{"id":11552,"date":"2017-12-12T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=11552"},"modified":"2017-12-11T20:53:31","modified_gmt":"2017-12-12T02:53:31","slug":"trope-tuesday-chekhovs-armory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/trope-tuesday-chekhovs-armory\/","title":{"rendered":"Trope Tuesday: Chekhov’s Armory"},"content":{"rendered":"

The famous Russian writer Anton Chekhov had a rule:<\/p>\n

Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is, of course, where we get the trope called Chekhov’s Gun.<\/a> If a gun shows up at the beginning of a story, you can almost always be sure that it will be fired at some point before the end.<\/p>\n

Chekhov’s armory<\/a> is where the story starts out in a place like this:<\/p>\n

<\/a>Or this:<\/p>\n

<\/a>Or this:<\/p>\n

<\/a>What the hell, I might as well just give you the link<\/a> to the blog where I got all these photos. There’s plenty more gun porn<\/a> where that came from.<\/p>\n

My first time playing with this trope was Gunslinger to the Stars,<\/strong><\/a> and I have to say, it made for a really fun story. My outline literally consisted of listing a different gun for every chapter, and figuring out how to work it in. Chapter two<\/a> was where all<\/del> most of the guns were listed, but after that, it was pretty much “open fire” and “reload”<\/a> right up to the grand finale at the end (with a little bit of kissing thrown in for good measure).<\/p>\n