Writing the Western Romance: a Short Tutorial with Some Methodology

Since I was a young girl, I had a fascination with Westerns and Native American cultures. When I was about five years-old my father took me to Jones Beach in the summer. There was a teepee set up with a beautiful Indian girl with long black braids in a white buckskin beaded and fringed dress. I just assumed that I was going to grow to become an Indian princess like her, but so far this hasn’t happened. I always wanted to write a Western and there was never any doubt in my mind, that eventually, someday, I would pen a story set in the Old West.

By the time I’d reached high school, my Dad taught me how to string a bow for archery, and the basics of the sport. I continued taking archery courses through my first two years of college. Later on, I took a course in hunting with bow and arrow—the only gal in the class!

The pull on the bow string is about fifty-five pounds or more, so you can’t hold it long and must release quickly—you’d better have a good beam on your target. I was able to incorporate my knowledge of archery and utilize it in two different novels, my first historical novel, The Secret Language of Women, set in China during the Boxer Rebellion, and my Western, The Girl Who Loved Cayo Bradley.  

Westerns, a fully-formed genre, offer riveting ways to integrate old ideas. Basically a good Western novel portrays how deep-rooted traditions still have value and should not be completely forgotten. If you have a compelling plot and characters with strong emotions and motivations, utilizing cause and effect, you’re on the right track.  

In order to sound like an authority, it’s important to remain loyal to what has already been accepted as Western literature. To paraphrase the author Frederick W. Boling, as a writer you should be reading everything in whatever genre you’re writing—good and bad alike. 

Read for background study purposes, and don’t only read the classics in order to craft your story or novel. I believe Boling is right. I read and continue to read this genre, including blogs by Western authors which tend to be most entertaining and instructive. If I really can’t handle a poorly written book, I usually try to get it in the audio version and listen to it as I tool around town in my car. 

Research is a must. Read the history and the geography concerning the regions and the places you’re going to write about. One thing for sure, if you’re writing a Western, these authors are a must: Willa Cather, Jack London, Zane Grey, Larry McMurtry, Charles Frazier, Cormac McCarthy, E. Annie Proulx, Louis L’Amour and a slew of others. There are many indie Western authors on Twitter: @JulieLence, @JullietteDougla9, @McCaffreyKristy, @chrisderreck1, @CAASBREY, @NanObe1, @TheWhipNovel (by KarenKondazian), @CarolinClemmons, @JohnRosePutnam and many more. The Blog Schedule on Cowboy Kisses lists some of the most popular writers in the genre, and their blogs are most informative. You can read about these authors on their Amazon bios.    

Settings and descriptions play an integral part in devising the Western story. For background, I watched and continue to view Western movies—old and new—classics and pardon the expression—crappola as in B movies or worse! Every decade of Western films! You never know when you’ll see or hear something and become inspired—some little incident, an action, the language used, the type of gun or knife, how scenes were built and envisioned, something that you can transmute to make your own and use in your writing. Movies and film also offer ideas for different angles to use for scene descriptions. 

If you can, visit museums and galleries, especially the ones with Western Art. There are many out west, but one of the best is Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is in Bentonville, Arkansas. It’s out of the way, but so worthwhile visiting.   

Become familiar with the setting. Look up maps from the time period you’re concentrating on. It always helps to visit the places you’re writing about because this will lend an air of validity to the writing. Be sure of the terminology, dress, language, customs, structures, incidents of the times. You can use conventional characters–the formulaic gunslinger, the hackneyed saloon girls with a “heart of gold,” and the clichéd sheriffs. In fact, readers want them, but add your own take to manipulate these characters to make them your own and unique.

One of our great American poets recently passed away, and what she had to say about poetry also goes for the Western and informs my writing style and technique, as I have a background in poetry. Mary Oliver said: “Always remember—the speaker doesn’t do it. The words do it. Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude. The idea must drive the words.” I would also add to that, select vivid, vibrant nouns. 

Write scenes that encompass action and dialogue and rely on the five senses. Insert tension, problems, conflicts, trouble and/or goals to be achieved. The purpose of dialogue is to reveal character and advance the plot. Write scenes that need another sequential scene to follow for the character’s reaction to a dilemma or where they are compelled to make decisions.

Beware of too much phonetic spelling and “eye” dialect—it can be off-putting to the reader as it is difficult to follow for long passages. I remember reading Roots by Alex Haley and suffering to get through it, just for that reason—jargon.  

There are so many visuals a writer can utilize and these offer riveting ways to integrate long-standing notions. Also these can paint us striking and powerful pictures. These can illustrate how things used to be before the encroaching of modern times in towns and the urbanization of sprawling cities, metropolitan living, etc. Then, too, there are “modern” Westerns, such as Urban Cowboy, The Electric Horseman, Brokeback Mountain, which rely heavily on the traditional past.

What I love about Westerns is finding out how much of the past informs our modern lives and also the future. Western drama embraces masculinity and symbolism. The real achievement, I think, when portraying the old West is to make the scenes as realistic as possible, as if you were actually living in this lawless era.

I consider myself lucky because I fell in love with my character Cayo Bradley, a cowboy, who is a multi-dimensional personality in The Girl Who Loves Cayo Bradley, recently released from Prairie Rose Publications. Yes, I was so taken by him that I wrote an entire book of Western poems, Westward: Guided by Starfalls and Moonbows, including a poem dedicated to him, entitled: “Cayo Bradley,” which is in the beginning pages of the novel.

