Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Chekov's Bullets and the Second View

by M A N

Time has not been a friend of mine this week, but I do quickly want to discuss the concept of the "gun on the mantlepiece." Playwright Anton Chekov said that if there is a gun on the mantlepiece in ACT 1, it must go off in ACT 3. This little tidbit of literary wisdom is known as (obviously) Chekov's Gun (like the Wiki article says, this concept is often confused with foreshadowing. Personally I think they are distinctly different. I see foreshadowing as more of an abstract hint of things to come whereas Chekov's gun refers to more tangible objects or events).

Chekov's adage makes perfect sense. If you're going to show your audience something as profound as a the metaphorical gun, it better have some relevance to your story. There's nothing quite so frustrating as a story that is all set-up and no payoff.

I am terribly fond of Chekov's gun. However, I tend to misuse the concept (or perhaps just misunderstand). Whereas Chekov was referring to something that is obvious to the audience, I like things that aren't immediately obvious to the audience. They're little things that read as throwaway lines or pieces of scenery solely there to decorate the background. It isn't until the climax of the story that all these little fragments come into place.

The wrtiers of Dr. Who use this to wonderful effect.

*SPOILERS BEGIN*

Take for example, Season 4. The declining bee population, the missing planets, the Medusa Cascade, even the more obvious Rose Easter Eggs. They all act as breadcrumbs throughout the season until they coalesce in the final episodes.


*SPOILERS END*

What I love about these little "bullets" is that noticing them isn't imperitive to enjoying or understanding the story, but it adds a layer of enjoyment for audience members who like to delve a bit deeper. It also increases the enjoyment of a second viewing/reading as you notice clues and hints that seemed irrelevant before. This also makes future stories more enjoyable by encouraging the parsing of scenes and language for hidden meanings.

For a brief example, watch the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode that Mark Waid posted on his site. Then go back and watch it again, keeping an eye out for all the clues. I'm sure there will be a couple of times where you'll slap your forehead and say, "Duh!" But notice what happenes. You've just watched a show TWICE, the second time being equally enjoyable yet for a different reason. To use a bad metaphor, you already know the punchline, but you're watching it for the joke.

I've done this with my own writing, specifically with Fall of Cthulhu. There is one specific bullet that I have been leaving on the mantlepiece since the very first issue that won't go off until the very last (next month as a matter of fact). The goal is to not only make the story enjoyable during the first reading, but to compel the reader to read the story a second time. Whether it works or not is something you will have to tell me.


On a separate note, we'll be skipping Guitar Friday this week since I'll be in New York for the New York Comicon. If any of you will be there, make sure to stop by BOOM! Booth #1313 on the main floor and say hi.

55 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're the professional writer, but as a very experienced consumer of written entertainment, I've always viewed Chekov's Gun as more deliberate and obvious than the hints, teasers, and easter eggs you mention. And at the same time more specific than foreshadowing (as you say).

To continue using Doctor Who, Chekov's Gun would be the beginning of Season Two's finale, where Rose tells the audience that this is the story of how she dies.

A related question: does a recognizable actor in what at first appears to be a bit part in a TV show count as Chekov's Gun -- I'm thinking of your typical Law & Order where the detectives are interviewing the victim's husband and he's that guy who's been in that other show and wasn't he in that movie. Obviously he's the murderer because you recognized him.

T.C. Jakobsen said...

I don't think Chekhov was talking about the obvious. If you read his plays, he is seldom very obvious. Also in the famous quote, we are talking about a gun on a mantle piece, hardly the most obvious thing in the world, especially on a theater stage without close-ups.

someBrad is completely wrong in assuming that Rose telling the audience this is her death-episode is a gun of the brand Chekhov. It is a prologue - like the one used in Romeo and Juliet, or in American Beauty, which breaks the illusion of reality and sets the stage for a different perception of a drama.

Chekhov was talking about set-up and pay-of, and essentially about the unity and the economy of a play.

Kate said...

If you drink the house Kool-Aid at USC's screenwriting program, this variation of Chekov's gun is called "the plant and payoff."

The distinction is that, as you say, the audience doesn't really see the plant for what it is, but when the payoff hits, they remember the earlier information.

