Writing popular fiction

of both of them.
    Just as science fiction and suspense can be broken down into a limited number of plot types, so can the Western. There are basically seven Western plot types:

THE LAWMAN STORY
    In this type of Western, the hero is a sheriff, marshal, or deputy, and his antagonist is an outlaw of one sort or another. The hero is always dedicated, but in a modern Western he should be motivated by more than a sense of duty, pride in his badge, and his monthly paycheck.
Badge of Honor
by Lee E. Wells is a good example of the type.

THE OUTLAW STORY
    Here, your hero is an outlaw, and he must be treated with as much sympathy as you would accord the lawman. His crimes rarely include murder, and never include
unprovoked
murder. He is most often either a highwayman or a bank robber, forced into a life of crime by the social conditions of his day (which we have discussed above) or by the Civil War and the changes it brought to his life. (The Civil War is the factor which influenced the hero of Lee Hoffman's
Wild Riders
to become an outlaw.) You should either logically reform your hero by the end of the book, or you should see that he escapes whatever forces of law pursue him and lives to rob again. As with the suspense novel using a criminal hero, don't construct a sympathetic outlaw only to hand him defeat in the end because "crime does not pay."

THE CATTLE RANGE STORY
    These are stories set on ranches, on long cattle drives, stories about sheep herders battling cattlemen, cattlemen battling farmers, cattlemen battling each other, stories about droughts, rustlers, and other cattle range problems. You have a wide choice of heroes and villains, though, again, they must be realistically drawn. Good examples of this type of Western are Todhunter Ballard's
Blizzard Range
, and Louis L'Amour's
Killoe
and
North to the Rails
.

THE REVENGE STORY
    There are three common heroes for this type of plot: the outlaw unjustly punished by a crooked or overzealous marshal; the good law-abiding citizen wronged by ruthless outlaws; and the last surviving member of a family murdered by Indians or bandits. In every case, the hero vows revenge and sets out to take it. Nothing will stand in his way, and he must eventually deliver the antagonist to retribution. Don't forget that you must strengthen the hero's motivations whenever possible and not propel him through a long chase simply for revenge; he must have secondary motives. A good novel of this type is Wayne D. Overholser's
The Long Trail North
, but without question the greatest Western revenge novel written to date is Zane Grey's
Riders of the Purple Sage
.

THE OPENING-THE-WILD-WEST STORY
    This kind of story includes those plots dealing with the journey of a wagon train across the continent, the construction of the railroad, telegraph line, toll road, stagecoach line, pony express route, or similar endeavour. Your hero may be the boss of the wagon train or of the construction company; opposed by reactionaries, ranchers who want more money for the use of their land, Indians, and outlaws in equal numbers. Or he may be a local rancher, a small businessman whose property is being condemned or taken away from him without proper compensation: in this case, the opponents would be those who want to force the construction ahead no matter who gets hurt. A warning: This second type of hero must have a personal stake in fighting the new construction; he may not oppose it simply for spite or because he doesn't want to see Eastern progress cut across his beloved wilderness. Few readers can sympathize with a hero, good or bad, who is against progress of any kind; and in those days, there was no ecological crisis to justify such a viewpoint. Luke Short's
The Outrider
is a good novel dealing with an ordinary citizen up against the corruption of mining and railroad interests.

THE BATTLE OF TITANS STORY
    These novels always concern a conflict between two enormous ranches or economical concerns of the Old West. One wealthy family is pitted against another in a fight for water sources, mineral claims, fencing limits, or because of mutual rustling. Your hero will be a member of and usually the head of the more virtuous family and will always triumph. Everything in this kind of Western must be on a grand scale, set against a panorama of Western landscape and history.

THE CAVALRY AND INDIAN STORY
    The new writer is often tempted to do this as Ouster's Last Stand, using Indians as immoral savages who
harass and