Write Compelling Fiction
L. J. Martin
Copyright 2008 by L. J. Martin
Smashwords Edition
Wolfpack Publishing
PMB 414
1001 E. Broadway #2
Missoula, Montana 59825
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher
(contact ljmartin@ljmartin.com), excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Works by L. J. Martin:
Shadow of the Mast
Tenkiller
Mojave Showdown
El Lazo
Against the 7th Flag
The Devil’s Bounty
The Benicia Belle
Shadow of the Grizzly
Rush to Destiny
Windfall
Condor Canyon
Blood Mountain
Stranahan
McKeag’s Mountain
McCreed’s Law
O’Rourke’s Revenge
Wolf Mountain
Nemesis
Venomous (Fourplay)
Sounding Drum (Last Stand)
From The Pea Patch
Write Compelling Fiction
Killing Cancer
Internet Rich (with Mike Bray)
Google+ (with Mike Bray)
Tin Angel (with Kat Martin)
Crimson Hit (with Bob Burton)
Bullet Blues (with Bob Burton)
Myrtle Mae (cartoons)
Cooking Wild & Wonderful
This manual is dedicated to all those thousands, or maybe millions, of folks who’ve submitted a novel and had it rejected, then placed it on a garage or closet shelf, where it languored forever…and it was probably the best novel of the year. Or could have been, with very little additional work.
And to the thick skinned who kept submitting, submitting, submitting!
Never underestimate the power of fiction.
Sir Walter Scott ruined the opal market; opals were as valuable as diamonds or rubies. Then Scott wrote about an enchanted opal that caused the death of a fictional heroine. The price of opals dropped by half!
INTRODUCTION
This manual is written for those of you who, like myself, are not English majors or grammarians—although those of you who are might glean some good common sense and novelist's tricks from it. The devil of the craft of writing fiction is, being an English major has little to do with it.
Grammar is important, but “I couldn’t put it down,” is a compliment not gleaned because of perfect grammar. Don’t get me wrong, but grammar is only one of the reasons fiction is compelling, only one of the many reasons that most cherished of compliments come to you as a fiction writer.
I'm a guy who loves to hunt, fish, or carry my cameras into the outdoors for almost any excuse. Like most of you I've worked hard all my life. I love the West and its history and think I'd have done just fine had I lived a hundred and fifty years ago. As the song says, a country boy will survive. But it would have been hard to survive without a good book in hand. A compelling book that elicited the writers favorite compliment: I couldn’t put it down.
I do love a good novel.
But to be published you need more than a love of novels. Be it driving an eighteen wheeler, driving a nail, or doing nails, there are skills to be learned, and writing compelling fiction requires the same. Of course there are skills to be learned, but there are tricks that make writing a novel, writing compelling fiction, easier.
There are also pitfalls, but most of them easily avoided.
I wanted to write and sell a novel. I learned how the hard way. By studying other's mistakes (and your own) you can learn the easy way. Even today, after selling twenty novels, I fight obvious mistakes and poor grammar, clumsy sentence structure and worse—much worse—boring narra-tive. I can't begin to teach you all there is to know about writing novels or even writing a good letter to your mother. But I can tell you where and how to learn a good deal of it.
I'm still studying but if I can make it a little easier for you then I've accomplished my purpose in writing this manual.
And I got published. So can you. And I mean legi-timately published by a company who makes their money selling books, and who doesn’t charge you for publishing your novel. Rather, they give you an advance against royal- ties.
Today, getting published is easy. A dozen POD, publish on demand, companies are willing to take your money. But there’s a long rough road between that kind of publishing and having a company offer you money for the right to publish your novel.
Most of the rules for writing novels are valid for writing in general. A few are specific to novels, and a few are specific to genre. If you don't know the definition of genre, then you're exactly the person for whom this manual is written. But even those of you who do know what it means will find some gems in here—most of them cat-burgled or openly filched from other much better writers than I. No, I’m not above learning from others. That’s what this little manual is all about.
A great deal of this manual refers to thrillers (or suspense), westerns, historicals, or romance, because these and screenplays are what my wife and I write and how we make our living.
Good luck with your fiction writing…your compelling fiction…your fiction which the reader can’t put down.
