They carry in them a historical record, patterns of use. Tropes are tools, but they’re also artifacts. How do you feel the use of tropes influences your writing? Many feel that tropes are best used when broken down and rebuilt. It challenges the tropes of what it means to be a “gunslinger,” perhaps even what it means to be a telepath. The story is a blend of western, humor, a hint of science fiction, a dash of meta-pop culture commentary. I imagined that I was, in a sense, dropping into that collective, composite Western Story, and then telling a story on top of that story. As the storyteller, I benefit from that immensely: a town, already fully furnished and populated by the collective memory of westerns, by other people’s imaginations. A reader brings all of that into the story with her, and that translates to, as you said, expectation. That richness and depth does so much work for the writer-the scenery’s already in the reader’s mind, the sets, the atmosphere, the costumes. The western as a genre has a rich and deep body of tropes to draw upon. I loved how “Bookkeeper, Narrator, Gunslinger” starts with one expectation and quickly takes a left turn into something completely different.
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