How to Write Your First Western Novel Part 1

A Western Novel is unique in many ways. When reading, there are certain elements that you know are going to be in the Western before you ever open the book. Horses, guns, romance, action and of course the villains, are all elements of the perfect Western novel. When you are trying to write your first Western novel, putting these elements into a story that captivates the reader can be a daunting challenge.

When I wrote Radersburg Gold, my first Western novel, I wasn’t, to say the least; too sure I could get it done.  Everyone talks about how they are going to write a book someday. It sounds so cool to say it.  Especially when you’ve just been through a wild ride caused by some outside force, like a plastic bag blowing through the air and wrapping across your horses face, hanging up in the headstall of your bridle and making that rapid fluttering sound in his ear. As you are picking yourself up off the dirt and your riding partner is about to fall off their horse into the dirt, from laughing so hard, it sounds cool to say, that could only happen to me. I’m going to write a book someday. It’s a whole different story when that day shows up and you start to write.

So, what does a rookie writer need to get started and give themselves the best chance to finish with a good book to show for their effort?

Practical experience or knowledge is good. I don’t mean you have to have gone on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana in order to be able to write effectively. Although, it wouldn’t hurt to have at least moved cattle from one pasture to another or attended a few brandings as a participating member of the crew. Doctoring cattle, just you and your horse, in a five hundred acre pasture can give a person quite a bit of practical experience in a short time.

Having a rope burn through your hand while you’re trying to get your dally or seeing your colt’s ears disappear out of sight as he bogs his head to go to bucking these can be, no pun intended, crash courses in practical knowledge. Making the ride or not making the ride, shooting a forty five Colt or a Winchester rifle, these are all good pieces of experience to help qualify a writer to tackle his first Western.

Too many times in my life have I looked forward to reading a new Western I’d just bought and had it ruined by a writer who didn’t know what he was talking about. I know one writer who is a walking history book about the Old West but couldn’t saddle a horse with three people just like him helping him. It’s not a requirement to know what you’re talking about when you’re a writer, but I believe it helps.

Due to possible slander charges being brought against me, I won’t mention any names of the books or the authors I’m using here but I will give you a few examples so you can understand what I’m talking about.

Not so long ago, as far as the time table of the world is concerned, a novel came out that dealt with the world of training horses.  It was very popular and it made it’s way to the silver screen. I didn’t watch the movie version for several years because I had made the mistake of reading the novel first. It was, I must say, one of those cases where the movie was better than the book, mainly because the movie got rid of most of the mistakes found in the book. Mistakes made due to ignorance are still mistakes, at least that’s what I think.

Now, don’t get me wrong this book was best seller. It made a lot of money. Yes, I may be a little jealous but I’m jealous about a lot of books I wish I’d written for the sake of how much money they made. I still liked those other books… Harry Potter comes to my mind right off.

But, back to what was wrong with this particular novel. So much so that it ruined, what was otherwise a good book, for me.

First off, when the horse was injured and traumatized the author had two boys cutting a V shaped notch out of the stall door and catching the horse’s head in it to doctor him. This told me right off the bat this guy didn’t know a cow stanchion from a lead rope. I have no problem with taking poetic license in order to jazz up a story but it needs, at least in this type of a story, to at least be possible. You could doctor a cow this way, maybe sheep and goats as well (I’ve never been a sheep herder so I really can’t say for sure) but trying to doctor a horse like this is something I hope none of you ever try to do.

For those who don’t know, when you pull down on a horse’s head it’s their natural tendency to pull back. To make a long explanation short it, if you slammed an already traumatized horses head, or any horses head for that matter, into a solid chute gate like this, he would probably never quit fighting until after he had broken his neck or torn the stall door apart.  It’s likely he would have injured the boys trying to doctor him if not killed them out right as well. If you’ve never seen the strength of a twelve hundred pound horse, that is scared, let me tell you, it’s an intimidating sight you’d probably never believe unless you did see it.

So, let’s say we go ahead and swallow this first lump of coal and we try to get past it and enjoy the rest of the story. This was a pattern that repeated itself all the way through the book.  I did, after all, want to like this book. It was a best seller I didn’t want to miss the band wagon and be the odd man out. But, every time I started to get back into the romance between the cowboy and the lady another, meant to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling, warm the cockles of your heart, phony scene would show up and jerk me right out of the good mood I was starting to enjoy. Here’s one I remember vividly.

The story goes on and now the hero is sitting, on the now un-traumatized horse, due to his superior skills with equines, on a high mountain ridge watching the two heroines pushing the white faced cattle up the hillside to the Wyoming summer pasture. Our Hero looks off on the other side of the ridge and sees the Mule deer doe, heavy with fawn, bat her big brown eyes at him, just before the buck prods her away with his antlers.

At this point I nearly threw the book through the wall of my house.  If you are going to write a pile of mush like that I think you ought to, as a writer, at least take the time to research it at least a little bit and get it right!

It’s a beautiful scene, you say, what’s wrong with it?  I’m glad you ask.  By the time the ranches take the cattle to summer pasture, the fawns are already on the ground and are getting pretty self reliant.

At this time of the year the bucks and does aren’t in bands together.  The bucks are in the higher country eating the mineral rich high grass in order to grow the best set of antlers they can. This is necessary for them to do, so they can fight off the other more inferior bucks in the fall and get to do the most breeding.

Last but not least, the buck’s antlers are in velvet. They are soft and easily damaged at this time of the year and the bucks are not prodding anything with them. The whole scene was made up, fairy tale, hog wash. It would’ve taken less than fifteen minutes to have looked up the information about the habits of Mule deer and written just as pretty of a scene that would’ve have actually been possible to have happened.

Another popular book tells of the hero running and leaping onto his horse, jamming his foot into the stirrup and stabbing his toe into his horse’s flanks, taking off in a mighty leap to pursue the bad guy. So?  Either our hero is a contortionist or he mounted his horse backwards.

These types of errors would be omitted with just a little bit of practical knowledge. If you can’t go out and actually ride, rope, work cattle or chase up or down a mountain, then you can at least research the anatomy of horses enough to not have your hero riding off in hot pursuit facing the wrong way.