From: firstinitiallastname@texas.net   
      
   Cori wrote:   
   > Gerald Clough  wrote in message news:   
   >   
   >   
   >>Aside from considerable knowledge of facts,   
   >>tales, and sources, many here have studied fictional accounts of the   
   >>historical west and may have things to contribute about what made them   
   >>good or bad.   
   >   
   >   
   > Thank you, Gerald.  In a way I already have an idea of what I want to   
   > write as far as when/where, but I am really interested in learning   
   > what's previously been done and what made it good or bad.  I do have a   
   > sort of an idea of what's been overdone, but honestly.  Is there ANY   
   > subject in 19th Century history which has been so COMPLETELY overdone   
   > no writer dare touch it from any direction?  Just wondering about   
   > possible pitfalls.   
      
   There's really not anything that's SO overdone that it out of bounds,   
   although the OK Corral and The Alamo, mentioned in another reply are   
   close. You'd have to be very good and have a very different angle to get   
   past an editor's "not another" reaction.   
      
   But there are all sorts of novels. McCarthy goes for grit and can set a   
   novel anywhere. Contrast McCarthy's border trilogy pieces with Tom Lea's   
   "The Wonderful Country." McCarthy is all hard edges and rough times for   
   the sake of giving his characters grief. Lea was much closer to a   
   "western."   
      
   It's obviously a serious error for a new writer to try to outdo a good   
   work in the same style and setting. One of the joys of research is   
   "discovering" something that hasn't been much used. I haven't read The   
   Open Range Men, but I take it that it treated the same general scenario   
   as Open Range, the film. Big-rancher/little-rancher,   
   rancher/sheep-herder and such are well-known and often-done situations.   
   But very few people have seen the situation in Open Range used.   
      
   It doesn't mean that almost the same story could have been told with one   
   of the classic backdrops, but using the new angle helped keep the   
   reader/viewer from feeling, right from the opening, "Oh. Another ___   
   story."   
      
   It doesn't mean they must never have heard of something. The scalp   
   hunters featured in Blood Meridian aren't exactly unknown, but I don't   
   think anyone had dragged their readers up in the middle of their   
   depravity and kept them there for a whole novel.   
      
   George McDonald Fraser made a virtual career of setting his hero in   
   dozens of very well-known historical events, including those of the   
   American West. But he had an angle, a character who became a celebrated   
   hero while practicing as a devout coward and astonishing womanizer. If   
   you want to see a master of inserting a fictional character into myriad   
   historical (and extraordinarily researched) events and figures, I   
   recommend seeing how he did it in his Flashman series.   
      
   Even an author who makes errors in authenticity can satisfy nearly   
   everyone. Andy Adams wrote "Log of a Cowboy" about cattle drives. His   
   own experience was in driving horses, and he made a few mistakes in   
   portraying cattle drives, but few would notice. Some of his mistakes   
   bother someone who has read a lot of authentic, first-hand accounts, but   
   I think even they like the read, moreso when they have looked into the   
   reason for his errors.   
      
   Research itself can be a pitfall. It feels good, feels like real writing   
   work, to do the research. But it's just prep. The real work is the   
   writing and learning to be your own critic. (Friends and relatives are   
   worse than unreliable.) I think the most important thing that can come   
   from research is that story ideas arise from all the bits and pieces you   
   pick up in reading.   
      
   Here's an example. A sheriff was once gunned down here. A man stepped   
   out and shot him down as the sheriff walked home from the theater. For   
   whatever reason, popular opinion was that the sheriff pretty much had it   
   coming. The shooter simply moved two counties over an wasn't molested by   
   the law.   
      
   Were I so inclined, I might take off from that historical event and   
   imagine the sheriff's son one day going after the shooter and, in the   
   course of events, discovering just why his father's killer wasn't   
   pursued. Nothing like that happend, but there's plenty of conflict,   
   which is what drives story. And there's no end of that sort of   
   possibility in historical events.   
      
   So, yes. You *could* use The Alamo events as a backdrop. But you'd be up   
   against a lot of scepticism - and against the impression that it was an   
   attempt to coat-tail onto the movie publicity. So, maybe the son of an   
   Alamo defender setting out to assassinate Santa Ana...   
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
       "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)