{"id":1638,"date":"2011-05-04T16:34:43","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T22:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/?p=1638"},"modified":"2012-03-23T17:06:25","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T23:06:25","slug":"to-never-give-up-cotton-smith-on-writing-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/2011\/05\/to-never-give-up-cotton-smith-on-writing-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"To Never Give Up: Cotton Smith on Writing the West"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cotton Smith<\/a> is as concerned with the interior landscape of his characters as he is with the exterior landscape of the West.\u00a0 And horses.\u00a0 He loves horses, and that affection shows throughout his excellent novels of Western adventure.<\/p>\n

Smith is a historian, artist, and writer of both fiction and non-fiction.\u00a0 His novels include Spirit Rider<\/em>, Return of the Spirit Rider<\/em>, Blood of Bass Tillman<\/em>, Death Mask<\/em> and last year’s Ride for Rule Cordell<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whether writing about Texas Rangers, farm boys, or outlaws, Smith gives readers a look inside the hearts and minds of the people who face hardships day in and day out.\u00a0 When Smith writes about a range war, shoot-out, or cattle drive, readers are reminded that character and plot are inextricably linked–that plot grows out of character and character grows through plot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am fascinated by the power of the human spirit,\u201d said Smith, \u201cthe ability to take blows and grow beyond them.\u00a0\u00a0 To never give up.\u00a0\u00a0 Everyone gets knocked down; how one reacts to that is the key to success.\u00a0 This challenge to life is enhanced, in my opinion, in dealing with the rawness \u2013 and greatness — of the American West.\u201d
\n
\nBelow, Smith and I talk about riding the West, creating characters, and bending (or not bending) the truth in Westerns.<\/p>\n

What do you enjoy about writing about the West?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cotton Smith:\u00a0 <\/strong>Just about everything.\u00a0 I think the West is essentially the soul of America.\u00a0 It is what we want, down deep, to be.\u00a0 Independent.\u00a0 Brave.\u00a0 Strong.\u00a0 As my dear friend, the late and great Don Coldsmith, used to tell me — there are countless stories waiting to be told.<\/p>\n

Early in my life, I “rode with Roy, Gene, Hoppy and Wild Bill on the silver screen” and played \u201ccowboys and Indians\u201d– and this infatuation turned into a lifelong love of the West, truly learning what happened there and why.\u00a0 Realizing, for example, that the Texas cattle drives were among some of the most daring of entrepreneurial adventures.\u00a0 Learning that citizens of the early cowtowns would make trips to Texas to encourage cattlemen to come their way: \u201cYou\u2019ll cross fewer rivers . . . and we\u2019ve got everything you\u2019ll want in town.\u201d (And they did.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Take a look in your refrigerator.\u00a0 Virtually everything there had to be made by our ancestors. Imagine that!<\/p>\n

Where does a Western novel usually start for you–image, plot, character, historical event, somewhere else altogether? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Cotton Smith:\u00a0 <\/strong>Good question!\u00a0 All of my stories are character driven.\u00a0 So I start with my main character and a general sense of the story I want to tell.\u00a0 Then I look for some dramatic point to begin, something to stop the reader and make him want to know more.\u00a0 Sometimes, I find that the first chapter in my first draft becomes my eighth or so when the writing is finished.\u00a0 The trick is to get right up against a critical point of action or mystery.<\/p>\n

My main character will be right there.\u00a0 Even if it\u2019s a sequel.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t outline. Well, I did outline one of my early books and, at one point, the characters took over and went another direction.\u00a0 Sounds corny, but it\u2019s true. I have in mind one or two key elements I want to communicate.\u00a0 So, in a way, I read the story for the first time as it is written.\u00a0\u00a0 Some authors write detailed outlines.\u00a0 That\u2019s great as long as you don\u2019t consider it the completion of your effort; because you\u2019re just getting started.\u00a0 And don\u2019t be afraid to change your outline when the characters take over!<\/p>\n

How do you develop your characters so deeply?\u00a0 Make them so…\u00a0 human<\/em>?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cotton Smith:\u00a0 <\/strong>A good protagonist must be a distinctive person, someone the reader cares about and relates to at some level.\u00a0\u00a0 Reading fiction is about escape, so give the reader a fun place to go and want to stay.\u00a0 The hero must have flaws, but also must have a drive to succeed.\u00a0 The worse the situation, the more we understand what he is up against.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All of us have holes in our game.\u00a0 I look for ways to make him real.\u00a0 Try describing a relative or a friend, then push it a little further.\u00a0 The \u201creal\u201d Hopalong Cassidy was a wise-cracking, smart-aleck foreman of the Bar 20.\u00a0 Not the mild fellow in the movies.\u00a0 But that\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n

