A Writing Lesson From A Long Dead Gunslinger

The Impromptu Show:
 
 I was on my way to Glenwood Springs, Colorado. What’s in Glenwood Springs, you might ask? That is the last place that the world’s most famous dentist lived and where he died. The world’s most famous dentist? Why on earth would we even want to talk about the world’s most famous dentist? I did leave out the part where I should have said he is not famous for being a dentist.

Of course, I’m referring to the legendary Dr. John Henry Holliday. Most people just knew him as Doc Holliday.

When I was a kid, and some of you older people will remember this, Time Life Books came out with a special edition dedicated to gunfighters. As a child these fascinated me. The idea of gunslingers calling out their enemies to the Main Street at high noon fascinated me.

While I was on the trail going up to the cemetery, I met a family. The man I met was an obvious stoner, his wife was desperate to get downhill, their kids were dressed in dirty pajamas, and tuckered out.

It would be easy to dismiss these people and ignore them. I had a nice chat with the father. For them it was an early morning walk outside. They were enjoying the day.

My author brain went into high gear and it was easy to paint these people into a story where this family was running for their lives from the unsettled spirits in the graveyard just up the hill where Doc Holliday and Kid Curry were battling for supremacy over their final resting places.

In my version of the story the family would have to take refuge behind headstones of deceased spirits implored them to take cover or end up joining them in the great beyond.

The day after my trip to Glenwood Springs I found a masseuse in Colorado Springs who could address my pulled muscle in my back. As I was driving to the appointment, I began thinking about what my trip to Glenwood Springs really meant. What did it truly leave me with?

I suppose, for me, it left me with a deeper appreciation of what life must’ve been like on the frontier in the 1800s. I now see Doc Holliday in a different light. While it would be easy to paint him as this steely eyed gunfighter, I saw another side of him. I saw the once infamous gunfighter, wracked with tuberculosis, laying there in the bed dying.

It’s a different side of him to be sure, that we normally see. And that is how you write characters who are three-dimensional. Don’t see them as what is simply portrayed at first glance. Walk around in their shoes a bit, or in my case their boots and try to see the world through their eyes. Not just at their best, but also their worst.

This is Bryan the Writer for All Things Writing, signing off.

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