Remember as you read this, it's written looking at the western and historicals as examples, however the rules, unless otherwise specified, apply to all genres....
THE PROCESS! A novel is a fictional story with a beginning, middle, and end. It has characters, plot, time and place. The trick is to bring those elements together in a compelling read.
Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry, is the story of a cattle drive. It begins in Texas and ends in Montana and takes months. Simple. Straight forward. A Pulitzer Prize winner. No complicated flashbacks to deal with. Your western, or almost any novel, can be a journey. Or it can be another kind of quest-the sheriff goes after the killer or vise versa, in old Tombstone or contemporary New York City. High Noon takes place in one town, in one afternoon. By the way, the movie was based on a great short story, The Tin Star, by John M. Cunningham.
Both plots are filled with drama. Drama in every scene. Conflict in every scene. Conflict in every scene, for drama is conflict, and a scene is not a scene without conflict of some sort. I'm going to repeat that, because its a critical part of writing compelling novels-there is no scene without conflict. More about that:
CONFLICT: Conflict can be man against man, man against the elements, man against animal, man against woman, or man against himself. Your story is about your hero overcoming one or all of them. No one wants to read about a pleasant cattle drive across grass-filled plains dotted with water holes in wonderful weather where everyone gets along famously. Or, to be more succinct, where nothing happens! Boring! However, a lot of so called literary novels seem to be very successful where the conflict is no more than an argument over how many lumps of sugar one should use in one's tea...but they're not my cup of tea.
Conflict and its resolution make compelling reading.
Every scene must have conflict of some kind or it shouldn't be in your story. If there's no conflict, then it's only a transition, getting your story from one place or another or from one time to another, and a transition deserves no more than a paragraph, usually at the beginning or ending of a scene.
PLOTTING: There are thousands of variations on plot. Plot, by the way, is defined by my trusty Random House in the second definition as:
....Also called storyline, the plan,
scheme, or main story of a literary or
dramatic work, as a play, novel, or
short story.
There's that word drama again. And remember the definition of drama included the words character and conflict.
So your plot, whether it be journey or quest, has character and conflict. Your job is to fill two hundred pages of two hundred and fifty words each, with compelling characters and hard-hitting conflict if you're writing a western, and five hundred twenty pages if you're writing a historical.
Drama! That's what you're after.
How? By telling a story.
A story of conflict.
Some writers sit down with pencil and paper, or at the typewriter, or in front of a word processor, and begin writing. Others plan carefully. Either way, in order to begin, it helps to have your basic story in mind. Think it though first, at least the main plot points.
I'm a character driven writer. I like to create interesting characters and let them run with the story. Kat, my wife, is plot driven. She knows exactly where her story is going when she sits down and types "Chapter One." Neither is right nor wrong. What works for you is right.
Thankfully, most westerns have simple plots. One hero or protagonist; one or more villains or antagonists. A journey or quest. Seldom does a western have an intricate plot or subplot. Seldom are flashbacks used. The drama moves forward in a straight time line.
A historical, on the other hand, can be much more complicated.
Like all rules, both of these are often broken.
Because plotting and point of view are so entwined, I'll continue the plotting discussion as we talk about P.O.V.
POINT OF VIEW: I've got a point of view about most subjects, so do you, so does your mother-in-law, but that's not the kind of point of view we're talking about.
After an editor establishes that you've written a novel with good sentence structure and your characters come alive for him, then the next thing the good ones turn their attention to is point of view. More basically good novels are trashed by editors because of inconsistent point of view for any other technical reason. Then again, I've met many editors and even more writers who've asked, "What's point of view?"
Point of view-from whose eyes the story is told-is a determinate of plot. For the sake of simplicity, we'll begin with the first person.
You can't wander away from the direct line-of-sight view or hearing of the story-teller if you write your novel in the first person. That is the "I" point of view.
I made sure my Walker rode free and easy in the holster as the cackler rose from his ladder-back chair
That's first person.
Ethan hoisted his Walker, making sure it rode free and easy, as the cackler rose from the ladder-back chair
That's third person.