I allowed him to invade my psyche, which proved beneficial to knowing him inside and out. I submersed myself in the period in which he lived, and in my mind, still lives in memory. Give the characters in your narrative noble goals, important ambitions, and objectives that they will risk seeking, despite the fact that they are flawed individuals.   

Western fiction portrays life in the epoch of the American Wild West, a period gone by and typically comprises the mid to late 1800’s. My novel, The Girl Who Loved Cayo Bradley, is set in 1874 between New Mexico and St. Louis, Missouri, with some scenes or descriptions of earlier occurrences, such as the Battle of Cineguilla. Since I couldn’t find all of the information I required to write this novel on the Internet, I resorted to the use of libraries. For this novel, I also purchased several history books and also books on the Jicarilla Apache Nation including their dictionary, which is not easy to use, I guarantee this!  Here is a list of the books: 

A Brief History of New Mexico 

Apache Warrior vs US Cavalryman: 1846–86 (Combat)

An Illustrated History of New Mexico 

Images of America Historic Ranches of Northeastern New Mexico

The Dictionary of Jicarilla Apache

The Jicarilla Apache of Dulce (Images of America)

The Jicarilla Apache Tribe: A History, 1846-1970 

My husband and I drive from Florida to Utah—we love driving out west. We spend spring, summer, and fall in Utah, a great jumping off place to see Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, California, and New Mexico, which we’ve travelled to many times. 

In New Mexico, I visited the Santa Fe Library, The Indian Arts and Cultural Museum, The Wheelwright Museum. I was fortunate enough to meet a lovely docent, Sue Knuth, who was most accessible.  They had had an exhibition in the museums the week before, so she availed me with many handouts about the Jicarilla Indians, the tribe I was writing about. I enjoy talking to people, and in New Mexico that’s just what I did—especially in Santa Fe. I perused a great many bookstores and the library.  I stopped window-shoppers to ask questions. I spoke with the guy who sells newspapers on the street, bartenders, waitresses, shop and café owners—and did I ever glean a great amount of oral history and answers to my many inquiries!  

In Grad School at Florida International University, I took many workshops with my friend, advisor, and mentor, Professor John Dufresne. One of the stories I wrote for a class was “Cayo Bradley.” The short story was published in Frontier Tales, long before I had an idea to expand it into a novel.  I don’t write outlines—I was never any good at it, but short stories, or stand-alone chapters can be a way to work into a novel. 

They can be published, which offers many opportunities to expand your novel and market it before it’s even published. Instead of outlines, I sometimes write a treatment about what the novel might be about, but this is rare, and most usually, I merely follow my characters around to see what they’re up to.  John told me many times over the time I pursued an MFA in Creative Writing, that the Universe conspires to bring you all you need to write a novel. I believe this idea of finding everything necessary to complete a book is true. So far I’ve been blessed since the Universe has never let me down.   

—

Nina Romano earned a B.S. from Ithaca College, an M.A. from Adelphi University and a B.A. and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from FIU. She’s a world traveler and a lover of history. She lived in Rome, Italy, for twenty years, and is fluent in Italian and Spanish. She has authored a short story collection, The Other Side of the Gates, and has published five poetry collections and two poetry chapbooks with independent publishers. She co-authored Writing in a Changing World.  Romano has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry.

Nina Romano’s historical Wayfarer Trilogy has been published from Turner Publishing. The Secret Language of Women, Book #1, was a Foreword Reviews Book Award Finalist and Gold Medal winner of the Independent Publisher’s 2016 IPPY Book Award. Lemon Blossoms, Book # 2, was a Foreword Reviews Book Award Finalist, and In America, Book #3, was a finalist in Chanticleer Media’s Chatelaine Book Awards. 

Her latest novel, The Girl Who Loved Cayo Bradley, a Western Historical Romance, has recently been released from Prairie Rose Publications.

http://www.ninaromano.com

 @ninsthewriter 

The Girl Who Loved Cayo Bradley

When Darby McPhee falls in love with Cayo Bradley, a wild cowboy from a nearby ranch, her world is ripped apart. Caught in a lifeless existence of caring for her father and brothers since her mother’s death, Darby does little else but work. But a death-bed promise to her mother to get her education now stands in the way of her heart’s desire to belong to the rough-and-tumble Cayo Bradley.

Darby is Cayo’s redemption from a horrific act in his past that torments him. After being captured as a young boy by the Jicarilla Apache, he now tries to settle back into white society—but how can he? If he loses Darby, he loses everything.

Darby is determined to keep her promise to her mother, but will Cayo wait for her? In this stunning tale of love and loss, Darby comes to understand that no matter what happens, she will always be THE GIRL WHO LOVED CAYO BRADLEY…

Romano’s story sizzles with the tension of lovers—one struggling to blend Apache ways and white, the other torn between East and West—searching for a way to join two lives going in opposite directions.

— Ruth Hull Chatlien, Blood Moon, and The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte

 The Girl Who Loved Cayo Bradley, a superbly crafted romantic page-turner, is a deftly spun tale of ill-starred sweethearts in the American West. Darby, a charming farm girl, and Cayo, Apache raised, a secretive man with a disturbing past. Sparks ignite, burning intensely despite cruel circumstances to separate them—an expertly woven story with witty dialogue, fast-paced plot, and stunning, enchanting prose!

— Michelle Cox, award-winning author of the Henrietta and Inspector Howard series.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips