This is something that’s come up a few times now when I’ve been alpha– or beta-reading for other people, so I thought I’d muse on it for a bit.
First, let’s cover that Chekhov reference. He was a Russian playwright – hence the cover photo for this post – and Chekov’s gun is a famous piece of advice. There are a few versions, but the most famous goes:
If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired.
Anton Chekov (at least, ish)
And to a certain extent, I think all writers get that. It’s foreshadowing, right? Your main character can’t just whip out a gun in the climax if we’ve never seen a gun in the story before. That’s a bit too Deus ex machina. In Misery, Stephen King talks about the old parachute-under-the-seat trick employed by so many serials of his youth: our hero seems to be stuck in a crashing plane as one segment ends dramatically, but at the start of the next he pulls out this never-before-seen parachute and jumps to … well, not safety, but he survives long enough to make it to the next cliffhanger.
So that’s the first point of Chekov’s gun: setting up your climax.
No, you don’t want to give your whole plot away, but you want to do what all the best thrillers do: allow readers to go back through the book a second time and find all the clues they missed before. They don’t have to be obvious. You don’t need a character gesturing grandly and saying “I say, Chekov, what a big pistol you have hanging on this wall!” It can be a derringer spotted in a lady’s purse as in [redacted because hey, that gives the whole plot away].
And of course Chekov’s gun doesn’t have to be a gun. It doesn’t even have to be a weapon at all. If it’s something that’s going to be important for your character surviving the story’s climax, then we need hints at it before your character suddenly displays a new trait or skill. For example – I have to spoil American Gods for this, so skip to the next paragraph if you’d rather read it yourself – Neil Gaiman pits the old gods versus the new gods and leads them up to a final battle that our main character Shadow ends by … talking. He’s this big dude, fresh out of prison at the start of the book, and we’ve seen him fight … but only when he was goaded into it. Gaiman sets Shadow up as this pacifist who looks for other ways around the fight and only wades in when he doesn’t find other options, but that’s the most important part: he sets Shadow up that way so the final battle doesn’t come out of nowhere. We know what kind of guy Shadow is and, even if he’s a bit thrown off by all the other plot Gaiman chucks at him, there’s that core element of character that carries the day.
Spoiler over.
But the other part of Chekov’s gun comes in handling reader expectations.
I was reading the first few chapters of a friend’s book while they were still drafting it – totally alpha-reading – and I commented on a part where they’d spent a long time describing the main character’s dogs. It was something like “Oooh, I can’t wait to see how they’ll play into the book in the future!”
Their response? “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
First, it’s a first draft, so that’s totally okay. You don’t need to make Chekov’s gun work perfectly in the first draft. In fact, if you’re a discovery writer, then Chekov’s gun is totally a second draft issue. It’s absolutely, totally fine if your first draft doesn’t do everything you want your final draft to do. It just needs to do what you need a first draft to do.
Second, apparently this isn’t the usual way of thinking about it, which is why I’ve surprised a few people with those kinds of comments. So:
when you spend a lot of time describing something, you’re signaling to your readers that it’s important.
I think we all know this on a basic level but it’s not always at the front of our minds when we’re writing. Sometimes we’re just having fun describing the setting. Sometimes we’re trying to concentrate on (finally) describing the setting because we know that’s our weak point.
Sometimes it’s a slow words day and we’re just trying to get any words at all to come out.
And again: first drafts are all about getting the words on the page. We don’t judge first drafts. They’re hard-working friends who know they aren’t perfect and do their jobs well.
But, when you get to the second draft and beyond …
Chekov’s gun is a balancing act.
And, as a balancing act, it exists in more than one part of your story. Chekov indicates acts, but it works for all narratives. We need to be introduced to The Thing before we see a character use The Thing, and if we see a character taking their sweet time describing A Thing early on (Ready Player Two, I’m looking at you) then we’re primed for That Thing to show up when the character most needs it.
Once you’ve figured out how your climax and falling action are going to play out, you can look back and make the necessary changes. Did you introduce your Thing early enough? Did you spend too much time describing something that isn’t that Thing (and wasn’t meant to be a red herring)? It’s hard to strike that balance where your beta readers say something like “Wow, I should’ve seen that coming but I didn’t!” but there is middle ground between complete surprise and giving it all away.
Do you think about Chekov’s gun when you write or revise? What’s your favorite example of it being used properly? Or maybe a time when you think it could’ve been finessed just a wee bit more …
Rebecca Frost 