Chekhov's Gun • Hacker News Board

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#131

Post by watwut » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

newacct583 wrote: post #106

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…

> In real life there is nobody enforcing Chekhov's gun. Of course not. Which is sort of the point. We already have real life. Stories are something different. Checkov's gun isn't a statement of some kind of platonic ideal of fiction construction, it's a convention . We like stories with "tight" framing because it's easier to watch and keeps our attention on the things that matter. And that's all it means. You can tel…

I don't think that rule expresses universal truth. These rules come and go. You have great writers who wrote famous books which don't follow these Storytelling that follows then becomes boring and predictable when they are widely used.

The junk adventure/vampire what not literature tend to follow all the structural rules and is as forgettable as it gets.

The argument with real life matter. Because when your storytelling rules make it impossible to tell real stories, then there is something wrong with them.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#132

Post by jonahx » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

scrame wrote: post #126

Chekhov Gun discussions always remind me of this Vonnegut passage: "I had no respect whatsoever for the creative works of either the painter or the novelist. I thought Karabekian with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid. I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading ch…

Vonnegut drawing graphs of famous story plots:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ

I saw him do this bit in person in the early 90s and never forgot it.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#133

Post by goto11 » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

mlang23 wrote: post #29

As a rough guide for new woke hollywoold this might be useful. For as a general principle applied to everything? Nah. I can imagine pretty dull movies where everything that happens can already been projected into the future. Remember these movies where you can say after 10 minutes: "She is going to get in trouble, and he is going to rescue her and get her at the end." Those are fucking dull.

The principle is older that Hollywood itself, so I don't know what it has to do with "new woke"?

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#134

Post by dcow » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

As someone who constructs imagery in their head while reading for leisure, these details help maintain immersion and are anything but irrelevant. Imagine a Redwall novel without the craving inducing feasts! Are there any e.g. fantasy novels where Chekhov’s gun is applied?

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#135

Post by watwut » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #100

shakna wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The tiny ring is not the only detail in that book. Checkov gun is that everything must have purpose, not that a thing with purpose exists somewhere inside.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#136

Post by watwut » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #12

shakna wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Alexandre Dumas did, and his stories are among the best there are.

Did he? Cause his original version does not have only purposeful things in it. Like detailed descriptions of evens in tavern that have nothing to do with later developments whatsoever.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#137

Post by DanielBMarkham » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

Obligatory Star Trek trivia: in "Spectre of the Gun", from the original series, Chekov finds a six-shooter pistol at the beginning of the show, making it a literal Checkhov's Gun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_of_the_Gun (Warning: this was not one of the better ST-TOS shows)

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#138

Post by goto11 » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #37

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.

I attended a talk from Digger webcomic author and artist Ursula Vernon, and she seemed to have a different approach. If I remember right, she said that instead of planning the whole thing in advance and placing specific Chekhov’s Guns as needed, she put in a lot of small detailed world building everywhere, allowing her to choose from whatever seemed appropriate at the time. Chekhov‘s Guns are important for short stor…

Chekhov wrote short stories and plays. It is harder to apply the same principle to serialized narratives like tv-shows and comics, since you don't know how everything pans out and you cant go back and edit.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#139

Post by SergeAx » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

How many Trekkies were clickbaited here?

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#140

Post by UncleOxidant » Sun, Sep 05, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

George Saunders' A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life[1] is highly recommended. I thought I had a good idea of how to read a short story before reading this book. I was wrong. Saunders (with the help of Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol) show how it's done - and in so doing also show how to write a short story.

[1] https://www.georgesaundersbooks.com/books/a-swim-in-a-pond-i...