Jump to content

Chekov's endless arsenal


Ser Leftwich

Recommended Posts

"Chekov's Gun" is used a lot on here and is often overstated.

1) Chekov wrote only one novel. He wrote mostly plays and short stories, which have to be shorter and more direct/efficient with what is mentioned.

2) It is advice from Chekov specifically about writing plays. Plays are short (see #1). Compare to Martin's writing, which often tells us more about how the chicken looks than the characters.

2) It is not an absolute rule. You only know which story elements are important at the end. ASoIaF isn't done.

 

Not everything that is mentioned in ASoIaF will be important.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Ser Leftwich said:

"Chekov's Gun" is used a lot on here and is often overstated.

1) Chekov wrote only one novel. He wrote mostly plays and short stories, which have to be shorter and more direct/efficient with what is mentioned.

2) It is advice from Chekov specifically about writing plays. Plays are short (see #1). Compare to Martin's writing, which often tells us more about how the chicken looks than the characters.

2) It is not an absolute rule. You only know which story elements are important at the end. ASoIaF isn't done.

 

Not everything that is mentioned in ASoIaF will be important.

 

 

You are a writer, reading to writers make me thirsty and hungry. Understand if anymore words come pouring out of your keyboard I'm going to have to eat every chicken in this forum.:P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can agree that Chekhov's Gun has become so much of a truism for writing that fans sometimes rely on it a bit too much in their speculations on where a story is going--and I'm probably guilty of that myself.

It's certainly not a law of writing, especially for a genre like mystery, which benefits from feints and sleights of hand to distract readers' attention away from the solution until the author is ready for the reveal. GRRM himself is a fan of mystery, and his stories have elements of that genre, so he's unlikely to incorporate every detail that pops up in his story into some grand resolution.

Still, he is rather good at using what seem like minor details to serve his larger narrative. The trick, though, is that details picked up in one person's POV are likely to serve a different person's storyline further down the road, so it's not an obviously predictable usage. And it could be a direct plot setup (like the Gravedigger, who will eventually re-enter the narrative, but probably not Brienne's), but it might also be more symbolic foreshadowing. So, it's a dangerous game we play with our tinfoil hats, but it's fun!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The amount he wrote or the medium he wrote in is largely irrelevant to the concept being described. 

I'll agree it's not an absolute rule, certainly there have been authors that don't follow it. Mystery writers often break it for the sake of suspense and to keep the reader guessing for example.

I don't think applying the rule to ASoIaF is overstating anything though. Especially for a writer like Martin, who has a demonstrated pattern of burying details in his novels that turn out to be pertinent later. 

Will every detail turn out to be important? Obviously not. Will many details turn out to be important? I don't think anyone can reasonably say anything but yes to that. The principle is applicable to Martin's works. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chekhov's gun refers to something that is introduced that has obvious importance, or has no other reason to be introduced, that creates expectations in the audience that it is going to pay off.  Obviously, in this series, things can, and probably do, change, in the writing, so it might not pay off.

For example, GRRM did not cover Jayne Poole's back with whip marks for the hell of it.  There is a reason for it; otherwise it  is simply pointless.  Similarly, the loan between the Iron Bank and the Nights Watch will probably show up again.  We have been deprived of details on these for a reason.  There may be other examples, as well.  But I do agree that it should be taken with a bit of care.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/31/2022 at 7:10 PM, Ser Leftwich said:

"Chekov's Gun" is used a lot on here and is often overstated.

1) Chekov wrote only one novel. He wrote mostly plays and short stories, which have to be shorter and more direct/efficient with what is mentioned.

2) It is advice from Chekov specifically about writing plays. Plays are short (see #1). Compare to Martin's writing, which often tells us more about how the chicken looks than the characters.

2) It is not an absolute rule. You only know which story elements are important at the end. ASoIaF isn't done.

 

Not everything that is mentioned in ASoIaF will be important.

 

 

Absoutely agree that not everything in ASOIAF will be important, in fact I think a significant portion interesting but ultimately unsignificant world building.

I suppose the problem is that we don't know what will be important and what will be unimportant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Odd and unnecessary things cry out for some kind of justification - I can't appreciate them as world building if they just feel wrong, somehow. Example: the Eyrie's oxen, which power the winches to lift up supplies. They are killed every winter, which mean every spring new oxen must be lifted into the Eyrie without the aid of oxen. They could lift calves, but then would have to wait for them to grow before being able to do any useful work. By which time it might be winter again. Weird and unnecessary.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The principle of Chekov's Gun is more about efficiency of language. If something has no impact on the story, then its place in the story should be questioned. That can be a detail, like a gun, or it might be a paragraph, a scene, a chapter or even a character. If it has no impact then you have to ask why it's there.

Checkov was mainly talking about plays, which are far more sparse manuscripts than novels and therefore place a higher premium on efficient use of words. To paraphrase the man, if you are going to spend words placing a gun in the opening scene, then it had better go off at the climax. Otherwise the gun is just an unnecessary detail as it can be taken out without changing the story in any way.

In mystery writing, red-herrings are necessary, they add to the mystery. If the gun being cleaned by Colonel Mustard in the opening scene is a red-herring then it doesn't need to go off, because in the end Colonel Mustard is not the killer, as we were first led to believe when we saw him cleaning his gun. So the gun still served an element of the story, even if it was misdirection.

Another common method of hiding clues in a story is called in plain sight. This involves burying a clue in a heap of pointless information, so there's usually a point to using pointless information.

There are a lot of elements to a story, like plot, character, theme, setting, and mood. Every paragraph or sentence or even word, should be serving some element of the story. GRRM has talked about the process of sweating down his manuscripts before delivery. That's a process where every word he can strip out without taking from the story gets stripped out. This is the opposite to padding, which is something GRRM definitely does not need to do. He wants to cut his manuscripts down so he can fit their conclusions in at the end and not have to bump them into the start of the next book instead. As a result, we should be confident that everything that remains in the finished manuscript serves some element of the story, if not multiple elements.

Some passages might leave us struggling to see the point on the surface but the books are multi-layered and that's why readers frequently catch new stuff on re-reads.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...