At the request of several friends and colleagues, I tore up my manual, WRITING THE COMPLETE FICTION into a 1,500 (or so) word number of articles for EzineArticles, updating them slightly as I go. I hope you learn something good from them, and I look forward to seeing your novels on the shelves and shelves, along with my 20 novels and 2 non-fiction works, and my wife’s 50+ historical and thriller romance novels.
Remember that as you read this you are written taking western and historical examples as an example, however the rules, unless otherwise specified, apply to all genres …
History History? What is a western about? Generally, it is a drama. If you want to write a book about the trials and tribulations of a comic watchmaker living in Sante Fe in 1875, you’d better make him the toughest watchmaker in various states, defending his watches to the death with a Colt. 44 and a bowie knife!
Random House defines a drama as:
A composition in prose or verse that presents in dialogue or pantomime a story that involves a conflict or contrast of characters … any situation or series of events that have a vivid, emotional, conflicting or surprising interest or results.
A good western (or any genre novel), like any good drama, is about trials and tribulations, successes and failures, and hopefully fascinating face-to-face conflicts that make for compelling read.
The best compliment a novelist can receive is: “I read your book in one go.” Even if they hated it, it was convincing! A page flipper. Let me qualify that compliment by reminding you that Westerns are generally short. Aside from an insomniac speed reader, no one could read War and Peace in one sitting. For your book to be compelling is the highest compliment a writer can receive.
The conflict and its resolution make for a compelling read. Put your hero on a cliff, no gunpowder, cue and shot, hostile Indians below, a rabid cougar on the cliff above and a grizzly bear protecting his cubs in the back cave and your hero developing a migraine.
Now that’s a compelling read!
An obvious exaggeration, and we’ll talk about credibility and pacing later, but you get the point.
Post your chart anywhere you like to read and study, as you’ll need to know a lot about time and place to write a successful one. It is helpful to choose a place and time that good historians have written about.
SEX: Sex? The sword. In recent years, the adult western, with explicit sex between a different lady in each chapter, has developed its own audience, and is quite large when it comes to genre writing. . It is not the norm yet. The rule is: the only one the hero kisses in a western is his horse. Like the other rules, this one was made to be broken. Louis L’Amour had a lot of romance in his many good novels … not explicit romance, but romance.
However, there is a romantic interest in most, if not all, of Louis L’Amour’s novels. Romance, as Zane Gray so aptly put it, is idealism, and westerns, as Louis L’Amour so aptly wrote, are about the dignity of Western man. Ideals. Romance. Good triumphs over evil. The good guy wins.
Keep the sex explicit (vivid description) in your conventional or contemporary novel, or in your romance novel, if you want to sell your western as a classic western. A historical offers a greater margin of maneuver.
I try to limit the sex in my books to dropping a boot or closing a bedroom door. Kat writes romance, so don’t read hers unless you’re ready to break a sweat.
This does not mean that there is no market for an explicitly sexy western. However, I think the original genre hurts to write and publish them. It’s not that I wouldn’t fight to defend that right. But they should at least be featured so the reader knows what they are getting.
THE END: I only include this topic in this section because some genres have definite completion requirements. For example, in the gender sense, a romance should end happily: the boy stays with the girl. A mystery must end with a solution to the mystery. But a western or a historical one can end either way.
High Noon ended happily. Shane rode into the sunset, alone and unattached again: happiness for the settler whose wife was also so drawn, but not the generally accepted happy ending. There is no hard and fast rule. But generally a western ends up as High Noon or Shane, or somewhere in between.
The stranger, hard and silent, triumphant but alone, enters the unknown, it is usually the saddest of the western endings. Why? Because most of us want to feel good. When the last soldier of the cavalry regiment and the last Indian of the village kill each other with their last bullets while standing on a pile of bodies of soldiers and Indians, characters that a good writer has brought in to worry you, you have a sad ending. There’s a market for that, but it’s not my cup of tea, or maybe sarsaparilla would be more appropriate.
Write a Shane or High Noon ending and you’ll sell your first Western novel.
A history can end either way. Again, it offers a lot more leeway.
So what is a western?
A gripping and captivating drama that takes place between the ages of eighteen forty and eighteen eighty-five over the West, with a hero who triumphs and wins the love of the lady, or at least respect and longing, and saves the city, the ranch, railroad, stagecoach line, etcetera etcetera …
But heck, if you get down to business, your guess is as good as mine and most editors’.
Write a novel they can’t put down. An irresistible conflict. West, East, North or South, or Kenya or Afghanistan, at its glorious best and evil worst.
In the next chapter (article) I will try to give you some clues.
