A Writer's Tale

When he attempts to shoot the clerk, why won’t it fire?

The answer to this question will almost certainly be the key to the story.

Right now, I don’t know what’s wrong with his gun.

But there are a limited number of possibilities in the real world. If he’s using an automatic (i.e., a semi-auto), perhaps he has forgotten to take off the safety or neglected to jack a round into the chamber. Unfortunately, either problem could be fixed in less than a second without Susan’s interference. If he’s using a revolver, the situation is even more limiting for us. Revolvers almost never have safeties and there is no need to jack a round into the chamber. You pull the trigger and that’s it. If a double-action revolver is loaded, it fires. Unless you have a misfire, which is so rare with modern ammo that you don’t want to fool with it. Besides, if you have a misfire, all you really need to do is pull the trigger again and go with a fresh round. Certainly the next cartridge won’t misfire, too.

I can see only two realistic possibilities for our scenario.

One, Spike is using an automatic and it gets jammed. This sort of “Thing does happen. A round sometimes doesn’t get fed into the chamber properly, and the gun won’t fire. In that case, you may have a difficult time prying out the stuck round.

Two, Spike doesn’t have ammo.

If I want to save my gimmick, I need to choose between those two alternatives.

The jam has potential. Maybe Susan could offer to let Spike use her eyebrow tweezers to clear the jam.

Nah. I don’t care for it. The jam is a little too forced and complicated.

Whereas the other alternative has a wealth of possibilities.

He has no ammo!

Why the hell not?

Now we really have a story cooking.

Obviously, Spike thinks he has ammo. Otherwise, why did he try to shoot the clerk?

If he thinks he has ammo but he doesn’t, where is it?

I have no idea.

But I’ve got to figure it out. If I can come up with a good reason for his gun being empty, I’ve probably got a story.

The ammo might be missing because someone interfered with it.

Susan?

How could Susan, without Spike’s knowledge, get her hands on his weapon and unload it?

Maybe she’s a magician.

I don’t think so.

Maybe she’s a pickpocket.

Better. But it still seems to push the boundaries of credibility a little bit too far.

While thinking about these matters, another thought has been running through the back of my mind: maybe Spike’s wife unloaded his gun without his knowledge back home before he took off for work.” Why would she unload it? Maybe she knows he’s a robber, and she takes out the ammo so he won’t hurt anyone. Or maybe she hates him and wants him to get killed. Or maybe she’s overprotective of him, unloaded the weapon so that she could clean his fingerprints off the cartridges, but then neglected to reload it after “helping” him. Any such situation might be the basis for a very interesting short story.

While fooling with those possibilities, however, an idea suddenly exploded into my head.

What if Susan, the-store customer, is Spike’s wife?

This could work.

In fact, I feel sure that it will.

A little tricky to pull off, but most stories are.

Naturally, the story has to be written in such a way that Susan appears to be a complete stranger to the criminal. She seems to be an innocent bystander, so the readers worry about what the awful robber might do to her. Things start looking very dicey for Susan when the Spike tries to shoot the store clerk. But the handgun doesn’t fire.

We’ve already decided that it doesn’t fire because, for some reason, it isn’t loaded.

At this point, the “natural structure” of-the story allows us another simple choice.

Who unloaded the gun? Spike or Susan?

Given the decisions we’ve already made, it has to be one or the other.

Unless they have a kid.

I don’t like the idea of their child unloading the gun. It seems too forced.

But the notion of their child’s involvement in the situation triggers another idea.

Even though Spike is a criminal, he’s a good parent. (Chortle chortle.) Far be it from Spike, an armed robber, to-leave a loaded firearm around the house where his child might play with it and have an accident!

No, he always unloads his gun and keeps the ammo hidden safely away from the kid.

Let’s make the gun a revolver, not an automatic. Spike would be less likely to notice empty cylinders than a big gap up the handle of his weapon.

This morning, Spike ran off “to work” without remembering to retrieve his revolver’s cartridges from their usual hiding place. His adoring wife, Susan, noticed his oversight.

By then, however, Spike was already out the door. So she went chasing him in her own car. Because of his head start, she is unable to overtake him until he is already inside the store and in the process of robbing it.

Susan needs to enter the store after Spike has started robbing it.

She enters just in time to see him try to shoot the clerk.

But his gun doesn’t work.