[Pro Writing] Hondo by Louis L'Amour - Dissection, Part 1
This was his first full book, after John Wayne optioned his short story "Gift of Cochise" for a movie. We'll see the differences between the three as we dissect them according to W. S. Campbell.
The little known breakthrough that started L’Amour’s career into writing, after a wide-ranging adventurous early life, was when he moved with his family to Choctaw Oklahoma in the 1930’s. 40 miles away in Norman, W. S. Campbell started up his landmark Professional Writing Course in 1938, publishing his seminal text that same year.
L’Amour is claimed to be one of their earliest graduates, which correlates to his own progress where, after a few disappointing years trying to get published, Per Wikipedia, “in 1938, his stories began appearing in pulp magazines fairly regularly.”
His progress into Westerns occurred after WWII, and his fortuitous meeting with New York editor Leo Margulies, who persuaded him to fill his magazine based on Western stories.
When John Wayne found one of his short stories and bought the screenplay rights, this started L’Amour’s success. That the movie and L’Amour’s novelized edition were released at the same time. With these, he became world-renown for producing the western novels he is known for today.
Per Wikipedia:
The short story The Gift of Cochise was printed in Colliers (5 July 1952) and seen by John Wayne and Robert Fellows, who purchased the screen rights from L'Amour for $4,000. James Edward Grant was hired to write a screenplay based on this story changing the main character's name from Ches Lane to Hondo Lane. L'Amour retained the right to novelize the screenplay and did so, even though the screenplay differed substantially from the original story. This was published as Hondo in 1953 and released on the same day the film opened with a blurb from John Wayne stating that "Hondo was the finest Western Wayne had ever read".
Its trailer:
In my research, I found a PDF of the original short story, although I’ve not been able to find that link again - so here it is as I found it:
The best way to study this is the same way as L’Amour was trained — in W. S. Campbell’s own methods, out of the text he wrote.
To play catch-up, I’ve linked to the mini-course lesson that I’d produced earlier this last year. In short, Campbell recommends you learn by studying past masters. And do do this, you need to study the story backward — scene by scene.
Forgotten Bestseller Secrets 01
The professional writer reads slowly, deliberately. They are not concerned with how the story ends, but rather – how the story ended for the reader.
There is a simple method to avoid being dragged headlong through a book...
That’s our current approach to this. As you, I’m studying this for myself, to improve my own craft.
The first action is to separate the story into it’s scenes, and then analyze those scenes for the craft devices L’Amour was using.
I plan to publish what I found in the following part to this newsletter next week.
After dissecting that Chochise story, we’ll start tearing apart his Hondo book - chapter by chapter. The purpose is to learn evergreen writing devices from one of the masters. The fuller how-to about doing this is explained in that lesson above.
I’m onto sorting out the Gift of Cochise scene breaks now - stay tuned…
For paid members, I’ve attached my epub file of this below. (Use Calibre or similar to convert it to plain text.)
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