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Handiwork... 🖋️

Here's where I delve into the practice of dime novel creation. I wanted to challenge myself to write a quick, 300 word Western story before reading a handful of Westerns for the first time, and then redo it after to employ what I've learned!

Sometimes judging a book by its cover is important, especially to gauge what's eye-catching to readers. I also decided to try making a dime novel cover and follow the same before-and-after process, only this time with art I've spent no more than 20 - 30 minutes on, to keep a focus on study rather than perfection.

Story Writing

Before

My first thoughts when it comes to dime novel story is that it’s largely internal monologue. Very grandiose and self-congratulatory. Silly names in-line with Buffalo Bill or Billy the Kid (a lot of Billys? A lot of B-names?). Connotations to animals, or someone-the-something. Gunslinging, high action, and fast-paced. Enough intrigue to keep you entertained, but overall, pretty shallow and easy to read. More dedicated to the old west facade than to real historical accuracy. Southern accent readable through text.

I can hear them hot on my trail. The quiet sound of hooves kicking up sand, the grunts of horses and men both too tired to continue on sneaking in this heat for much longer. No matter how much I look ‘round myself, I can’t see them. Past cactuses, past cliffs and craigs… They could be hiding anymore. I can’t see them, but I hear them. Hot on my trail. BANG! After hours of this senseless goose chase, the bastards finally fired on me. The shot goes whizzing past my ear, nearly taking a chunk of my cheek with it. And then I really hear them, hoots and hollars of them no-good Highwaymen, fast surrounding me. But they call me Bobby the Bullet for a reason, see. I draw my gun from it’s holster before that ugly Daniel Geddes can steer his mare in front of mine. He plans to cut me off – instead, I cut him short. BOOM! Geddes’ horse hits the sand. My own girl, Saturn, raises her hooves high off the ground with an echoing whinney. She gets up, the poor love, and takes off into the sunset. Geddes ain’t so lucky. Now his men hold up. I hear their whispers of disbelief. Their ringleader, the one who roped them all into this no good lifestyle, dead on the ground. Well, what point’s there to fighting anymore? They need a new plan. Fast as it started, the battle’s been won. For now. Those Highwaymen get to riding, leaving the man they once put their loyalty in to rot alone in the desert, picked apart like vultures, the creature he always most resembled. What’s next for the Highwaymen, I wonder? Well, it don’t matter yet. At least for another day, luck shines its light on Bobby the Bullet, who lives to ride again.

After

After reading a bunch of dime novels, there’s a lot I think I should change about this original story! While the plotlines and general writing is shallow, it’s not as shallow as I thought it would be. There is plenty of detail and a lot of exposition in many of these stories. The pace is fast, but not breakneck. The stories don’t come across great , but also not as utter heartless trash like some reviewers may lead you to believe, though maybe for the time, compared to other works, they were. I also noticed that while dialogue is written with dialect, most of these stories are third person omniscient, so I changed that as well. Dimes have lots of dialogue, probably to stretch length, but I didn’t want to change too much about my original writing, so I left it out this time! Also, there are a lot of long sentences. Not necessarily run-on, but longer than I’m used to writing. Overall, this exercise was really fun and got me to notice things I never would have about dime novels.

Out in the hot desert wilderness, rattlesnakes and tumbleweeds scurry past a lone ranger and his horse. The man is called Robert Freeman, but he’s staked his claim in these parts as Bobby the Bullet, for his fast shot and even faster horse. A horse that now walks drained and weary and hot and thirsty down an old beaten path through the sand, bored of this monotony. Bobby is different. He keeps his senses alive at all moments because he knows that any minute he lets his guard down is a moment that he might be overtaken by Dan Geddes and his Highwaymen. The plain desert land does not fool him. He knows there are more places to hide than one may think. Suddenly, both Bobby and his horse are startled by a loud, echoing gunshot, breaking them from their sombre thoughts. Bobby was right to have been on watch, and thanks to that, he has his gun drawn by the time the men have surrounded him. It’s Geddes’ highwaymen alright, with scarred and hallow faces like wolves, blood and murder shining in their eyes. One brave soul makes his attempt to steer his mare out in front of Bobby’s loyal Saturn, clearly expecting to have gotten the drop on the old Bullet. Instead, another gunshot screams out across the desert flats, and in an instant, the scene is dramatically changed. The attacker’s horse whinneys in surprise at the startling loud noise fired from a gun right in front of her, losing her footing and falling down to the road in front of Saturn’s hooves. Bobby holds on tight as his girl kicks her hooves high off the ground with a neigh of surprise and grips his pistol tight, in case any of the others take advantage of his situation. Nobody does. It takes a moment, but when Saturn rights herself, Bobby the Bullet finds himself looking down at the dead body of ugly old Dan Geddes himself, who only moments before believed that he would be the one to claim the bounty on Robert Freeman’s head. The red of his blood stains the yellow sand. The men around them holler and gasp in surprise and nobody else dares to take a shot. The game has been won, their ringleader unceremoniously gunned down in the middle of his big performance. They were not fast enough for Bobby the Bullet - nobody ever was.

Cover Design

Before

This is the first image my mind came up with when I thought about a dime novel cowboy cover, without reference (obviously). For some reason, I imagined it being very yellow... I think I went with that because I imagine the book being faded with age, or maybe printed in muted colours due to dye expenses or cost of labour. Not sure! I wanted to add that dime at the top so everyone makes an instant connection. Otherwise, I really just thought up a basic pistol-toting cowboy on a horse in the desert.

After

Here is take two! I was surprised to see how many dime novel covers released before 1900 had a lot of colour to them. For the most part, red, blue, and yellow appear to be the most common colours, but I also saw a lot of greens and browns. The colours usually aren't too cohesive, but they are fun to look at! Much of the colouring fits the lineart, but it can be a little messy and inaccurate, which I tried to replicate here. I also tweaked the style from the first one to fit the sketchy linework seen in a lot of cover art. You can decipher the foundations of comic art techniques - like using hatching as a form of shading - too. As a whole, dime novel covers are a lot more detailed than I would have expected, and a lot of covers go really in-depth with backgrounds as far as foilage and mountains go - so I popped in a few more scraggly plants, cacti, and dune-y mountaints. I was also pleased to see my idea of adding an actual dime at the top was actually implemented in a few covers I came across. I took the most inspiration for this from Karaibo: The Outlaw's Tale from 1879, which I used as a reference for the horse.