BEYOND COWBOYS: CHARACTERS OF THE WEST by Vonn McKee

I love lists: making them, reading them, crossing things off them. Even the act of creating a to-do list for the week makes me feel I’ve accomplished something. I also keep ongoing lists of things helpful to my writing cause –– such as interesting character names, trivia about historical events, or those little stories told around dinner tables that might fit perfectly in a fictional scene.

A few years ago, I heard the incredible author Win Blevins (STONE SONG, GIVE YOUR HEART TO THE HAWKS) speak about his mental list of character types. He said that, when he first began writing western fiction, he realized he didn’t know that much about real cowboys. After some pondering, it occurred to him that there were dozens of other characters to write about: miners, natives, fur trappers, and so on. That opened the door to an endless supply of potential plots and character studies. Thank goodness Win had that realization. Western literature would have missed out on his emotional, beautifully styled novels.

This inspired me to keep a list of my own (included below) for those times when I’m stumped for a story idea or just need subplots and interesting side characters. Feel free to add more suggestions in your comments!

FRONTIER CHARACTERS:

COWBOYS, RANCHERS, VAQUEROS, SHEEPHERDERS

RUSTLERS, ROBBERS, ROADSIDE BANDITS

GUNFIGHTERS, BOUNTY HUNTERS

LAWMEN (RANGERS, SHERIFFS/MARSHALS & DEPUTIES)

INDIANS

EXPLORERS, SCOUTS

MILITARY OFFICERS AND CAVALRYMEN

POLITICIANS

MINERS, PROSPECTORS, FUR TRADERS

SETTLERS, HOMESTEADERS, SQUATTERS (MALE AND FEMALE)

STAGE COACH DRIVERS, PONY EXPRESS RIDERS

RAILROAD WORKERS (LABORERS, ENGINEERS, BUSINESSMEN)

LAND SPECULATORS, BUILDERS

BUSINESS OWNERS AND EMPLOYEES (MERCANTILE, LIVERY, BLACKSMITH, TRADING POST, DRESSMAKER, SADDLE MAKER, NEWSPAPER REPORTER, BANKER, TELEGRAPH OPERATOR, ETC.)

SOILED DOVES, ENTERTAINERS, BARTENDERS

TEACHERS, PREACHERS, NUNS

Hopefully, this list will spur you on creating all kinds of interesting folks in your next book. It took a lot of people to build the West. Go forth, and tell their stories!

All the best,

Vonn McKee

“Writing the Range”
2015 Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award Finalist (Short Fiction)
2015 WWA Spur Award Finalist (Short Fiction)

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WEBSITE vonnmckee.com

From WOLFPACK PUBLISHING

Now available on Amazon:

Chewing the Cud - Tips for a First Draft ... Meg Mims

The terror of the blank page… ah, yes. All that white space.

Who else has heard advice like, "just vomit it out," or "get it down fast, you can fix it later," or what have you. Uh huh. If that works for you. Doesn't for me. I get stuck. Often. And I'm not a "pantser" anyway, never have been. I need at the very least Michael Hauge's 5-point outline, with the inciting incident, first and second turning points, point of no return, and climax. After writing ten plus books and novellas, I need more before I sit down to write something new.

Sure, we’ve seen quotes from famous authors about first drafts. “The first draft of anything is sh**.” (Ernest Hemingway) “I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build sand castles.” (Shannon Hale) “The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” (Terry Pratchett)

I like the last one best, but even in telling myself the story, I falter. Um… hmm. Hoo boy. I know A-B-C-D, but what about the points in between? The gaps in my outline. The little details about my characters that never made it into my sketches when I first started preparations. And I spend a good month preparing before every book, especially now that I’m writing a series. Ever hear of a "book bible"? Yeah, you need one. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, or you'll find characters with the same first or last name, or switching identities faster than models on a runway. If you don't know your characters, readers will get confused. So will you. "Uh, who's Bill? Oh, wait... he's Jim."

You also need to know your characters' backgrounds, from birthdate to family to home life to education to friends, married or single, kids or not wanting them, attitudes toward parents, religion, morals, etc., etc., etc. There are lots of charts you can fill out, or make up your own. Protagonists, minor characters, and don't forget your villains. They need motives for what they do. If you don’t know your characters well enough, they may end up worse than flat soda.

