Chekhov's Gun • Hacker News Board

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#91

Post by Grimm665 » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #15

croes wrote: post #3

This principle kills surprises because a soon you see the rifle you know what will happen. A little bit of misleading is not a bad thing.

Surprise is overrated. Suspense is superior. The best explanation of the difference is given by Hitchcock in an interview with Truffaut. We see two characters talking for 45 seconds. Then a bomb goes off, that was under the table. The audience didn't know there was a bomb: big surprise; but the dialogue between the characters is completely irrelevant and eclipsed by the explosion. Now imagine the same scene, but befo…

Inglorious Basterds does this very well, its opening scene is very close to what you describe, as well as a number of other scenes in the film.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#92

Post by mbreese » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

germinalphrase wrote: post #80

dragontamer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> charming mistakes One character being played by three different actors (either that, or three characters being so similar I confused them as the same character despite being three different actors) is hardly charming IMO. Longer form stories, such as Game of Thrones (where Azor Ahai, and other such plotlines are literally killed off) are probably more entertaining. It sucks to see a fan theory turn out to not matte…

“ Red Herring, which is explicitly a detail that not only doesn't matter, but purely exists to mislead the audience.” There is also the McGuffin which appears to matter, but exists entirely to elicit character action. For instance, in “Psycho” the plot line about the stolen money is dropped almost as soon as it is established, but it did its job by getting Marion on the run and into the motel.

The MacGuffin isn’t just there to elicit a response though… it’s a primary motivator for the characters. It’s usually (but not always) a physical object, but that matters less than the fact that the characters are trying to obtain it (usually unsuccessfully). It’s also rarely explained — it is an object that simply exists.

Hitchcock loved the MacGuffin, but Psycho isn’t the example I’d use. The money in Psycho is a useful plot device, but is not a MacGuffin. Money is too common ofna motivation. The briefcase in Pulp Fiction (which is of unexplained importance, but clearly something they want to obtain) is a classic example of a MacGuffin.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#93

Post by epidemian » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #7

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovSGun There are articles about the other linked concepts as well: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Foreshadowing https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffin https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedHerring https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShaggyDogStory

Linking to 5 tvtropes pages —5 possibly-very-deep rabbit holes— on a generally nonworking day? Truly diabolic :D

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#94

Post by Vaslo » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #52

mongol wrote: post #50

In the movie Fargo, there is a substory where Marge Gunderson, the female police officer, meets with a highschool class mate Mike Yanagita. They eat dinner and he makes a romantic advance, and she leaves. This substory never made sense to me within the general plot of the movie. Should Chekhov's gun have been used, or did this episode play a part that I have not realized?

When Marge finds out from her friend that nice guy Mike is actually an unstable liar, she starts to question whether the “nice” Jerry might have similar secrets

Never realized and I’ve probably seen this movie 100 times. I suspect there may have been a little scene that connected the two more explicitly but may have been cut. Great information - I’ll go to Pancakes House now.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#95

Post by samatman » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 2:54 PM UTC

plafl wrote: post #65

bigdict wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but all those things play a role.

They play a role in a different sense: if you see a rifle it may be there because it's going to be fired or maybe because the character likes rifles. Could you imagine The Big Lebowski without bowling? And yet bowling has nothing to do with the story.

If I were to watch a documentary about The Big Lebowski I'd want it to be called Bowling, Interrupted.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#96

Post by justsomeuser » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

xaedes wrote: post #27

"The Room", by Tommy Wiseau, is a movie where Chekhov's gun isn't applied. It contains lots of small happenings with no further relevance. It has lots of other issues, technically speaken. But together they make this film not only amateurish, but it also gives it a certain kind of realism. In real life stuff happens and still may have no further relevance to the "story" after all. In real life there is nobody enforci…

I also think that the rifle can “set the frame” for the character or scenario.

E.g. that the character is the kind of person who owns guns.

It does not go off or get used, but the viewer will use that as input to make a judgement about the character.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#97

Post by Vaslo » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

One really great example of this is coughing in films. Once someone coughs for no reason, you know they will croak by the end of the film.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#98

Post by ineedasername » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 2:56 PM UTC

It's not a universal requirement of "good" writing. Contrast it with the shaggy dog style, basically the antithesis of Checkov's gun. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_dog_story

IRL is probably more like the shaggy dog.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#99

Post by mikewarot » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

njharman wrote: post #90

I was disappointed the Wikipedia article didn't have any counter views or criticism. Article on concepts typically do.

I thought the reference to Hemingway's mockery of the concept was a well done hint that not everyone agrees with the principle.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#100

Post by samatman » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

shakna wrote: post #8

zorr wrote: post #4

I've seen this principle come up a few times but I don't think I fully understand it. For example, assuming a passage in a story where a protagonist enters person X's house and a particular room is described in much detail. The described detail does not necessarily advance the story but instead does "character building" hinting at the personality of person X. There literally could be a loaded gun hanging on the wall…

The best stories frequently break the principle. There is a ton of worldbuilding done in even simple-reading stories like the Hobbit, that are largely irrelevant to the greater whole, but serve to give the reader a better perspective. Mindlessly following Chekhov's Gun, in my opinion, will always result in pulp fiction. Whether it's TV or novels, or movies. If you've stripped a story down to the bare basics, all you'…

The tiny ring of invisibility which Bilbo uses as a plot devise to escape a few times, turns out in Lord of the Rings to be the most important artifact in Middle Earth.

About as Chekhov's Gun as it gets.

I wouldn't say that leaving frequent references to the depth and age of the world, and then filling in the Legendaria in note form for the rest of your life, is much related to this concept. If a sword hanging on the wall belonged to an ancient hero, already dead, and known to everyone in the scene, a paragraph with "Here is hung Such-and-such, the bright blade of so and so with which he did $mighty-deed" doesn't have to carry any more weight in the story. There might be a whole book or chapter about so and so, there might not be.