Being a Better Writer: Chekhov’s Gun · 10:54pm Jun 11th, 2018
Welcome back readers! Guess who had a real breakfast yesterday morning? If you guessed me, that’s correct. If you’re wondering why that’s significant, all I feel I need to do is point you at the title of my last post, the self-explanatory Flu.
Yup. The latter half of this last week was fun. And compared to that, being able to have real food is absolutely wonderful.
On another note, you know what else is wonderful? Seeing the first reviews and feedback start to trickle in for Shadow of an Empire. It’s official: Shadow of an Empire is an awesome, gripping read, and people love it! This also marks the first time I’ve ever had people contact me over Twitter to tell me how much they loved the book—right on! If you’ve not gotten started on Shadow of an Empire yet … well, what’s the hold up? Click that book cover on the right and get going! Knife-fights, horseback chases, shootouts, and more await!
Grabbed your copy? Good. Now that you’ve done that, we can move onto today’s topic: Chekhov’s Gun.
I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of this one. Chekhov’s gun is one of the more universally known writing rules. Named not for Chekhov of Star Trek fame but rather for a book on writing advice by one Anton Chekhov, Chekhov’s Gun has become an almost universal law across fiction. It’s simple, easy to remember, and most of all, works. Writing a story? Keeping Chekhov’s Gun in mind will not only help you keep track of important narrative objects, but also trim out unneeded descriptive elements and clutter. Not bad for a straightforward, easy to remember quote.
Now, at this point those of you who can paraphrase the rule off-hand are probably already jumping ahead, but those of you who cannot, and are either new to the rule or inexperienced with it may be wondering exactly what it is or how pulls this off. So, as we start our discussion of Chekhov’s Gun, let’s revisit the rule itself. Like I said, it’s pretty simple, and easy to remember. You ready? Here goes:
Kudos on your article.
I live in a blue state so it's harder to get a gun here.
Hafta go to a red state and get Chekov's gun.
On the subject of Mr. C's gun, did you see the movie Gremlins?
There was this sword hung on the wall with no care.
The movie folks worked a bit too hard to make sure viewers knew about it.
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Gremlins is one of my favorite movies, and I thought about that darn sword many times while writing this, lol.
That was a good article as usual, and while I don't really have anything to say about it directly, I think it would be good to follow it with an article on red herrings because that's something that runs a serious risk of running into the problems of falling into the the pitfalls of failing at a Checkov's Gun as you pointed out here.
What you did there. I see it.