Setting by Jack M Bickham Read Free Book Online Page B

rescue the hero from his plight.
    Another reason for the isolation so typical of the western novel setting, however, is simply this matter of reader expectation. From the time of James Fenimore Cooper's tales of the early frontier, readers of western adventure have expected an isolated setting. Such readers aren't aware of the practical plotting advantages such a setting provides for the action writer; it's simply what these readers are used to, and it's what they want to find again in every new novel of the type that they read.
    There are other aspects of setting that fit the western genre, too. Some were mentioned in chapter four. But there is also the matter of expansiveness . . . grand vistas . . . vast, open country. This sort of physical setting and open feeling is characteristic of nearly all such books.
    The kind of people found as part of the setting in westerns is usually predictable, too. Sympathetic female characters, until the most recent time, were quiet, loyal, long-suffering and hardworking characters whose main function was to serve as romantic interest for the more-important males in the story, or to act as mirrors whose adoration made the men look more heroic. That's changed a bit in recent years, and today you can occasionally find a female in a western who is her own person and has some spunk. But the background cast of most westerns is male to this day, the masculine ethic forming part of the story's setting.
    The males tend to form a story backdrop based on traditional values, including the work ethic, belief that right makes might (and not the opposite), and the heroic ideal of a lone man against heavy odds for the sake of justice. While the real West might have had a great number of strong and admirable black men, they seldom appear as part of the setting in a traditional western. And while in truth more men might have been shot in the back with a shotgun than killed in street duels, the setting of a western still often depends in part on the unexamined assumption that Marshal Dillon really did stride out into the middle of the street and outdraw a bad guy every once in a while. In the real West, six-guns misfired with dismaying regularity; in the traditional western, six-guns are as reliable as the finest modern weapon. In the real West, the women who made it as far as the frontier towns tended to be a bit on the tough, gnarled side. In the traditional western setting, they're more likely to resemble Michelle Pfeiffer. And so it goes.
    The point here is not to disparage the western or any of the other genres we're going to examine. The point is that you as a writer should be aware of what your genre reader expects, and then remember that it is incumbent upon you to deliver the goods expected, whether they're in line with actual fact or not. Thus, in writing genre fiction, you have to be accurate in terms of the reader's expectation or the myth of the genre, rather than the actual truth.
    Knowing your genres, then, will tell you where "accuracy" is located.
    So let's briefly consider a few others.
    ROMANCE
    Readers of romance often turn to this genre for escape from the humdrum, relief from grim reality, and reassurance that life can be both beautiful and romantic — that dreams do indeed come true. What do these expectations say about romance settings?
    Perhaps above all else, the romance depends on a philosophical setting—a group of beliefs assumed as true by the people in the story—based on the ideal of romantic love. The heroine may indeed be a young career woman quite capable of taking care of herself, and may even speak against "silly romantic love." But she is proven quite capable of being "swept off her feet." A belief in love-at-first-sight, so celebrated in popular songs, is essential to such a story; it is the bedrock belief-setting on which everything else is built.
    Further —and bearing in mind that there are exceptions to every generalization — most romances play out in a