Point – Counterpoint offers differing opinions on literary topics. This one discusses describing a scene.

Checkov’s Gun

Point

by: Betsy J. Bennett

We all know the Chekov quote, “if there’s a gun on the wall in the first chapter, it better go off before the end of the book.” Today’s question, is that good advice? Is it still true?

Actually, yes. It’s still true. It is great advice.

That’s not to say that everything in the first chapter must reappear. If you describe your protagonist as wearing L.L. Bean hunting boots, what you are doing is giving the reader an idea of who he is. With limited words, you are painting a specific picture of your character. Without knowing anything else about him besides the fact that he wears hunting boots, we, the reader, develop a mental image of him as someone comfortable with firearms, competent in pitching tents and making fires, someone who perhaps has a disdain for ‘civilization’. You don’t have to tell me he probably needs a shave and that his clothing features a lot of orange or cammo. I can see that. Without much more information, I probably know exactly what’s in his pick-up truck. If this character is actually a conductor for the Boston Pops, and normally wears black tie and has never been comfortable in hunting boots, then you’ll have to explain why he’s wearing them in the first chapter. If not, there’s probably no reason to ever mention the boots again.

You can build your world by describing the bridge of your spaceship, the interior of the Kansas saloon, the trenches of WWII, and I can ground myself in your reality without needing to see those descriptions again.

But substitute “something significant” for “a gun on the wall” and it better reappear before your reader reaches “the end”. Your reader wants to be clever. He wants to pick up clues (and red herrings) that the writer drops. He will see the “something significant” and remember it. He’ll want to see how the writer brings it back into the narrative. That’s how you get him to keep turning pages and reading deep into the night when he should be sleeping. You want your readers sleep deprived and hooked. (Or at least hooked).

Your reader will be disappointed if on Page 1 you mention your hero works for the CDC with Yellow Fever mutations and if by the end of the book there hasn’t been a catastrophic disaster with no vaccine in sight.

If on page 1 your spaceship navigator says there’s an unknown nebula on the horizon, your ship better end up there before the end, even if (especially if) they veer around it.

Your reader wants to anticipate the ending. Your job of course is to make the ending inevitable but not obvious. You want your reader to be pleased to be wrong, because your twists and turns were so much more entertaining that what he imagined. But you also want your reader to pick up clues.

Reading should not be a passive activity like watching the same rerun endlessly on television. The reader should be a willing participant in the unfolding events. He should mentally keep track of clues you drop no matter what your genre and try to figure out how they relate. The author should feed this addiction by keeping promises.

If there is something significant on the wall in the first chapter, it better be a significant part of the conflict and resolution.

Chekov was right about that.

Checkov’s Gun

CounterPoint

by: S.L. Kotar

 

“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” Anton Chekov

While it would be pretentious of me to criticize so important and brilliant an author – or, for that matter, my Point-Counterpoint fellow writer, there are few paragraphs of which I could object more strenuously. But what is writing to begin with, if not pretentious? Who would ever dare put pen to paper if they were to be judged against Dostoyevsky, or Melville, London or the Bronte sisters? What writer would dare think they could drop on their knees and pray beside Alyosha Karamazov; struggle with a mere spear against the great white whale; tame a half-wild sled dog; suffer a broken heart with Jane Eyre, wander the moors with Heathcliff, or be a tenant at Wildfell Hall?  Only one who dared to create and exist in their own world while taking the reader along for the adventure.

But how to paint this world becomes the question. I want the reader to see what I see; I am the director who films my characters: what the camera sees is a carefully arranged stage, called, in my medium, a piece of paper. If my character walks into a room and notes a rifle on the wall, that’s how I dressed the room. He sees it because it’s there, not because it has a special significance. If he has a stubble, I’ll describe it: flecked with grey; a two-day growth. He tugs on it; it itches. He’s wearing it because he’s working under cover. I want the reader to see the hair; feel its roughness. The reader isn’t deducting the scene, he’s in the scene. Life isn’t clear cut: it may be full of potential clues but not all of them are relevant. Real life is unpredictable. Will the rifle have some latent significance? He doesn’t know. Maybe it won’t.

What Chekov and my colleague describe is the necessity of anticipation: everything has a purpose. To me, that’s nothing more than a set-up. While anticipation is necessary in any good story, I believe it’s the uncertainty that creates drama. For me, as a writer, I want to convey, in word pictures, the look and feel; the tension and fear; exhilaration and joy. I’m putting the reader in the scene and that reader is a marshal or a lawyer or a starship captain. I put the reader in the character’s mind; you know what he knows, you experience the awe and mystery, feel the raw emotion; see and dismiss a thousand different “clues” while speculating on the outcome of a bank robbery or a jury’s decision or the awe of seeing a star born.

Depriving the reader of the chance to see and absorb a scene without knowing that’s going to happen is depriving that character/reader of the ultimate ability to make the scene and the novel come alive. The reader-witness-participant doesn’t expect the rifle to be fired in Chapter 3 because there are no “chapters” in real life. If the reader is seeking “chapters,” then he’s not in the moment – he’s on the page. And therein lies the difference.

Be bold. Be creative. You’re bringing the reader into your Universe. There’s nothing quite so personal or revealing than that. You’ve opened your soul. Carry the moment. Don’t let convention or “anticipation” get in your way.