“The next thing that happens in the story, is the next thing of interest that happens to the characters.”
David Lean, Director
FROM BROKER TO BOOKS?
Most of my early life was spent as a real estate broker, selling farms and ranches, subdivision land and lots. But I had the urge to write. I tried a novel at the ripe old age of twenty-four, and after four chapters found I had little to say. Later in life, I found myself un-married and living on a boat—and with time on my hands so I decided if I was ever going to fulfill this smoldering ambition, now was the time.
After completing a 500 page historical, I submitted it a few times, and got a few form rejections. It dawned on me that I had (as I have a tendency to do) plunged in where angels fear to tread. Only then did I decide to study the craft. I was lucky enough to marry a lady who approached things a little differently. She's a great study and had the background. A good grounding in English in college, and a voracious reader. And she, too, had the urge to write. Together, we went to writer's conferences, and separately, we wrote.
And after paying our dues with many conferences, and many, many more hours in front of the word processor, it began to pay off.
One of my novels, Rush to Destiny, was nominated as a finalist as the best biographical novel of 1992 by a group of New York reviewers and the magazine Romantic Times /Rave Reviews. Another, The Benicia Belle, was a runner-up for the Western Writers of America Spur Award for best original western paperback of 1992, one of over 40 novels submitted that year.
Kat, my wife, (www.katbooks.com) has had her later books repeatedly on the best seller lists and has won many awards. She’s a New York Times bestseller, and interna-tionally published in over a dozen languages and in over two dozen countries. And she’s earning more than she ever did in the real estate business—and she did very well in real estate.
Throughout the manual I've used the masculine gender, but I have a great respect for all the wonderful, talented wo-men who write novels—even westerns or thrillers, common-ly considered "men's fiction"—or want to write them, and for the women who read them.
No matter who you are or what your age, if you can read and understand this manual, you can write a novel. Some of you may take a long time to do so, some of you may whip out a masterpiece in a few months.
Like most any specialty, writers have their organi-zations. And professional organizations can make your edu-cation come more quickly, and can make your endeavors more enjoyable. It's hard to be alone in any venture, and knowing you have peers who have the same concerns and problems you have, and with whom you can share your suc-cesses, helps.
Western Writers of America, Inc. is a great organi-zation which enjoys an annual meeting, which supports western and historical writers (both fiction and non-fiction), which gives awards annually to those they judge superior in their field, and which publishes a bi-monthly magazine called The Roundup. There are some requirements to join.
Romance Writers of America do the same for that genre, have many more members, and offer excellent sup-port. Those interested in romance writing should join. There are no "published" requirements. RWA has a number of local chapters with meetings and support groups that are excellent for beginning writers. They have an annual con-ference.
Mystery Writers of America, Thriller Writers of Ameri-ca, and many other groups are out there for you, if you want to learn and share your wants and needs. Search for them on the net.
Some genres, in general, pay more than others, which is a result of reader popularity.
At one time, Zane Grey outsold all of them, and the western genre still enjoys a strong, faithful following.
Although it’s hard to get reviewed in national publications, as the market it admittedly small. And not well respected. Thank God the elitists who display an indif-ferent attitude or worse to the writing which in my opinion is the backbone of the nation, are not nearly so influential as they would like to believe.
To illustrate what I say, I'll quote my good friend Richard S. Wheeler (a great western writer) who pointed out in a recent The Roundup article that the New Columbia Encyclopedia has admiring entries on several mystery wri-ters (over 40) yet only one patronizing entry on Zane Grey and one on Owen Wister—no mention of Pulitzer prize winner A. B. Guthrie, Jr., or of Dorothy Johnson, Frederick Faust, Glendon Swarthout, Ernest Haycox, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, William MacLeod Raine, Henry Allen, Jack Schaefer, or a dozen others worthy of note.
We western writers “don’t get no respect.”
I love westerns, but I also love thrillers, suspense, mysteries, and most non-fiction. And I love to read compel-ling writing of any kind.
And to write well myself, I keep a number of reminders posted over my monitor, so I can’t help but see them everyday.
REMINDERS: Over the top of my computer, along the edges of bookshelves just over eye-high, I have taped the following reminders:
Filter all description though point of view!
