Western Wednesday: New Saddles on Old Horses

Old Western proverb: Spurs and jock itch don’t mix…Nah, just made that up…but be careful what you scratch with anyway…

If you get a chance, check out Margaret Marr’s nice review of my Lance Howard novel The Silvermine Spook over at Nights & Weekends: http://www.nightsandweekends.com/articles/10/NW1000161.php

Lots of talk lately about modernizing the Western, making it more relevant to attract a wider readership. To a point, I agree with some of the suggestions. Some things need to change/evolve or a genre gets stale. And this usually comes when writers rely too much on the bells and whistles of a genre instead of focusing on the soul of it. The same can be said of every genre—just take a look at most TV episodes nowadays. How many recycle the same plot germ, and simply adapt it to their particular show? How many times in the ‘70s was the hero of some show forced to land a plane in which the pilot had suffered some mishap? Too many. I got sick of seeing it, and I imagine many readers get sick of some of the contrivances used in some Westerns (or, insert favorite genre here).

That said, I also disagree some. Readers come to a particular genre for the familiar, the comfortable. They want the hero to win, the bad guy to kiss dust and expect some of the trappings of the line. Stray too far from that and grumbling ensures. That’s not to say these things can’t be delivered by a skilled author in a fresh and/or stylistically unique way, but without them you risk alienating long-time, faithful readers. Of course, you may interest new readers, but do you piss on the old ones to gain a few sales?

I don’t think so. I think you, as an author, become innovative. Otherwise you run into the cache 22 many of us do with publishers, who complain about nothing fresh but immediately reject freshness because it doesn’t adhere to genre expectations.

Perhaps the TV shows Lost and Smallville (or Alias, for that matter) are good examples of genres reinvigorated by creative storytelling. Smallville takes the Superman mythos, which by now is as familiar to the general public as any work of fiction ever was, and at times turns it on its head while preserving the exact same parameters the legend has set down from Day One. Same with Lost. It’s a bit Gilligan’s Island on crack, but embedded with twists and turns and character interactions that make things fresh—all leading to the same end you knew was coming and feel comfortable with once it does.

Would the Western benefit from this? Certainly. It’s up to the authors and publishers to be open to it, be willing to go the extra mile not to repeat what has been done but present a limited number of plot and situations in an original or uniquely voiced manner.

It’s a challenge. But would you be writing if you were afraid of that?

Note: I wrote this blog a couple days ago, but didn’t get the chance to revise, since I was busy with edits for the new Avenger Chronicles short story anthology. Today, coincidentally, I stumbled on much the same debate going on in the new online edition of Black Horse Extra (www.blackhorsewesterns.com) So anyone interested in further discourse on this particular topic should mosey on over there and take a peek. They offer some fine insight.

Coming soon in widescreen and comic book editions from Moonstone’s Originals: The Golden Amazon—There will be blood…