GOAT – Writers & Books

 GOAT – Writers & Books

I often see lists, lots of lists. Most are a top ten or bottom ten of something. America's ten best or ten worst fast food items or places. The best football or basketball player of all time. The greatest writer or book of all time. Fortunately, all of these lists are fantasy. Can we compare Mickey Mantle to Babe Ruth or players in modern-day – different times and circumstances?

One of my favorites (favorites to be irritated by) is the ranking of Presidents of the United States by IQ. These are often drawn up by someone pushing a particular political party. And what IQ test did all of them take?

Lately, we have invented the acronym GOAT, or greatest of all time. Who knows? You get the point: Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, John Lennon, Joan of Arc, Catherine II., Shakespeare, Hemmingway, Twain.

But, what we can do is say who our favorites are, and here are a few of the writers that got me started reading westerns, and to this day, I still love reading and writing them.  

1. Elmer Kelton – I have read almost all of his westerns. Not sure I may have read them all. My two favorites – The Time It Never Rained and The Good Old Boys

2. Louis L'Amour – Some love him, others can't stand him. Some of his books seem a bit formulaic and flat, but others are some of my favorites. The Quick and the Dead, Hondo,  and Silver Canyon are favorites of mine. L'Amour sold over 200 million books, and they are still selling, leading me to believe there must be a lot of good reads among his works.

3. William W Johnstone – Johnstone wrote in many genres, but I have read only his westerns. I enjoyed his early works, with Preacher and Smoke Jensen, two of my all-time favorite fictional characters. The Last Mountain Man is my favorite of all the mountain men books I have read.

4. James Michener – Not everyone considers Michener a western writer, but he is one of the best to me. Centennial might be my favorite piece of fiction, and his novels Alaska and Journey are beautiful reads.  

5. Noel Gerson – This might seem an odd pick as Gerson wrote under nine different pseudonyms, including Donald Clayton Porter (the White Indian Series) and Dana Fuller Ross (The Wagons West series. When I read those two series many years ago, they were most enjoyable. The Wagons West series was continued by another terrific writer James Reasoner.

 

There you have it. A few writers and books to add to your reading list.

Here is a link to my books on Amazon – take a look and enjoy!

Keep on reading and keep on writing.

Photos – From our recent trip to warmer weather. 😊

 

 

It's All About the Plot

Sometime along the way in most of our education travels we learn that there are but seven topics for stories. The list put together by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (1863-1944) has been taught for years and seem as appropriate today as they did many years ago.

Quiller-Couch’s list

1.  Man against man

2.  Man against nature

3.  Man against himself

4.  Man against God

5.  Man against society

6.  Man caught in the middle

7.  Man and woman

Interesting to note that Quiller-Couch wrote under the pen name of Q. I like it. Quiller-Couch also is credited with this, something every writer has heard.

If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

In 2004 Christopher Booker, an Englishman like Quiller-Couch published his – The Seven Basic Plots and has a new, maybe more modern look, at story plot possibilities. Reportedly Booker worked on his list for more than 30 years.

Booker’s List

1.  Overcoming the Monster

2.  Rags to riches

3.  The Quest

4.  Voyage and return

5.  Comedy

6.  Tragedy

7.  Rebirth

Might be easy to place everything I have written or read into one of the two lists. So what about those that write westerns or historical fiction? Famed western author and screenwriter Frank Gruber listed, again, seven plot lines for westerns.

Gruber’s List

1.  Union Pacific Story

2.  Ranch Story

3.  Empire story

4.  Revenge story

5.  Cavalry and Indian story

6.  Outlaw story

7.  Marshal story

Gruber also said that dialogue should be used to move the plot through the story.

I find it both interesting and gratifying to know that everything does not change too fast. Long live the western, after all, it follows the same plot lines as every other kind of fiction.

-Today's photos from our backyard gardens.-

Keep on reading and keep on writing and remember the weekend is not too far away.