Problem, Purpose, Conflict, Goal—Active Voice!
Hear, See, Taste, Touch, and Smell!
There is no scene without conflict!
Check for As, That, Was!
Each of these has been taped there at various times throughout my writing career. And I still glance at them regularly, and they are still crucial to good writing.
The rest of this manual will, among other things, tell you why I think the above reminders are so important and why, if you're a reader (and you shouldn't try being a writer if you're not), you'll never be stuck for plot or characters.
“I try to leave out the parts that readers skip.”
Elmore Leonard, Novelist
CAN YOU DO IT?
Anyone who has a basic understanding of the structure of written English or is willing to learn—and has a story to tell, or the imagination to make one up—can write and sell a novel.
First you must want to.
I sold my first paperback western, Tenkiller, to Zebra Books (Kensington), many years ago. My second, Mojave Showdown, was picked up by the same company. Together, my wife and I wrote and sold Tin Angel, a western romance, to Avon. To Bantam Books, I've sold the westerns El Lazo, Against the 7th Flag, The Devils Bounty, and The Benicia Belle. In addition, Bantam published my historical, Rush to Destiny. My next was a Double D hardback, a novel of the West, Shadow of the Grizzly. Bantam also brought it out as a paperback. Kensington Books, under their Pinnacle imprint, published my Blood Mountain, Condor Canyon, Stranahan, McKeag’s Mountain, Wolf Mountain, McCreed’s Law, Sounding Drum (hardback), it’s paperback version Last Stand, and Crimson Hit and Bullet Blues both of which were co-written with my good friend Bob Burton, who is actually America’s No. 1 bounty hunter with over 3,000 arrests to his credit. Since that time I’ve published many, both fiction and non-fiction, see my webpage. And now, with the advent of eBooks, anyone can publish.
Kat, as I’ve mentioned, is published in several foreign countries in romantic suspense and historical romance, and our joint western-romance effort Tin Angel is published in Norway. I'm published in large print with most of my books and am privileged to work with Books in Motion who published my works in audio.
My wife is a very successful romance writer. Kat's sold an equal number of historical romances to several publishers—many of her novels have appeared on the best seller lists.
We did it. You can do it.
I am not a college graduate. Family took me away from college in my junior year. In English I would probably test in the middle (my loving wife would say lower) of a group of college freshmen and be stuck in the bone-head class. But I'm willing to look up what I don't know, and I'm willing to take the time necessary to make sure my work is neatly presented to the reader—the first of whom will be an editor who will say yes or no to buying the work.
And all of the above is much easier now, with spell and grammar checker on the computer.
And every day I enjoy writing more than the day before. It continues to come easier—and it's more financially rewarding.
It'll never be perfect.
Writing is not a science, it’s a craft, an art. Two and two in writing doesn’t always add up to four.
I keep learning every day. Who knows? If I do it long enough, maybe I can enter college and not have to take bone-head English! Writers learn by doing, every time they sit down and face the blank page.
You've got a great story. We all do. You have to be willing to take the time to get it on paper in a clear and legible manner and with reasonably good English so the editors read past the first two pages. Even the best of stories—most compelling or exciting or touching—may go unread, and unsold, due to misspellings and typographical errors in the first couple of pages. Many editors, most in fact, justifiably feel that if you are sloppy in your technical skills and presentation, odds are you're sloppy in all other aspects of your writing.
But more about that later.
When I first picked up a pencil and yellow pad, I had little knowledge of spelling or sentence structure. I found a little time, a dictionary, and some harsh critics, and all (mostly Kat) contributed to the eventual sale of my first western novel. My first novel, a historical, lingered on the shelf for many years before I made a buck from it.
The chief excuse for non-achievers in all areas of endeavor is, "I just don't have the time." Horse hocky! We all waste time. We watch T.V. We ride in the car and dream non-productive thoughts. You can write in your mind (and most writers do) long before putting it on paper. You can record on a hand-held tape recorder and transcribe later. Time is no excuse.
Write in the car, at the beach, standing on the stream bank casting for trout.
There's only one way to be a writer, and that's to write. Write two pages—two lousy pages —per day, and in six months you have a 360 page novel.
