I'm in the middle of writing a western zombie flick, but trying to keep with a hard western, while avoiding the typical cliches. Is that even possible? I don't want the "stranger comes to town" type of thing, or the jaded gunslinger.

Curious to have a discussion on what makes a late 19th century western, a western.

I'm over a month late, can I still jump in? :)

Westerns are FULL of cliches, probably more than any other genre I can think of and you nailed some in your post above. The lone stranger walking into town, the gunfight in the middle of the street, train robbery, prostitute with a heart of gold, naive/savage native Americans, vigilante justice, crooked sheriffs, the saloon, the untamed wilderness, man vs. nature, manifest destiny, rugged independence etc.

You really can't avoid them. Instead embrace them.

When I wrote mine, No Beans in the Wheel, (plug plug) I looked for a lot of those cliches and tried to twist them on themselves. I have a train robbery of course but tried to make it like an elaborate Ocean's Eleven type heist. I have two duels but instead had the characters fight with knives and swords instead of guns. The female lead is the farthest thing from a lady of the night, I think in a western your job is to take these cliches and put your own unique spin on them.

And if you are doing a western zombie movie then that's great! There's a ton of zombie movie cliches out there as well. I'm sure if you could find ways to combine the cliches from these two genres you'd be in great shape. Lots of opportunity there to mine for sure.

Just my taste - but I'm out at "Zombie". I think originality goes out the door there.

This thread was created when I planned on Winterhaven being a zombie flick. I think I even wrote and shared an intro to it, with the same group of character.

Either way, Winterhaven has some cliched stuff in it, but not so much that you'd really pick it apart or take offense.

I'm a little irritated that I didn't go with my other idea, which would have been a murder mystery, or serial killer plot taking place in the old west. The spin on it would have been that an outside investigator came to town, who specialized in detective work.

Avoid references to Clint Eastwood.