by Anne R. Allen
"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
Chekhov, the Russian playwright, also wrote short stories, essays, and instructions for young writers. The above admonition is probably his most famous writerly advice. It’s aimed at playwrights, but it’s true of all fiction writing.
His rule is telling us to remove everything that has no relevance to the story.
If chapter one says your heroine won a bunch of trophies for archery which she displays prominently alongside her replica of a medieval English longbow, she’d better darn well shoot an arrow before the story is done.
But Don’t Details Give Insight into Character?
What if that longbow is only there to show us what her apartment looks like? It’s very different from shadow boxes displaying a Barbie collection, or garish lampshades that would make a decorator cry. Décor gives important insight into a character, doesn’t it?
It depends. Yes, we do want to use details to set tone and give depth to our characters, but the key is how you stress those details when you first present them.
If there's a whole page about those archery trophies, or the characters have a conversation about the importance of the longbow in English history, eventually you need to shoot some arrows.
Now, not every lampshade the author mentions has to show up two chapters later on the head of a drunken ex-boyfriend, but you need to be careful how much emphasis you put on that lampshade.
If you lovingly describe a terrible lampshade in several paragraphs and the lampshade never appears again, you have a forgotten “gun.”
Mysteries Need Red Herrings, Don’t They?
What if you write mysteries? Mysteries need irrelevant clues and red herrings. Otherwise, the story will be over before chapter seven.
But mystery writers need to manage their herrings. If the deceased met his demise via arrow, probably shot by a medieval English longbow, then our heroine is going to look like a viable suspect to the local constabulary.
Only we're sure she didn't do it because she's our hero! Okay, that means the longbow and the trophies are red herrings.
But they still need to be dealt with. Maybe not fired like Chekhov's gun, but they need to come back into the story and be reckoned with. Like maybe the real killer visited her apartment earlier when delivering Grubhub, then broke in later to "borrow" the longbow in order to make our heroine look like the murderous archer.
Is Your Subplot a Chekhov's Gun?
I've been running into the “forgotten gun” problem in a lot of fiction lately — both indie and traditionally published.
I sometimes find myself flipping through whole chapters that have nothing to do with the main story. That's because the subplot isn't hooked in with the main plot. It's just hanging there, not doing anything, like a pistol on the wall.
The subplot has become the unfired Chekhov's gun.
For instance, one mystery had the protagonist go through endless chapters of police academy training after the discovery of the body. The mysterious murder wasn't even mentioned for a good six chapters. I kept trying to figure out how her crush on a fellow aspiring law enforcement officer was going to solve the mystery.
I slowly realized it wasn't going to.
None of the romance stuff had to do with the mystery. When I finally flipped through to a place where the main plot resumed, the hot fellow student didn't even make an appearance. He'd already gone off with a hotter female recruit.
It's fine to have a romance subplot in a mystery — in fact, that's my favorite kind. But that romance has to take place while some mystery-solving is going on. And hopefully it will provide some hindrances to the proceedings, and maybe some comic relief.
But if that romance doesn't "trigger" a new plot twist or reveal a clue, then it's an unfired gun on the wall. It's just hanging there, annoying your reader, who expects it to be relevant.
Don’t Create a Chekhov's Gun with Too Many Named Characters
Another "unfired Chekov's gun" situation often comes up with the introduction of minor characters and "spear-carriers."
You don't want to introduce the Grubhub guy by telling us how he got the nickname "Green Arrow" — followed by two paragraphs about his archery expertise — unless he's going to reappear later in the story. And he’d better be doing something more archery-related than delivering egg rolls and moo goo gai pan.
This is a common problem with newbie fiction. In creative writing courses we're taught to make characters vivid and alive. So every time we introduce a new character, no matter how minor, we want to make them memorable. We want to give them names and create great backstories for them.
But you should fight the urge, no matter what the creative writing teacher in your head is saying.
If the character is not going to reappear or be involved with the plot or subplot, don't give him a name. Don't even give him a quirky outfit. Just call him "the Grubhub guy" or "the Uber driver" or "the barista."
A named character becomes a Chekhov's gun. The reader will remember the name and expect the character to come back and do something explosive.
Research Can Create Lots of Unfired Guns
Many unfired guns come from what I call research-itis. That's when the author did a ton of research, and dammit, they're going to tell you every single fact they dug up.
You'll get three chapters on the importance of the English longbow in the Hundred Years War, and how it was quicker and more lethal than the crossbows of the French army. Then there’s a chapter on the vital role of the longbow in the battle of Agincourt, and a study of the Robin Hood ballads and the part the longbow played in the Robin Hood myth.
None of which has anything to do with the dead guy in the living room with the arrow in his back.
If the reader doesn't need to know something to solve the mystery and it's not a red herring, keep it to yourself.
Although a lot of that research will come in very handy for blogposts and newsletters when you're marketing the book, so don't delete a word of those research notes!
What about you, writers? Do you ever have a problem with an unfired Chekhov’s gun?
About Anne
Anne R. Allen is an award-winning blogger and the author of 13 funny mysteries and 2 how-to books for writers. She’s currently published by Thalia Press. Her bestselling Camilla Randall Mysteries are a mash-up of mystery, rom-com, and satire. They feature perennially down-on-her-luck former socialite Camilla Randall — who is a magnet for murder, mayhem, and Mr. Wrong. But she always solves the mystery in her quirky, but oh-so-polite way. Anne is a contributor to Writer’s Digest and The Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market. She’s the former artistic director of the Patio Playhouse in Escondido, CA and now lives on the foggy Central Coast of California.
The Hour of the Moth
When Camilla Randall allows a neighboring business to hold a “Moth Hour” storytelling event in the courtyard of her beachy California bookstore, she finds an inconvenient corpse left in the audience after the event. The deceased, a storyteller famous for his appearances on NPR, turns out to have a shady past — and a lot of enemies. Unfortunately, Camilla’s boyfriend Ronzo is one of them. When it turns out the famous storyteller has been murdered, Ronzo becomes a “person of interest,” and goes into hiding.
It’s up to Camilla — and her cat Buckingham — to find out which of the quirky storytellers who attended the Moth event is the real killer. Each of their stories contains a clue to the mystery. It seems one of the storytellers is in possession of some stolen diamonds, and another, who first appears to be a helpful friend, is anything but.
Meanwhile Ronzo is incommunicado, the bodies pile up, and a series of mysterious catastrophes makes Camilla fear she’s losing her mind. Then, with the help of her drag queen friend Marva, Camilla has to save her best friends from the murderer before it’s too late.
Top featured photo purchased from Depositphotos.