Simply describing a character is not making him so.\u00a0 The reader must see him through his actions and his speech.\u00a0 Consistently.<\/p>\n

Remember, villains have a good side, too.\u00a0 In fact, try turning your next villain into a hero and see what happens.<\/p>\n

I do a lot of rewriting \u2013 \u201clayering\u201d, I call it.\u00a0 Making certain my characters are real, have quirky things they do.\u00a0 But don\u2019t mistake a few quirks for a personality.<\/p>\n

In Behold a Red Horse<\/em>, the strongest of three brothers is blinded by a wild horse kicking him, making him, most likely, the first-ever blind Western book character hero.\u00a0 In Spirit Rider<\/em>, Panther-Strikes, an Oglala-raised white man, loses his Oglala wife in an inter-tribal raid, rejects his Indian upbringing and returns to \u201cthe white man\u2019s world\u201d to become an astute businessman.\u00a0 He is confronted with the kidnapping of his former brother-in-law by outlaws and finds that he must return to his Oglala ways to try to save him.<\/p>\n

In Pray For Texas<\/em>, Rule Cordell is devastated when his dog, a stray, is killed in a Civil War battle.\u00a0 Around him is all manner of death, yet losing an innocent dog brings him to his knees.\u00a0 He is an intense Confederate cavalryman trying to deal with the awful reality that the South has lost \u2013 and with it, the painful realization that his evil minister father was right that he shouldn\u2019t give himself to a cause.\u00a0 Throughout the book, he wears the stem of a rose on his lapel; the original rose was given to him by JEB Stuart\u2019s widow at the great general\u2019s funeral.\u00a0 That\u2019s intensity.<\/p>\n

In Blood of Bass Tillman<\/em>, Bass Tillman is an older man who has long ago given up gunfighting to become a respected lawyer in his adopted town of Longmont.\u00a0 That gentle life is snapped when his son and wife are murdered.<\/p>\n

How do you write such compelling dialogue?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cotton Smith:\u00a0 <\/strong>Don\u2019t put \u201cinformation\u201d into the dialogue that isn\u2019t logical.\u00a0 There are other ways to get this detail across.<\/p>\n

Say it out loud after you write it.\u00a0 Does it sound like something someone would actually say?\u00a0 If not, write it again.\u00a0 For the most part, we don\u2019t speak in complete sentences.<\/p>\n

If your character has a dialect or a speech impediment, be consistent with it throughout the book.\u00a0 At the same time, make sure it isn\u2019t too exaggerated; the reader won\u2019t want to work that hard.<\/p>\n

Be careful of long three-person conversations.\u00a0 They rarely work.<\/p>\n

Any advice for writing action scenes?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cotton Smith:\u00a0 <\/strong>Keep it real.\u00a0 Tense.\u00a0 And keep adjectives and adverbs to a minimum.\u00a0 Gunfighters rarely met each other in the street, to test their abilities with a fast draw.\u00a0 Why would anyone do that?\u00a0\u00a0 Unless a bullet struck the heart or the brain, it was likely a person, expecting to be hit, could keep going in combat.\u00a0\u00a0 It is very hard to shoot accurately from horseback \u2013 and few horses would stand steady for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s a fistfight, study a televised fight and write down the blows delivered.\u00a0 Understand what it takes to knock a man down or out.\u00a0 Remember, the knuckles will be hurt.<\/p>\n

How much and what sort of research do you do?\u00a0 How much can you bend the\u00a0 truth?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cotton Smith:\u00a0 <\/strong>I do a great deal of research even though most of my stories are pure fiction.\u00a0 Still, it is important to know what it\u2019s really like on a Texas cattle ranch in winter . . . the specifics of certain weapons . . .\u00a0 handling a new horse . . .\u00a0 and so on.\u00a0\u00a0 These details add interest and value and make the story convincing.<\/p>\n

At the same time, a writer must recognize that he or she likely knows more about such details than almost anyone and must use them sparingly, or else the book gets bogged down.<\/p>\n

