Ah, Chekhov’s gun*. ““If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise, don’t put it there.” Anton Chekhov was a playwright, and was commenting on the need for details, but also the problem of excessive detail. You can overload the setting, and the story. On the other hand, you need to be sure that you are not so spare that you leave readers puzzled.
This came up yesterday, when a beta reader flagged something that, per Chekhov’s Law, should come up again later in the book, and be a Major Event. Except it can’t because it has to transpire later in the series. However, I need to foreshadow it, and deal with the pygmy pachyderm before I get unhappy letters from other readers saying, “Hey, wait, these people have been in a relationship for how long and she still hasn’t figured out [thing]?” Because to have her not tumble onto [thing], or ask about things on the fringes of [thing], suggests I’m breaking that character. Which I try very, very hard not to do.
So, in the series, [thing] will be a major point and will appear. However, it can’t happen in this particular book. So I at least need to add a nod to [thing] later in the book, and hint at why it will remain firmly affixed to the mantlepiece for a while. I can do that in a novel or short story series. In a play? It doesn’t make as much sense.
“But what about having a gun on the mantle because it is a hunting lodge, and an antique, and you are using it as part of the scenery?” Sure. If you write “slow” the way I do, you can pile in details as a way to show readers what your character’s world is like, or your character is like [see footnote], perhaps to hint that the family was once far more prosperous than it is now, or that the Crazy Uncle two generations back also came home amazingly wealthy and the family is still reaping the benefits of his labors. Not a problem. But …
Is the gun on the mantle described in great detail, enough so that the readers are reminded about it whenever the characters are in that room? Then it should probably have a purpose, even if very minor. In the WIP I just finished, the protagonist and her husband have a rather unattractive, very large, orange seagrass basket that is very, very expensive and that they cannot give to someone who might want it, because of the social and political position of the giver (wedding gift). However, that fact that that particular person gave it to the couple gives other individuals pause, which is important to the plot of the later books in the series.
Now, I write this way, and I tend to have a bad habit of dropping in details that seem random, but that will come back at later dates or in later books. Readers come to expect this. It works in the kind of books that I do. You don’t have to do things like this. If you write fast-paced, tight stories without room for unused detail, then don’t try to add things in. If you write slower titles where the overall sense of the setting is part of the story, not particular guns on the mantle, then don’t fret about keeping a list of details that must be used later in the plot.
Chekhov’s Law, like many other laws (other than Murphy and Newton), is a very good reminder, especially if you write short form, or plays, or tight stories. If you are more discursive, or have a different style, then the gun can be a piece of decoration, a memento from an ancestor, an unwanted reminder of the past, perhaps, but it does not have to be in working condition and certainly don’t try to fire it. (And remember the Four Rules if you do shoot it.)
*As opposed to Ibsen’s Gun, which appears over and over and over until watchers know that it is a CLUE and a LEITMOTIV. (See Hedda Gabbler for details).
NOTE: I am away from the computer for most of today, and will try to answer questions and free comments from moderation as I get a chance.
Mad Genius Club 
9 responses to “Does the Gun on the Wall Have to Be Fired?”
Detail waves are one of the techniques mystery authors use to camouflage clues. We focus on a character as he zones out of the conversation and takes in the scene, right down to a drainpipe outside the window. And the sleuth shows us the importance of that drainpipe later.
I’m finding that these days I write a lot of non-fiction by instinct, adn that my instincts betray me.
‘Can betray me’ is a little softer than I mean, but I certainly don’t mean that they always give me every choice incorrect. I get enough correct choices that I can coast along, and then “what on earth did I try to say here? No, cannot salvage this, delete, delete, delete.”
Reading a lot of detailed step by step proof mathematics textbooks can serve me poorly if the sort of writing I am trying to do is not anything close to that.
Which is to say that I angst about not talking to people, and I also angst over drafts that try inappropriately to be precisely and overly detailed. My instinct here was to chime in on why specifying detail requirements has a compliance cost for playwrights. To take what you have concisely said, and expand on it with unnecessary supporting evidence or claims.
I tuned a lot of my instincts arguing with people on the internet. If I am lost or stressed, I am likely to assume that everything is an argument, that somewhere that there is someone advocating for ‘the other side’ of whatever idea or claim. Then I can make some wild assumptions about the audience, and also to assume that the most esoteric things are self-evident to all, and that the things that everyone knows and agrees on are in need of extensive citation, and a dozen detailed steps of analysis.
I’ve been struggling to navigate the questions of appropriate levels of detail. But, at the same time, a lot of my seemingly worse writing has also been related to issues with my mood.
Guns are cool, so it is cooler to have a fictional firearm, and for it to be fired. OTOH, if I try to make people sit still for enough details of quality control during manufacturing, those had better be very important.