They’ll also stop talking to you. Like wayward, snotty kids holding back secrets. Yeah. They’re brutal that way. You're typing along, feeling smug, pushing to the halfway point, and then WHAM. Your hero or heroine does something stupid. And you're sitting there, wondering why.

Ooooh, man.

Or like a bad actor, they go hide in their trailer and refuse to come out. Until you beg them, bribe them, or figure out what is going on. And you'd better, or that deadline's gonna hit you right in the nose.

That's why I stop, take stock of who these people are and why they do what they do instead of what I want them to do - and what's odd, sometimes they're right.

SO I'm finally getting around to the point. What does work (for me) is a process I call “chewing the cud.” Sounds gross, doesn’t it. The humble cow, or goat, alpaca, sheep, and antelope, cannot digest one time through, so they repeat the process. Rumination: “chewing the cud.” Also, “a deep or considered thought about something.”

So when I sit with my laptop, taking snippets of my outline and pasting them into the next chapter, pushing out the words, halting every so often until they run out... Sound familiar? I take a break. Get up, walk around, do the dishes (Agatha Christie swore by such chores), vacuum (you'd be surprised how the noise helps your brain ponder, almost as good as listening to music), take a shower, a walk, a box of cookies out of the fridge – er, no, I can’t do that anymore. Dang. Who can stop at one anyway...

Maybe those cattle ponder things while chewing. They do look fairly peaceful out in the pastures.

I’m flummoxed by writers who can churn out thousands of words day after day. Yeah, everyone has a different process. Mine is more of an “ocean wave” where the tide comes in and goes out, a little farther each time… but dang. Some days the tide stops. So I give my brain (and subconscious) a little break, time to ruminate, swallow, chew again. Taking a break (like right now, writing this blog post) can refresh the well, fill the cistern, drink from the stream of ... well, you get the idea. Every writer needs a few breaks to prevent burnout. Take a nap. Do yoga. READ A BOOK.

Reading is especially good, especially if it's something outside of the genre you're writing. Anything but, in fact, as far from normal as possible, like a zombie horror, or a biography (I'm tackling the one about Alexander Hamilton), a classic, whatever strikes your fancy. And read like a writer while you're at it. Nuances of character, a fresh descriptive phrase, or a vocabulary word the author uses in a unique way. File it in the back of your mind.

Thibodeau Photography

I almost always come up with something to plug in that works earlier in the draft, or where I stopped. Often what comes is something important that I’d never planned on – a happy accident, as the painter Bob Ross would call it. Sometimes it’s just a small detail. Whatever, I welcome it.

Chew on that. It might help your first draft.

Meg Mims is currently writing the "Shamelessly Adorable" teddy bear cozy mystery series - Bearly Departed will debut in June for Kensington, and she's working on Bear Witness to Murder now. Meg won a 2012 Best First Novel Spur Award for Double Crossing, a western mystery, and is also one half of the writing team D.E. Ireland for the Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins mysteries - with two finalist berths in 2014 and 2016 for the Agatha Award Best Historical Mystery. Meg is chafing to write another western, if she can squeeze more calendar days into the year.

BE THANKFUL FOR WESTERNS - Meg Mims

I pretty much ran through the various heroines, heroes, horses, villains and sidekicks in my previous posts. I had to think twice about what to address next -- and figured since Thanksgiving is coming up, I'd ask some of the readers an important question.

WHY ARE WE THANKFUL FOR WESTERNS?

Think about it. It's just fiction/film entertainment. A way to pass the time, to relive the "Cowboys and Indians" fun we had as kids, right? Think again. Who hasn't been intrigued by what you've read or watched to Google a fact or fiction question? I have, countless times. Come on, don't be shy! Admit it. Why are we thankful?

 A.  HISTORY - for the history alone, we ought to be thankful (whether or not the book or film gets it right) because reading or seeing a western will definitely spur the interest of the reader/film goer - old, young or in-between. I can't tell you how often as a kid that I went searching in the library for non-fiction books due to seeing Jeremiah Johnston or Little Big Man, Last of the Mohicans (it *was* set in the west, for the era) or Dances With Wolves, McLintock! or Stagecoach, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Tombstone or True Grit -- and I recently read many of the fiction books associated with films (forgive me, I came late to reading in the genre.) Reading and seeing the panoramic views of the American plains, the buffalo herds, the wide open prairie before settlers came, the mountains, the cowboys and cattle drives, the railroad line stretching west - all helped me expand my knowledge of the American West.