Like most things we set out to do in this life, luck played a part in my selling. But don't be discouraged if you think of yourself as unlucky. Luck, I've found, is nothing more than the inevitable result of hard work.
The harder you work, the luckier you get.
Now I want to help you get lucky.
It took eight years for lady luck to seek me out. By then, I'd had almost forty years to harden my head. I'd read hundreds of westerns and many more novels of other genres, and I thought I knew how it was done. But I didn't even know the questions yet much less the answers. And for the first six years of the eight years I wrote before I sold, I didn't bother to ask. Form rejection slips told me I wasn't doing it right. I decided it must be a craft, kind of like painting a picture or building a fine saddle, and I decided to learn it. So I went to classes and conferences. Two years after we began that effort, we sold our first novels. Six wasted years!
Kat, who’d begun writing much later than I actually sold six weeks before I did.
I wish I'd had this manual years ago.
The self-satisfaction of seeing your name on the cover of your paperback at the local market or drug store, on the jacket of a hardback in the book store, or on the box of an audio, is well worth the effort—not to speak of the multi-thousand dollar advances and, if you are diligent and keep after your new trade, the continuing royalties. Many times a novel will pay off for many, many years. In some instances, if your reputation grows, you’ll sell reprint rights for much more than your original deal on that same novel.
For twenty years western novels written by a Manhattan dentist sold more copies than any other book save the Holy Bible and McGuffey's readers. Even today, fifty years after his death in 1939, Zane Grey's work sells many, many copies a year. Today, Louis L'Amour dominates a good share of the western novel market—look at the western section of any bookstore or the book rack in any truck stop! L'Amour has sold well over two hundred fifty million books.
Long live the Kings. But Mr. Grey and Mr. L'Amour are gone, and the throne—the western one—is vacant. And there's always room for a good writer in any genre.
Write the great one!
Genres, and consumer taste, can be fickle. They can come and go.
So many poorly represented westerns have appeared on television and movies, it has almost destroyed the genre. Today's contemporary producers and directors continue to try to place 20th Century values, mores, and lifestyles in the 19th Century. They portray children as assertive and mouthy when in that era "a child should be seen and not heard." They try to put women in business at a time when it was commonly believed "a woman's place is in the home." They continue to write men who swear and wear their hats inside in the presence of women, when a man would have been horsewhipped for swearing in front of a woman and the nearest man would have at least reminded him to remove his hat. They write away from all of the things that attract viewers to westerns and historicals. But that's not to say you can't write a great and historically accurate novel featuring a woman who rose to the top of most any profession in the 19th Century—you can, and you can be historically correct. As long as you respect the little things, and as long as you write her as an anomaly, outside of the norm.
Western and historical readers and viewers know the West and know history. They not only read western and historical fiction, but many read and study history—including journals and autobiographies. They know how it was in the West, or wherever and whenever they care to study.
Writers of both novel and film would do well to emulate them—study time and place and write to it, not away from it.
But the western and historical genres are also changing for the better. Women are being written about accurately...strong, proud, women who deserve being admired and copied for the values they portray. The Native American is coming into his own by being accurately chronicled as proud people with values and mores that deserve being written as they were and from a Native America point of view.
And other minorities are finally being represented in westerns and historicals. Accurate writers are discovering that around most any 1870's southwest cattle drive campfire would seldom be ten whites, but rather two blacks, six Hispanics, a Chinese cook and a white—or European, as whites were known in most of the Americas and as they are still known to a good part of the world.
In a Publisher's Weekly article by Dennis E. Showalter entitled Blazing A New Trail, he maintains that "American West themes are making a major comeback. The box-office success of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven has made the western a hot Hollywood item."
Even though I will tell you what I feel is the easiest way to get published, and how to "write to" what New York views as the West, there are still great inroads to be made by writing away from these guidelines—it's just that the risk of not getting your work sold is greater. But never write away from good time and place—it's not good writing to do so and it's not good for the profession—unless you’re writing a parody, such as Blazing Saddles.
So much for westerns and historicals.
Romance represents 48% (or more) of the mass market paperback industry. A huge number. Women read 80% of all the fiction written in America and buy romance in huge quantities. If you can write what makes them laugh, makes them cry, and turns them on, you can have a piece of this huge market, and see your romance alongside Kat's and many other fine writers on the nation's bookracks.
