Pirates & Westerns

For some reason I have a fascination with pirates and westerns. They seem to hold an idealized fantasy that I am drawn into. I would never want to live during the time period most westerns are set in and I definitely don’t want to find myself on board a pirate ship. I understand these are not pleasant places to be. However, I keep being drawn to stories about them.

Movie western are my favourite type. I try occasionally to read western stories, but the only ones I really enjoy are Robert B. Parker’s Virgil Cole & Everett Hitch books. I didn’t really enjoy the movie made of the first one though. Most westerns I like. The stories of riding on a journey with gun duels somehow trigger my imagination.

Likewise stepping on board a ship and sailing for parts unknown in search of treasure are great. But with pirates I actually prefer books over movies, though I enjoy both. I fully understand that sailing with pirates was a dangerous and awful thing to endure, but without hardships a story wouldn’t be as exciting.

 

Kill Them Off And Start Over

Sometimes characters quit behaving and decide they don’t want to do anything. This can be a problem when you are trying to get the story finished. But there is a solution if you have tried everything else. You just kill all the current characters off. This doesn’t get the story finished though as it stops things in their tracks, so you put in new characters to finish the story. You pick characters who are willing to talk to you and pick up where the last ones left off.

This solves all of the problems. The characters who are giving you issues are gone as well as fueling the continuation of the story. You get to work with new characters who could be a lot more fun than the original ones. Also the story will get finished, likely will be better than if you stuck to the first set of characters.

So, if you are having problems in your story kill off all your characters and start again with new ones. This should help move the story along. After all the new characters have to figure out what happened to the previous ones and finish what they started.

 

Currently Smashwords is having a summer sale, so all of my books are available for free until July 31, 2016. https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/bheathermantler If you read them please leave a review on Smashwords, Good Reads, or on a similar place.