[Pro Writer] Hondo by Louis L'Amour - Dissection, Part 7

We continue analyzing L'Amour's short story - "Gift of Cochise". Finding the craft which made his novel-writing career take off. 2 installments left...

The spread for “Gift of Cochise” as it appeared in Colliers (5 July 1952)

OUR WORK SO FAR: Hondo was L’Amour’s big break into novels. It was based on his “Gift of Cochise”. We’re continuing to work through this short story, following W. S. Campbell’s prescribed approach. (See this Dissection Part 1 post.) Last installment examined Scenes 9, 8, and 7.

This post is too long for most email viewers. Click on the external link to get the full version - and bonuses.

Again, I found a PDF of the original short story, although I’ve not been able to find that link again - and included it here ICYMI:

The Gift Of Cochise Louis L'amour

109KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

In this installment, we are referencing Keep ‘Em Reading Lesson 06 - Writing Straight Ahead. Review this before continuing.

As these next two Cochise scenes are again short, I’ve included them into a single chunk for study. But take your time reviewing each. They each build into the next. In addition to tracking the flow of ideas through words, sentences, paragraphs, bridges, scenes and sequels — now we learn how to get your story written smoothly - after all that research you’ve made to build it.

---

Dissection: The Gift of Cochise - Scene 6 and 5

These two scenes are again short. Take into account in this installment how scenes can simply be glue for the story - or may be simply information. Scenes build plot. And as you’ve been tracking this story backward — we’ve seen this story coming along. Feel free to review your notes once again.

6.

They trailed him through the White Sands, and he left two more for dead. He fought fiercely and bitterly, and would not be turned from his quest. He turned east through the lava beds and still more east to the Pecos. He saw only two white men, and neither knew of a white woman.

The bearded man laughed harshly. "A woman alone? She wouldn't last a month!

“By now the Apaches got her, or she's dead. Don't be a fool! Leave this country before you die here."

Lean, wind-whipped, and savage, Ches Lane pushed on. The Mescaleros cornered him in Rawhide Draw and he fought them to a standstill. Grimly, the Apaches clung to his trail.

The sheer determination of the man fascinated them. Bred and born in a rugged and lonely land, the Apaches knew the difficulties of survival; they knew how a man could live, how he must live. Even as they tried to kill this man, they loved him, for he was one of their own.

Lane's jeans grew ragged. Two bullet holes were added to the old black hat. The slicker was torn; the saddle, so carefully kept until now, was scratched by gravel and brush. At night he cleaned his guns and by day he scouted the trails. Three times he found lonely ranch houses burned to the ground, the buzzard- and coyote-stripped bones of their owners lying nearby.

Once he found a covered wagon, its canvas flopping in the wind, a man lying sprawled on the seat with a pistol near his hand. He was dead and his wife was dead, and their canteens rattled like empty skulls.

- - - -

5.

For more than three months, whenever he could rustle the grub, Ches Lane quartered the country over and back. The trouble was, he had no lead to the location of Ed Lowe's homestead. An examination of Ed's horse revealed nothing.

Lowe had bought seed and ammunition, and the seed indicated a good water supply, and the ammunition implied trouble. But in that country there was always trouble.

A man had died to save his life, and Ches Lane had a deep sense of obligation.

Somewhere that wife waited, if she was still alive, and it was up to him to find her and look out for her. He rode northeast, cutting for sign, but found none.

Sandstorms had wiped out any hope of back-trailing Lowe. Actually, West Dog Canyon was more east than north, but this he had no way of knowing.

North he went, skirting the rugged San Andreas Mountains. Heat baked him hot, dry winds parched his skin. His hair grew dry and stiff and alkali-whitened.

He rode north, and soon the Apaches knew of him. He fought them at a lonely water hole, and he fought them on the run. They killed his horse, and he switched his saddle to the spare and rode on. They cornered him in the rocks, and he killed two of them and escaped by night.