B. CHARACTERS - you have to admit that the American West bred unique individuals. Tough, resilient, hard-working, gritty survivors who did whatever they had to or went back East (or died.) The origins of that character and integrity come from the melting pot of all the various people, native and immigrant - pilgrims from England, the original People of all the various tribes stretching east to west, stout Irish and Germans, Italians and other Europeans, Russians and Swedes and many others, and don't forget the African Americans forcibly brought here, who also fought for their freedom, plus the Chinese who were brought to dynamite through the Sierras while building the transcontinental railroad, and who stayed on to fight for a new life here.

These men (and women, which I'll address soon) were portrayed in books and films that have lasted in our memories - and it's up to us to pass on what we know to the next generation of Americans. From the real liver-eating Jeremiah Johnston, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Butch Cassidy, Jesse James and others to actors Graham Greene, Wes Studi, John "Duke" Wayne and Victor Sen Yung who portrayed Hop Sing on Bonanza - long before any television show dared to address anti-Chinese sentiment in the Old West. Long before David Carradine's Kung Fu show, too.

And now for the unique women who stood by their men or stood alone, just as tough and resilient, just as hard-working and gritty. In fact, women equaled men in helping to survive conditions in summer and winter in the endless, empty prairies or in rough towns. Consider Sacagawea, who with her infant son strapped on her back, helped lead the Lewis & Clark expedition... and the pioneer family of Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose daughter Rose assisted her mother in writing the beloved series of her childhood on the prairie. Both Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane proved their mettle in matching men, shot for shot or job for job. And let's not forget Judy Garland in The Harvey Girls, where they actually got the uniform right, to give us a window into how some ladies came out to civilize the Old West.

C.  AS AMERICAN AS MOM, HOT DOGS, BASEBALL AND APPLE PIE

Why else would people in Japan, Germany, Italy and other countries love westerns if not for a love of our country's origins? I'm not sure everyone in America loves our origins as much as they should - except when the Fourth of July or Thanksgiving roll around. Thomas Jefferson started America's westward expansion with the 1803 Louisiana Purchase from the French - you can see the map to get a picture of how fast the "west" was added to the original states and how the territories each had unique traits, from Florida's swamps to the majestic Rockies to the California gold fields and the Pacific Northwest forests. Western books and films give us far more than entertainment. They are based on a foundation of fascinating history, and no other country in the world (except Australia, although their books/films are few) has such a rich, massive lore for readers and film goers to explore and enjoy.

D. ER,  LET'S NOT FORGET "THE PEOPLE"

Many Indian tribes called themselves "The People" and they were here first in fact, although the American government hardly took that into consideration when expanding west - and ruthlessly cut down an incredible array of culture, tribal history and way of life in sheer greed and profit. But Native Americans remain a cornerstone of the "Old West." They can never truly be forgotten, thank goodness. They may never regain the status they once had, of course, when nations and alliances stretched from the east to the west coasts of America. But their grit, spirit and courage shown in battling to maintain their unique way of life shaped the "Old West" as much as the cowboys, cattle droves, Mormons, prairie farmers, gold and silver miners, railroad builders and laborers, lawmen and criminals, soiled doves and gamblers, etc. Consider this map which shows all the tribes before Columbus.

 
I am exceedingly thankful for the Old West, for the history of this country and the endless possibilities to bring that era alive in my writing. Yeehaw and Happy Thanksgiving to y'all!

Meg Mims is an award-winning author with two western mysteries under her Eastern belt. She lives in Michigan, where the hills are like driveway slopes and trees block any type of prairie winds. LIKE her on Facebook, follow her on Twitter or check out her books on her website. Double Crossing won the 2012 Spur Award for Best First Novel and Double or Nothing is the exciting sequel. Both Double Crossing and Double or Nothing are finalists in the Laramie Awards! Her story, "A Savior Is Born," is included in A Wolf Creek Christmas published by Western Fictioneers, and her new Christmas novella, Santa Claws, is out. Last year's Christmas novella Santa Paws is once again an Amazon bestseller!

Source for Tribal Nations map - www.escapistmagazine.com