In which I remembered the Chekhov’s Gun principle…
Hey there, writing friends! Today I had a little mini breakthrough in the plane emergency scene. I had been stuck for so long on the interaction between the hero and heroine when they realize the plane is in trouble, and this afternoon I had one of those ‘Aha!’ moments out of nowhere. I realized that in the very very first scene of the book I had added a gun…
Not an actual gun. Chekhov’s gun.
If you’re not familiar, Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was a Russian (Ukranian) playwright and short-story writer. He’s most well known for his plays The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and The Three Sisters.
He was also a doctor–dude of many talents. But let’s get back to his “gun” rule. In a nutshell, the Checkov’s Gun rule, or principle, says:
- If you are going to show a gun in the first act, you better use it in the second. Or in the next scene, or chapter. Somewhere. Otherwise it doesn’t belong and you should cut it.
So those are my paraphrasing of his words above. One of his actual quotes on the subject follows below.
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 Chekhov
So back to my story. While I was doing house chores and thinking about my story, I realized that I had added a ‘gun’ in the first scene in the form of a St. Christopher Necklace that the heroine receives from her cousin, to wish her safe travels.
When I remembered that the heroine had that in her possession, and realized that I had to USE it in the upcoming scenes, suddenly inspiration came flying from my subconscious and I was able to FINALLY make a little headway on that difficult scene.
Another 400 words worth of new stuff got put down–and 400 words per hour seems to be my writing rate these days. I’ll take it.
I hope that you guys had a great writing day, too. See you tomorrow!
–Karyn