Ok...now that I got your attention with a goofy thread title, I'll get on with what this thread's about.
I've seen some folks who are talking about ideas they have for Westerns. This is a good place to "cuss and discuss" those ideas, since as Festus has pointed out there are sub-genres within the Western category. Matt Braun used the terms Western and Novel of the West as somewhat broad groupings, with the latter intended to cover works that might not be traditional Westerns but use the West as a setting.
Myself, I tend to tinker. I have a fictional county in Montana (complete with extensive back history) that I use as a setting for my more traditional work and place the bulk of my historical effort into the stories of the Frontier Army. I've seen some people talking about using female MCs and covering their passages West. Go for it! The journals of the women who made Western trips are among some of the strongest in the historical record of the West. They deserve to have their stories told.
My most recent experiment is a collection of short stories set in the fictional county I mentioned earlier. They're intended to cover the history of the region from 1840 through about 1880, when the bulk of my novel ideas start. I start each story with a short introduction, setting out the historical background and drawing contrasts where needed between how the Western shows things and how the West's history really worked. One quick example, and then I'll stop typing... In the traditional Western, a gambler is almost always a cheat and a figure of scorn. In the real West, gamblers were often numbered as a town's most wealthy and at times respected citizens (gambling money had much to do with the founding and build-up of Denver, to name one example).
Ok...enough rambling from me.
I've seen some folks who are talking about ideas they have for Westerns. This is a good place to "cuss and discuss" those ideas, since as Festus has pointed out there are sub-genres within the Western category. Matt Braun used the terms Western and Novel of the West as somewhat broad groupings, with the latter intended to cover works that might not be traditional Westerns but use the West as a setting.
Myself, I tend to tinker. I have a fictional county in Montana (complete with extensive back history) that I use as a setting for my more traditional work and place the bulk of my historical effort into the stories of the Frontier Army. I've seen some people talking about using female MCs and covering their passages West. Go for it! The journals of the women who made Western trips are among some of the strongest in the historical record of the West. They deserve to have their stories told.
My most recent experiment is a collection of short stories set in the fictional county I mentioned earlier. They're intended to cover the history of the region from 1840 through about 1880, when the bulk of my novel ideas start. I start each story with a short introduction, setting out the historical background and drawing contrasts where needed between how the Western shows things and how the West's history really worked. One quick example, and then I'll stop typing... In the traditional Western, a gambler is almost always a cheat and a figure of scorn. In the real West, gamblers were often numbered as a town's most wealthy and at times respected citizens (gambling money had much to do with the founding and build-up of Denver, to name one example).
Ok...enough rambling from me.