L'Amour didn't get his first novel published until he was forty-six. Mine came at forty-seven. Yours may come at seventeen or eighty-seven.
The first criteria for a novelist, as far as I'm concerned, is loving to read. If you enjoy reading mystery, romance, horror, fantasy, science fiction, or westerns, or any other genre, then I suggest you turn your writing talents to the particular genre you love to read. You already know a lot about it—length, structure, basic rules such as a happy ending for a romance. You may not realize you know those things, but you do. And that's one of the reasons you should write what you love to read.
If you love to read novels, chances are you'll love writing them even more.
How else could you sit back, God-like, and become a cavalry general attacking the Cheyenne or a gunslinger walking down the main street of 1880 Dodge City or Tombstone to draw down on the fastest gun in the West? How else can you become a swash-buckling pirate or his petulant captured flame-haired heroine?
And if you don't like the way the action comes down, you can do it again. Writing is a wonderful way to make all those fantastic dreams you had as a youth, or have today, come true—at least on paper.
Dream, and get paid for it.
I've never been one for long, intricate, manuals which tell you every detail necessary to accomplish a goal—although this one continues to grow. I'm impatient. This manual is designed to give you the hard-hitting facts about what and how. The when, why, and where is up to you.
I will also give you a list of reference materials and books that are invaluable—and there are thousands more equally so. After a number of years of collecting, I have most of these mentioned in my own personal library, but all of them and many more may be found in local lending libraries, or may be inter-branched or inter-city borrowed.
Of course, the web is now the ultimate research tool, and no one could have a reference library to match it. But you have to be careful, as not all the information you might find on the web is accurate. Anyone can post.
I've also included a list of weekly, monthly, and bi-monthly magazines that will help you with craft and keep you up on the marketplace. These, too, are available at the library.
You'll also share with me the agony of defeat. In writing, it's called a rejection slip. But sometimes you can use them to your benefit! So if your writing glass is half empty a rejection slip is defeat; if half full, it’s a learning process.
With the exception of a couple of optioned screenplays, every dime I've made writing has been made from westerns, historical romances, historicals, suspense or thrillers, so the meat of this manual is going to center on writing well, not writing any particular genre. Many of the examples are from the western genre, but description from point of view, as an example, is applicable to any genre.
I'll show you how and why the question "How do you get your ideas?" is such a foolish one. History, current events, your everyday life…is replete with novel ideas, for every genre, including science fiction.
Now, sit back, read, then do what you've always wanted to do—write a novel.
“He’s a good enough liar to write books.”
From Kipling’s Captain’s Courageous
WHAT IS GENRE?
GENRE: Genre is defined by my Random House Dictionary as:
A class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or the like.
Romance, science fiction, horror, fantasy, thrillers, historicals, mystery, and westerns are generally considered to be genre novels—and there’re more. And there are sub-genres: adult westerns, fantasy, gothic romance, regency romance, etc., etc.
Who determines genre? The market and a lot of preconceived notions. Editors who buy novels and guide them to finished form, and readers who buy them to consume. Readers expect such a novel, a western for instance, to be written a certain way and, because of those reader expectations, if it isn't written that way, editors generally won't buy it—because they believe it won't sell and their sales department doesn't, or believes they don't, know how to sell it. They'll say, "It falls through the slots."
If you want to sell your work to the established publishing houses, the first thing you have to realize is publishing is a business. Like other businesses, publishers want products that sell.
The editor's first obligation to the publishing house is to stock the shelves with the standard product, the proven sellers. Only once in every hundred books they edit will they reach out. And remember, they've probably read or partially read five thousand manuscripts to get those hundred they bought—the reality is that a million manuscripts a year get submitted and 3,500 published in mass-market fiction. The odds against a truly unusual book getting to the market are huge. But when they do, they are sometimes the huge sellers.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, among the all time best-selling novels, and the most translated novel, bar none, from the English language (at least when I wrote this), was turned down twenty-eight times before it found a home. It was a short, unusual story. Now it's a short, unusual story translated into more languages than any other novel ever published.
