Thinking about adding a dash of Fantasy to my Western

Straggler

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Greetings!

What's everyone's thoughts or maybe experiences with crossing Westerns with other genre, a few come to mind: Firefly, Johna Hex, Cowboys and Aliens, and The Dark Tower series (which I have not read yet). Most of these are TV/movie or comic books, could a Fantasy/Western cross in book form work? Or is it best to stick with straight Old West.

I was working on a plain Western when I came across this picture here and thought it would be a neat idea to add a bit of Fantasy, I don't really know what it would be at this moment. I would want to keep it 80% Western with 20% of the Fantasy. Any thoughts on this?
 

alleycat

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And then there's those Clint Eastman "westerns" like High Plains Drifter.

Just a personal opinion, but I don't think of things like The Dark Tower / Gunslinger series as being westerns, they just use a western motif. Once there is a significant fantasy element as part of the story, it stops being a western to me (at least to actually being classified in that genre). The old Twilight Zone TV series used to use a western setting quite often, but they weren't western stories.

You would probably be better off promoting it as a fantasy anyway.
 

Dave Hardy

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Weird Westerns are more in vogue than traditional ones I'd say. Markets for any kind of fantasy/SF are more robust than for Westerns.

Personally I'm a little ambivalent on the new crop of Weird Westerns. A lot just use a generic Western setting in a rather perfunctory way as a backdrop for some fantasy. I like to see the Western aspect get as much attention as the Weird. That means being more engaged with what makes a Western a Western in themes and structure than another retread of a gunfighter show-down.

Weird Westerns have a long history, stuff like Nick of the Woods (Bird 1837) has demons, Indians, outlaws, avenging Quakers, & general crazy shit. Ambrose Bierce wrote a few such as The Damned Thing, The Death of Halpin Frayser, The Stranger, A Man with Two Lives, etc. Robert E Howard wrote quite a few good ones in the '20s & '30s, like Old Garfield's Heart, The Horror from the Mound, The Man on the Ground, The Valley of the Lost, etc.

My favorite modern Weird Western writer is Joe Lansdale, who did a lot of work on Jonah Hex. The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down is totally extravagant steampunk-weird-ass-lunacy. The Magic Wagon is a more restrained Lansdale work, but just as good.

It's your story, so you have to go with what your instincts tell you. This is just my $0.02, but you always be on your best game.
 

Misa Buckley

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I'm writing a Weird Western, but I definitely want the setting to be more than back-drop. It might sound odd, given I have walking dead and a zombie hunter armed with a sword, but I want it to be authentic. I want the right flavour and dialogue... and I'm not doing great on the latter.

Managed track down The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down to a Steampunk anthology, so I'm going to buy that and watch Firefly. LOL
 

pezerp59

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Gotta love the Weird West. I've got three pieces roughed out for future development: mutated insects protecting the Kimberly diamond fields, mountain men encounter evil spirits in the Shining Mountains and a movie crew goes back in time to film an authentic Mastodon hunt.
 

jaheath

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I agree completely with pezerp59, love some Weird West. Deadlands was an RPG that came out years ago that based on the Weird West. Robert Howard had vampires in his 1932 short "The Horror from the Mound".

One of the first stories I ever wrote was a short about an occult trouble shooter that went around cleaning up after black magic gone awry.
 

FOTSGreg

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I'm currently writing a weird western called "Porter's Way". It mixes guns, magic, and a few dozen other fantasy elements into a story that's definitely western in nature (retired lawman tracking down his brother's killer across a western-style landscape that is definitely not our Old West, but certainly has definite elements thereof). It's just over 10k words right now and I'm hoping to bring it in at around 15k at this point.
 

Jacob_Wallace

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So just what is it that makes a western if westerns don't necessarily take place in the old west?
 

Jamesaritchie

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So just what is it that makes a western if westerns don't necessarily take place in the old west?

At least three things. 1. It takes place in the new west. A few of my favorite westerns take place in the modern west. 2. It takes place in a place that really is the Old West, that uses the same basic technology, lifestyles, etc. of the Old West, but has SF or fantasy elements that remove it from reality. 3. It can be the Old West of another planet, of another dimension, or of true fantasy land.

And calling it the "Old West" doesn't automatically mean it is. I'm not sure Max Brand ever used a real setting. He just made up the Old West as needed, everything about it, yet his books are considered some of the best and most literary out there.

As long as it's written like a western, it's a western, it just may not be what most think of, which is called a "traditional" western.