How Westerns influenced me. August 13, 2024

 Westerns are my dad's favorite kind of movie, and thus I grew up watching a lot of them. They had more of a grip on my brother, because when we were kids, he always wanted to play adventure games that took place in the western United States between the years 1865 to 1895. Though I liked Westerns, I more often wanted to play games that took place in the present, so I could use vehicles, and he we always argued about it. I tried compromising but he never agreed about anything. I already wrote a little about it, and though that also gave me inspiration for books, I will talk about how the Western genre inspired me. 

Westerns are a good genre for visual storytelling and for contrasting characters, and for making the setting be practically a character. They can help you get to know the characters as the story progresses, and have characters discover humanity as they go. A lot of Westerns have music that befits what is happening and songs that often contrast or match the situation. Because the main group of characters in The Covert Militia Campaigns are members of an alternative metal band, I use their music the same way. In my books, it shows what adolescents is like as you move to adulthood, because most people when they grow up, they always think of their childhood as their carefree glory days, when in truth it was just as difficult as being an adult, setting up for character growth. It was the same for growing up with Asperger syndrome when nobody knew anything about it. The only other thing I will mention, I trope I had in mind from when I first started writing which is a homage to John Wayne's Westerns. All Covert soldiers three main weapons are a laser sword, an assault rifle, and a pistol. In every book in the series, there will be at least one battle in which Jack Stamper will only use his laser sword, Galahad, and his main pistol, and one where he just uses his sword and assault rifle. It will be the same with his sidekicks. If you would like to read them, and see more about it, as well as the work from many other independent authors, you can click on the link. Smashwords.com