But if you want to get comfortably published, don't try to reinvent the wheel. Write to the market. Make it easy on the editors. Give them a product they're used to, one they can get on the shelf with little effort on their part or that of the copy editor. One that sells and makes money for the publishing house.
I once spoke at a college seminar on writing where the renowned science fiction writer Ray Bradbury was the featured speaker. After speaking to my small portion of the seminar, I attended Ray's keynote address—and found myself being berated for giving the exact advice above. Write to the market, although it had been related to him in a different manner than I’d represented. “I also said, write from the heart.” And “money isn’t everything.”
Bradbury, who sold his first brilliant novel, Fahrenheit 451, at the ripe old age of 21 or so, believes that all writers should be like him, brilliant, and merely write a brilliant novel and go on to fame and fortune. Thank you, Ray. But some of us have to grind it out the hard way, and would like to make a little money, and get a few pats on the head, along the path.
Yes, if possible, write a brilliant unorthodox novel and be rich and famous—but the odds are you'll languor and slip away from writing when you find a pile of rejection slips building window-sill high beside your desk. Many who might evolve into brilliant productive writers will go by the wayside if expecting, and being disappointed by, the lack of fame and fortune from a first novel or from not selling a first, or second, or third novel. Many now productive and successful writers did not sell a manuscript until they had written a half-dozen novels. I remember a story about Danielle Steel. It was reported that she sold her first novel, only to receive rejections on her next five. That would be even tougher in many ways than not selling your first.
Editors look forward to receiving their paychecks regularly and if they don't stock the shelves with products that sell, paychecks stop coming because they are looking for another job. They look for product to fill the slots they have open. Tried and true genre product that fits the slot.
But back to genre.
Romances end happily: girl gets boy and vise versa. Mysteries drip clues, and you don't know the solution until the last chapter. Sci-fi is about aliens and outer space. Horror better scare the hell out of you. Since I'm concentrating on the western and the historical, I'll zero in on them—and by the way, what's good for the western is generally good for the western romance, novels of the west, and historicals set in the old West. Most of it, of course, is common to all genres.
If I seem to be stuck on westerns, remember the same basics can be applied to all genres.
WHAT'S A WESTERN? WHAT'S A HISTORICAL? As its eighth definition of the non-capitalized word, western, Random House says:
A story, movie, or radio or television play about the U.S. West of the nineteenth century.
an of historical novel it says:
A narrative in novel form, characterized chiefly by an imaginative reconstruction of historical events and personages.
Let's look at those definitions as they apply to western/historical novels. And remember that a western romance may have different guidelines than those for a straight western or straight historical.
As appears on the paperback racks in thousands of book stores, truck stops, supermarkets, and drug stores, a western is a fictional story of forty five to sixty five thousand words. This is a rule. Rules are made to be broken, and the word-limit rule, like all rules in publishing as well as most other businesses, is broken often. One of the finest western novels ever written (in my opinion, and the only Pulitzer Prize winning western novel ever written) is much longer. We'll talk more about Lonesome Dove a little later.
Again, so much for rules.
The point I'm trying to make is, nothing is hard and fast. But if you want to sell your novel, it's the accepted beginning, accepted length, accepted subject matter, accepted time frame, accepted style, and accepted ending that will sell quickest. Don't fight city hall.
Get one sold, get famous (or at least established), then you can break the rules.
Stephen King wrote a three word chapter in Misery. Thomas Wolfe wrote a four hundred word sentence in Bonfire of the Vanities. Both were (silently or at least in low tones) chastised by New York editors for "grandstanding." But they can pull this kind of stuff because they are Stephen King and Thomas Wolfe.
Consistently put a few novels on the top of the NYT or the PW lists, and you can grandstand.
In the meantime, write fifty to sixty thousand words for your short genre or one hundred thirty thousand for your long one—or better yet, follow the guide lines of the publisher to whom you wish to sell.
Later, I'll tell you how to count words in the old and new ways so you know how long your work is.
But any work of fifty to eighty thousand words does not a western make. What makes the western a western?
TIME FRAME: Westerns are generally set in the expansion of the West period. The year of our Lord eighteen hundred and forty up to the turn of the century, with by far the majority set in the twenty years from the end of the Civil War to eighteen hundred and eighty five. Why? Because the reading public conceives that time frame as the "West." Buffalo Bill Cody, Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, cowhands, gunmen, cattle barons, Indians, Indian uprisings, the expansion of the railroads, etc., etc., these were the people and the events we've come to identify with the West.