If the point of view then shifts to the cackler, then to the barmaid across the room, its third person omniscient. The all-seeing eye. It's the third person omniscient P.O.V. that I choose to use in most of my writing.
Since I chose omniscient, I could have gone on to begin the next paragraph, or next chapter:
Meanwhile, back at the ranch....
You can't do that in first person, you can't go to the ranch in your writing unless you take your first person observer to the ranch. Simple? No, it's not simple for me. I still fight proper P.O.V. every time I write, but at least now when an editor or another writer asks me "What's your point of view?" I don't launch into a political observation or my opinion about the last news story on the tube.
In many novels written today, and some of mine, I change P.O.V. from chapter to chapter or even sometimes from scene to scene, and change from first person to omniscient. It gives you lots of flexibility, and is acceptable.
Point of view, as it applies to the craft of writing, is through whose eyes the action is seen.
Before you plot your novel, you must determine in which point of view it is to be written. A first person P.O.V. cannot have flashbacks unless the protagonist (99% of all first person novels are written from the hero's P.O.V.) is the one thinking about the flashback. A first person P.O.V. cannot see or hear something that's happening in the next room, next building, or next town. It limits your plot...or at least your approach to your plot. For that reason, most novels and certainly most westerns and historicals are written in third person omniscient.
Now that you've decided to write in a given P.O.V., you can plot your novel.
DESCRIPTION: I can't think of a faster way to get me to lay a novel down than to layer in too much laborious description. Many writers, and many editors, love a novel dripping...no, gushing...description. Many writers are great at purple prose, but give me a lean one every time.
A few years ago I read The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller. A small hardback which had a modest first printing-but a book that got legs, as they say in the trade. The novel was number 1 on both the Publisher's Weekly hardback best seller list and the NYT list, and was then to become the best selling novel of all time. It's been eclipsed now, but then.... And the reason was that it said a great deal in its 171 pages, with a simple turn of a number of great similes and metaphors. When you're writing about unrequited love, and your character is aging with "dust on his heart," as Mr. Waller's protagonist did, you don't have to say a lot more.
Remember brevity, read The Bridges of Madison County and find it at its best.
DESCRIPTION THOUGH POINT OF VIEW: Do you remember earlier I mentioned I keep a sign over my desk that says "filter all description though point of view." Why? Because by not doing so, you're engaging in author intrusion, which I'll tell you more about later, and by doing so, it gives your reader a great insight into the character of your characters. We'll also talk more about characterization later. Let me show you what I mean.
Miss Mary Jane Petersen crossed the board walk and paused in front of the batwing doors. Taking a tentative breath, then a deep one, she smoothed her linen skirt. Finally, boldly, back stiff and chin held high, she entered.
The room, filled with bawdy men, reeking of tobacco smoke and sweat, stopped her short. The clamor silenced as all eyes turned to her-but she was careful not to meet them. She strode on, moving to the plank bar and finding the gaze of the curious barkeep.
"Your proprietor. Mr. Oscar Tidwell, please," she said, carefully keeping her voice from cracking.
or:
Miss Mary Jane Petersen crossed the board walk and paused in front of the batwing doors. Tucking her loose fitting blouse in tightly-purposefully straining it against her ample bosom, which she had long known was her best feature-she pushed boldly into the saloon. The smell of working men always made her pocket book itch, and now was no different.
Bawdy men paused and surveyed her as she strode across the room to the plank bar, then went back to their faro and poker and whiskey.
The barkeep shined a mug as she approached. He, too, let his eyes drift to the straining fabric. It was all she could do not to openly smile. Men were so simply manipulated..
"The boss man, please. Tidwell."
Do you get two different opinions about Miss Mary Jane?...even though the bar scene is basically the same?
Lots more in the following articles....
L. J. Martin is the author of 20 fiction works and 2 non-fiction works from major publishers. His political blog http://fromthepeapatch.com/ is followed by many thousands. His wife, Kat Martin, is internationally published in over a dozen languages and in over two dozen countries and has over ten million books in print.
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