GenresFiction
Western
Frontier, dust, and the law at the edge of it.
The western is about a place where the official story of law is thin, and people are making up the rest as they go. That can be the nineteenth-century American frontier, or it can be a later or stranger version of the same pressure: distance, scarce resources, a reputation that arrives before you do, and a decision about what you are willing to do when nobody is coming to help.
Dust and hats will not carry a book. The western works when it is specific about work, land, and who is allowed to own either. A lot of older versions of the genre were happy to leave whole groups of people out, or to treat them as scenery, and a new western that doesn't think about that is going to feel lazy. You can write a classic showdown if you want one. Just make sure the argument that leads to it is about something a person could actually lose.
The kinds of book inside it
Classic
The shapes are familiar, the stranger, the town, the range, and the job is to make those shapes feel lived in rather than quoted.
Revisionist
The old story is still there, but the book is willing to say who paid for it, and the heroics don't get a free pass.
Weird west
The frontier is joined by something uncanny, and the strange element should make the western problem worse, not replace it.
Frontier
Settlement itself is the story, the building and the cost of building, rather than a single gunfight waiting at the end of the street.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a story summary in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.