The Bureau of Census, in 1890, compiled and published Population and Statistical Figure for The United States and in that document declared the America frontier closed. In 1893 the Indian Territory was organized as the Oklahoma Territory, and with that act every square inch in America was officially under some form of local government. The Wild West was over, the frontier gone.
Stick with one set in that time frame—the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century—at least for the first novel.
A Historical? Any time in the past. Is the WW2 period, or any time subsequent (say Vietnam) considered a historical time frame? It depends upon the editor. Is a pre-historic considered a historical, I think again it depends upon the editor, but most would probably consider them nearer the fantasy genre. Look at the John Jakes series of novels, The Bastard, etc., for my belief of what are true, easily identified, historicals.
If you want to read the most accurate and entertaining reconstruction of pre-history, read Michael and Kathleen Gear. No one writes pre-history better than a professional archeologist and anthropologist, for no one has come closer to living it.
WHAT'S A WESTERN OR HISTORICAL SUBJECT: Can a western be set in 1880's New York City, if it's about a cowhand? An eastern-western? Maybe, but I wouldn't want to try it (although it's being done in romance westerns). Talk about a hard sell! A sheriff goes after a killer in Arizona; a bad cattle baron rules the town that's grown up at the edge of his spread in New Mexico; a Union cavalry officer returns to Wyoming from the Civil War to find his sister kidnapped by the Crow. Cattle drives, gamblers and saloon girls, rustlers, robbers, Comancheros, cowboys, and Indians. These situations and characters are the meat of genre westerns.
But western romances, historicals, and contemporary novels with western settings can be written with much greater leeway—almost infinitesimal.
SETTING: Setting? Set your western or historical in the West, or if a historical, preferably in a place you know a lot about. If not your own home town, then a place you've visited and, hopefully, have learned something about its history. Not absolutely necessary, but helpful. It's hard enough to break into a new business. Make it as easy on yourself as possible.
My first book was about my home town, Bakersfield, California. It was a hard sell. Even though the West's greatest stock drive originated in Kern County, and one of the last great shootouts took place in the Bakersfield Tenderloin, New York editors think of the West as Abilene, Tombstone, Fort Worth, Santa Fe, Rawlins, etc. The places they've read about in westerns for years. Except for the gold rush period, they think of California as the land of fruits and nuts. Mark Twain said California was "West of the West," and New York still believes it to a great extent.
If I were starting my first book again, it would set in an area deemed western by the folks who buy them—editors.
But again, this is a rule that has been successfully broken. What you need to know about a setting can be researched in the local library. Tom Clancy wrote his best-selling The Hunt For Red October, set almost entirely in a nuclear submarine and involving intricate detail, and never set foot in a nuclear sub.
It can be done; it's just tougher.
And here again, settings for western romances, historicals, and other genres utilizing western themes are much broader and much less limiting than genre westerns.
STORY: What’s a western about? Generally it’s a drama. If you want to write a book about the trials and tribulations of a comic watchmaker who happens to live in Sante Fe in eighteen hundred and seventy five, you better make him the toughest watch maker in several states, who defends his watches to the death with a Colt .44 and a bowie knife!
A drama is defined by Random House as:
A composition in prose or verse presenting in dialogue or pantomime a story involving conflict or contrast of character... any situation or series of events having vivid, emotional, conflicting, or striking interest or results.
A good western, like any good drama, is about trial and tribulation, success and failure, and hopefully, riveting head to head conflict that makes a compelling read.
The finest compliment a novelist can get is, "I read your book in one sitting." Even if they hated it, it was compelling! A page turner. Let me qualify that compliment by reminding you that generally westerns are short. Other than a insomniac speed reader, no one could read War and Peace in one sitting. That your book is compelling is the greatest compliment a writer can get.
Conflict and its resolution creates compelling reading. Put your hero up a cliff, out of powder, wad, and shot, hostile Indians below, a rabid cougar on the cliff above, and a grizzly protecting her cubs in the cave behind—and your hero developing a migraine.