As far as \u201cbending the truth\u201d is concerned, that depends on what you are writing.\u00a0 If it is a story about what would have happened if Wild Bill Hickok had survived his Deadwood murder, the writer is immediately creating something \u201cnew\u201d \u2013 and that has its own problems.\u00a0 If, however, a real character pops into the story, then be careful.\u00a0 Some writers don\u2019t like to put words into the mouths of historical figures.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mind if it is consistent with what we know about him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The only book I\u2019ve written so far with a strong sense of actual history is Return of the Spirit Rider.<\/em>\u00a0 The year is 1876.\u00a0 Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and others occupy some of the pages, along with fictional characters.\u00a0 I made certain that they were in the right places at the right times, according to history.\u00a0 It added to the flavor of the story, but it could have been told without using them.<\/p>\n

What’s next for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cotton Smith:\u00a0 <\/strong>My next book comes out in November.\u00a0 Shadow Crossing<\/em> from Leisure Books is a story about U. S. Deputy Marshal Sell Hoback growing up knowing the Colorado mountain wilderness and loving it.\u00a0\u00a0 His brothers and sister — and his father, a U. S. Deputy Marshal — saw to it that he learned well.\u00a0 The family even had a secret bear claw initiation built around a three-day wilderness trek when each child was fourteen.\u00a0 Each Hoback wore the bear claw on a leather strand around his \u2013 or her \u2013 neck as a mark of pride.<\/p>\n

When his father is murdered by an unknown assailant, Sell Hoback becomes a deputy marshal in his place.\u00a0\u00a0 It was something he had wanted to do since childhood.\u00a0 During the Civil War, Sell was decorated for bravery; his older brother, Court, won the Medal of Honor, but became a known gunfighter afterward, an outlaw some said. A third brother, Matthew, died in the conflict. His oldest brother, Jamison, became a teacher and his sister, Katherine, became a successful horse rancher.\u00a0 Lots of fun!<\/p>\n

Lastly, any parting words?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cotton Smith:\u00a0 <\/strong>If you love to write, don\u2019t let anything stand in your way.<\/p>\n

There is a tendency among inexperienced writers to create too much back-story at the beginning of their books.\u00a0 That can be deadly.\u00a0 You want the reader to experience the story, not read about it.\u00a0 If you need all this back-story, start your novel there.\u00a0 My fourth novel, Spirit Rider<\/em>, was actually my first, although it was never published in the way it was originally written.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t let anyone read your material, except someone who can buy it \u2013 or someone who has sold their work.<\/p>\n

Be an observer of people.\u00a0 Keep notes.\u00a0 It\u2019s good to keep a small memo pad with you at all times.\u00a0 Good ideas need to be written down, right then and there.<\/p>\n

Any coincidence \u2013 an independent, uncontrollable act \u2013 should go against the hero.<\/p>\n

Too many adjectives and adverbs spoil the soup.<\/p>\n

Be careful about writing in the first person.\u00a0 It can prove to be a trap.<\/p>\n

Write a little every day.\u00a0 No excuses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t submit something until it is your best, then go after it.\u00a0 Be careful about self-published books.\u00a0 Unless you just want to stroke your ego and end up with a garage full of books.\u00a0 Keep working and find a real publisher.\u00a0 They are out there.<\/p>\n

The American West is alive and well.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Jeremy L. C. Jones <\/em><\/a>is a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.\u00a0\u00a0He is the staff Interviewer for <\/em>Clarkesworld Magazine<\/em><\/a> and a frequent contributor to <\/em>Kobold Quarterly<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 He teaches at <\/em>Wofford College<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>Montessori Academy<\/em><\/a> in Spartanburg, SC.\u00a0 He is also the director of <\/em>Shared Worlds<\/em><\/a>, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and <\/em>Jeff VanderMeer <\/em><\/a>designed in 2006.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cotton Smith is as concerned with the interior landscape of his characters as he is with the exterior landscape of the West.\u00a0 And horses.\u00a0 He loves horses, and that affection shows throughout his excellent novels of Western adventure. Smith is a historian, artist, and writer of both fiction and non-fiction.\u00a0 His novels include Spirit Rider, Return of the Spirit Rider, Blood of Bass Tillman, Death Mask and last year’s Ride for Rule Cordell.\u00a0 Whether writing about Texas Rangers, farm boys, or outlaws, Smith gives readers a look inside the hearts and minds of the people who face hardships day in and day out.\u00a0 When Smith writes about a range war, shoot-out, or cattle drive, readers are reminded that character and plot are inextricably linked–that plot grows out of character and character grows through plot. \u201cI am fascinated by the power of the human spirit,\u201d said Smith, \u201cthe ability to take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[75],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1638"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1899,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1638\/revisions\/1899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booklifenow.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}