It takes more than just a good idea to write a novel, but what exactly does it take?

That is what Ron Hansen and the exhibit in the Reinert Alumni Memorial Library dedicated to Hansen and his novel, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” answers.

Hansen is a Creighton alumnus. He graduated in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in English.

While he was at Creighton, Hansen participated in the literary magazine “Shadows” as an editor and an artist, said David Crawford, an archivist at Reinert. Hansen has gained success, not through a couple lucky novels, but through writing in many different areas, including travel books and magazines, Crawford said.

“[Hansen] is an artist who has worked very hard at his craft,” Crawford said.

Hansen recently returned to campus to give a talk on how the Jesse James novel was written and his part in the making of the movie version of his book. In honor of his return to campus, the library put together a display about the creation of Jesse James.

In the early 90s Hansen stored his collection of materials from his work on Jesse James in the Creighton archives.

Crawford and others putting the exhibit together used these materials to create a display that shows the hard work that goes into creating a novel.

“As you look at the amount of work that went into the novel and the numbers of rewrites and revision and amount of thought it is useful in seeing what it takes to write a novel,” Crawford said.

Since the Creighton archives had all the early materials, the exhibit is able to accurately portray everything that went into the making of the novel and then the making of the novel into the movie.

The exhibit includes early drafts of the novels, research that Hansen did, and many other aspects of the process. The exhibit will be up through May 16.