Discussion:

Louis L’Amour was known for being able to start his next story once he finished the one he was working on.

The trick in this was that he was researching the next one meanwhile. So the story and characters were all fleshed out, just waiting for him to start writing it.

L’Amour read and studied non-fiction to get the details straight. And he’d write notes about story ideas. But when he wrote, it was straight ahead — scene by scene, chapter by chapter. His research was complete before he started writing.

He exemplified what he’d studied under Campbell at the University of Oklahoma — then tested and polished this for 15 years of regular story submissions to the popular magazines. By the time he was ready to write full novels, he hit his stride by mastering short stories. Hondo being made into a movie was the chance he needed. And by the time Cochise was released, those movie rights bought, and his novelization of the movie came out, he’d already written and published his first four novels. He’d keep up the pace of publishing an average of three novels every year after this.

What L’Amour was known for was the accuracy of setting and details in his writing. Now you can start seeing how his studies paid off - and how his flow of writing was achieved.

Our Continuing Studies

The point of that first series out of Forgotten Bestseller Secrets is: Keep ‘Em Reading.

Find the rest of these lessons in their Table of Contents here:

---

Coming this next week…

There are two more “Keep ‘Em Reading” lessons to study, and three more scenes in this short story. As your dissection continues, you might have already jumped ahead. That’s fine. The point of these lessons is to learn how to learn from the Masters.

Stories can be digested by scenes, full novels digested by chapters. That’s where we’ll take up “Hondo”, along with our studies of character and story-plot meanwhile. Each week, we’’ll review another of these lessons against what we are dissecting that week.

All something to look forward to. And you’ll also be able to revisit these dissection-lessons as well. Like my other work, I’ll be building a table of content for all the lessons as we go.

Regardless, I hope to see you here next week to finish the process of finding out how L’Amour developed a single short story that started his worldwide fame.

---

About Forgotten Bestseller Secrets

I spent years uncovering and digesting the materials produced in that first two decades of W. S. Campbell’s training course. It’s never been duplicated any where else or since.

Finally, I distilled his materials as best I could to repackage it into a modern form (mini-courses) which could be readily understood in our current culture. So you and everyone can speed up their progress in learning how write un-put-downable popular stories. While not having to spend decades re-inventing the wheel for yourself.

All until, eventually, someone brings these Campbell books back into print. For now, I’ll continue to promote him and his instructor’s works. And help people understand how to communicate better with each other through their writing.

You get certainty on your own craft by distilling other authors, both good and bad, to find what they did great and how they could do better. That’s learning. That’s evolution. That’s why we are here.

Earlier in This Series…

[Pro Writing] Hondo by Louis L'Amour - Dissection, Part 1

[Pro Writer] Hondo by Louis L'Amour - Dissection, Part 2

[Pro Writer] Hondo by Louis L'Amour - Dissection, Part 3

[Pro Writer] Hondo by Louis L'Amour - Dissection, Part 4

[Pro Writer] Hondo by Louis L'Amour - Dissection, Part 5

[Pro Writer] Hondo by Louis L'Amour - Dissection, Part 6

---

For Paid Members

You can forge ahead on your own. I’ve attached everything you need for your own self-paced study.

I’ve extracted the Cochise story’s text and attached my epub file below. (Use Calibre or similar to convert it to plain text.) I’ve also recreated this short story with the scenes in reverse order - also attached.

Also included is the full Forgotten Bestseller Secrets book, which has the full mini-course, plus two additional mini-courses on characterization and plot building. We’ll need those next two courses in dissecting L’Amour’s Hondo itself. All based on Campbell’s works and those of his instructors.

As well, I’ve included Campbell’s contemporaries, Foster Harris and Dwight V. Swain in “The Basic Formulas of Fiction”. This will explain more about the technical points we’ve covered above.

That’s three books out of the Writerpreneur Series which address writing craft. You’re welcome.

Needless to say, you ought to upgrade to paid in order to speed your progress as a professional writer.