The film used to illustrated this concept @ USC was "Back to the Future," which has the advantage of a first act that is almost entirely plants, and a second act that proceeds to payoff each and every one with great precision.

I agree, it's a handy tool. (And I have great fondness for the teachings of Frank Daniels et al, but I have no illusions that there's one great, master system for writing screenplays.)

Myself, I have a weakness for elements of the future -- I can never pull it off without sounding hacky, but when it's done well, it is a thing of beauty. (Going back to "Back to the Future," the moment when Marty sees the poster for the Under the Sea dance, and realizes he can use that to reunite his parents? The poster is an element of the future.)

Anonymous said...

Yeah, Rose's prologue wasn't a good example.

I like Kate's definition of a plant being something you don't notice enough at the time to spoil the plot but can remember enough to make the pay-off work. But this is not what I'm thinking of when I hear Chekov's Gun because the pay-off with the gun is pre-ordained (it must be fired) and that seems based on creating anticipation for the pay-off which means that there has to be some level of obviousness and predictability. Chekov's gun isn't a plant because the audience does see it for what it is (if they see it), they just don't the specifics surrounding it's firing.

I still think this is in a different category than the hints are so subtle that they require a second viewing to appreciate.

Maybe my sense of how obvious something should be to be considered an example Chekov's Gun is colored by 1) watching lots of bad attempts in the course of years of movie and TV watching, and 2) general audience sophistication. Now, in addition to knowing what a gun is and therefore anticipating the pay-off if we see the gun, we are trained to look for the gun.

Anonymous said...

#1313 huh?

Someone should put up a sign that says, "Mockingbird Lane."

Anonymous said...

Now is a great time to promote the show.

Who would you want to see on a talk show appearance?

What's a good promotional product for Leverage?

Stellar Drift said...

Oh dear... I always thought the Dr. Who things was sophomoric nonsense signifying nothing more than "stuff we put in the last episode." - for genre relevance check out Babylon 5 (whole series, skip nothing, see them in order) for some smoking starships on the nebular shelf.

As for Chekov, its a little known fact that his older brother Bruce forced him to eat the damn gun and stop using crutches ;-)

Andrew Timson said...

Babylon 5 is a great example. But I'm not so sure it's all that different from Doctor Who—when you're working over 13 episodes instead of 110, the scales of what you can build up and pay off are vastly different.

For an example of how not to do it, see the new Battlestar Galactica. The Final Five were only invented to solve a plot problem (why wouldn't Baltar see the other models on the baseship in season 3?), and weren't the product of any particular planning. There's also breadcrumbs dropped early on that can't or probably won't be followed up on. (Which B5 is also guilty of too, to an extent—but that usually stemmed from production realities rather than JMS making it up as he went.)

Anonymous said...

For the record, this TVTropes page is made of win.

That Fuzzy Bastard said...

A weird thing about Chekhov's gun... The term as currently used comes from the memoirs of Shchukin, who quotes Chekhov saying that a gun introduced in the first act must go off by the last.

But... In my Russian lit courses a few years ago, I had heard that Shchukin was misquoting, and that the actual source is a letter from Chekhov to his wife, in which he writes "Here in Moscow, I've been seeing a lot of boring plays---you know the sort, the kind where, if a gun is introduced in the first act, it has to go off in the last."

And considering Chekhov's writing, that actually makes a lot more sense! Chekhov's original quote probably refers to Ibsen's Hedda Gabbler, which features a very prominent gun on the mantelpiece, which dramatically goes off at the end of the play. But that kind of well-constructed Ibsenism is what Chekhov was rebelling against as a writer. For evidence, look at The Cherry Orchard, where *two* guns are dramatically introduced in the first act, and neither one is ever heard from again (even after the owners of the guns are forced off their land).

Setup and payoff are wonderful things. But they can introduce a terrible feeling of tedium in an alert viewer, as she starts counting down the minutes until the obviously-on-its-way payoff comes. Personally, I think we could all take more of a lesson from Chekhov's plays, which are full of red herrings, digressions, and other elements that are there to illustrate character or situation rather than shove the plot forward.

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