever seen. This has, however, caused its own problems.
Before sending my manuscript to my editor, I have friends who read it to make sure I'm not giving anything away. I know what's classified, but I want an extra set of eyes on it, especially eyes that are still in the arena. Usually, they have me change a few things and we call it a day. For "All Necessary Force," I got to turn the tables. On a certain piece of kit, I was told I "couldn't talk about that. It's classified. Take that technology out of the book." My reply: "Uhhh...I made that up. We don't really have it."
While fooling an operator is pretty cool, sometimes I cross classified lines without meaning to, because there are only so many ways to skin the cat. One widget I created in "All Necessary Force" was something I had never seen, but I knew it was technologically feasible. Sure enough, a few months after I put it on the page I was doing some work for an agency, and the guy I was with pulled out my widget. It had become real, and I was now accidentally treading on classified technology. I had him walk me through how it worked, and was satisfied that mine was different enough that I didn't need to pull it. I won't say which piece of kit it is, but it's still in "All Necessary Force."
In the end, I've learned that being a subject-matter expert doesn't make writing the technology any easier. It just creates a different set of problems. One thing's for sure - if it's in my book, it's damn sure capable of working in the real world, Sir Isaac Newton and all.