Week 10: The Emotional Orchestra of Story

I'm currently reading Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. That sentence alone should give you insight into my emotional state. I've empathized and connected with the panoply of characters that inhabit this tome. This engaging, dynamic, completely enthralling piece of classic American literature.

To be clear: I'm not a fan of Westerns. Even during my decade working in film production, the Western genre was a blind spot in my filmic encyclopedia. I could name the greats, but not the hidden gems, not the little pockets of cinema that held beauty solely found in Westerns.

So here I am, many years later, totally lost in the town of Lonesome Dove, relating to the characters as they traverse the wild frontier, cattle driving. How am I, a Latina woman, never having worked the plains or ridden a horse or known the peace of a campfire on the plains of Nebraska...how am I connecting so deeply to a Western?

It is the emotional orchestra that Larry McMurtry creates in the pages of the novel. By emotional orchestra, I mean the varying beats of the story. The varied characters, the honorable rangers who are dutiful in their work of catching bandits, murderers, and horse thieves, but the emotional grey space they inhabit when they are just being humans.

A cowboy who loves a woman from afar, that woman having survived her own spectrum of emotional trauma who suffered the bad luck of simply being a woman traveling the plains. The young man who would hope to win the pride and validation of a man he viewed as a father figure. The former ranger who had long fallen into disrepute reserving his pride for small glimmers of moments. Buffalo hunters whose barbarism knows no bounds, but others who hold undying loyalty. Sporting women and wives who run a farm in the absence of an ailing husband.

All of these characters who are three-dimensional provide leaps and bounds of emotional experiences. The comedy of errors of roping an ornery calf to the small task of crossing river turning deadly. Love stories meeting heroism meeting cowardice. Tales of men who don't recognize the simple pleasure of sitting on a porch to watch the sunset or men who want nothing more than to return home.

With Story, you want to offer varying emotional beats to your reader. Don't linger in the morose or the macabre for too long and don't shy away from the grave in order to skirt the surface with comedy that hinders connection. Instead, allow Story to reflect life. The ups and downs, the sighs of relief when realizing the danger has passed, the tightening of knuckles when danger approaches.

When Story mirrors life, with its major and minor chords, all of the sudden, we have an orchestra.