If the gun is the only thing on the wall, I expect it to be fired. If the gun, the sword, and a critter head trophy are on the wall, and the fireplace mantle below it has several photographs, a folded flag in a display case, and a pile of firestarters…
Then if the fire is started (whether in the fireplace or elsewhere) and the photographs provide connection, and the flag explains how close the owner was to the deceased person in the photograph, so of course he’d have the MacGuffin or the knowledge of where it was hidden, and that it’s where he and the deceased used to go hunt….
At that point, the gun and the sword are flavour text, extraneous details that help set the scene.
Of course, if I’m trying to figure out where to go from a point later in the book, and I desperately need a gun or a sword, I’ll go back and grab from there… but I don’t have to.
Yeah, this.
Let’s not also forget the “what reader has perfect memory?” issue.
For both “growing cast of thousands” series and “the German sword or the Byzantine one on who’s mantle?” detailed descriptions, I increasingly find it difficult to either pick up or ignore (appropriately) the mention of the item/person under my reader’s eye at quite the right memory level.
If the object is mentioned too often (easy to do for the conscientious author), then (depending on genre) it can scream “clue!”, unless it is also disguised as something that naturally would be mentioned repeatedly (Sherlock Holmes’ pipe as an offensive weapon, say, or the life-saving foot-tangling rug in the doorway). If not mentioned enough, then it’s easily forgotten, so I try to build it in with organic casual repetition, so that it can hide in plain sight.
But characters…. my own character darlings and their names/relationships are all very vivid to me, but (I’m sorry) as a reader there aren’t enough letters in the alphabet to serve as distinguishing initials (Tim, Tom, Tamburlane, Tuppie, Talamasca, Tammie). As a reader, I would very greatly appreciate a lot more paraphrasing to support character interactions (“Her father gave her a dirty look” or “He raised an eyebrow at his daughter’s claim”). That never gets old for me, in a series of 20 entries, each a few hundred pages long. (Or even just in one long book.) Constant subliminal reminders dropped in occasionally are very welcome — I’d pay more for the version of the series where that’s an option, so that I can remember why character actions should be resonating in a way the author clearly intends (but that I’ve forgotten).
I made a big deal about MC being given a .45 Colt 1911 and lessons on how to shoot it effectively. Couple chapters later, the gun figures prominently because MC -doesn’t- shoot it.
Take that, Mr. Chekov! ~:D
“Well, I wouldn’t want to be a pain,” Sam muttered, climbing out of the hot spring more carefully than he had been doing. He made it to the bench and sat wavering a bit, until he got his equilibrium back. He put his gun belt on first, then shoes, underwear, shirt and finally his shorts. Sat for a moment thinking about what would suck the most that might happen, and remembered all the Hollywood movies where the bad guy substitutes blanks in the hero’s gun. That would be pretty bad.
He pulled out his pistol and removed the magazine like Alice had showed him, pulled back the slide to eject the round in the chamber because she had cuffed him three times for forgetting, and inspected the bullets. They looked good as far as he could tell, nice and front heavy with lead, jackets shiny and not corroded, no pocket lint stuck in the hole in the front of the bullet. Primers intact. His engineer brain thought through the problem, and he remembered Alice had shown him how to check the barrel. He put his thumb in the open chamber and looked down the barrel from the muzzle, using his thumbnail to reflect sunlight.
There was a twig in there.
“Göll!” he called. “Got anything to clean a pistol?”
That got her running. She slid to a stop in front of him after a short sprint, took the pistol out of his hand and checked it. “Good catch, hero,” she told him.
One of her spiders came running up and stuck a fuzzy appendage down the barrel, forcing the twig out the open chamber. “Pine sap,” said the spider in disgust. It sprayed something down the barrel and ran it through. “Sabotage,” it decided, changing its mind. “Let’s see how this goes.” It extruded a drop of something viscous from its mouth onto the limb and ran it through again. The barrel began to fizz as whatever was on the metal reacted violently with the drop of goo.
In the distance something shrieked and fell out of a tree. It ran five steps before a hidden spider shot it with a railgun, amazingly loud though it was half a mile away.
“Yeah, that’s right boys,” muttered the spider next to Sam, inspecting the barrel again. “Nano-disassembler beats magic.”
It’s better that it NOT be fired because then you can surprise the readers with its actual plot function, which is, say, to hold the priceless pearls that the owner brought back as loot.
You can achieve much the same effect by giving the Chekhov’s Gun an obvious plot purpose at the time it is introduced. Even with a gun, for another character to comment on the gun and where the character had to have gotten it may distract.
Look, in the end, setups need some kind of payoff. Either the gun is fired or an offhand remark becomes literally true and vitally important *8 freaking books later* (thank you Jim Butcher!)
Chuckle Chuckle
I’m helping to proof-read Christopher Nuttall’s books.
In the current book, a character (Adam) is thinking about experimenting on something that the Main Character (Emily) thinks is very dangerous.
To the point where Emily asks another character to keep an eye on Adam’s experiments (she knows how hard it would be for Adam (or her) to not experiment with this).
The fun part is that I know how this book will end so I’m thinking that Adam’s idea will be very very useful in the next book. [Crazy Grin]