Author Skills | Fiction | Writing Prompts

What ‘Chekhov’s Gun’ Means for Writing and Editing

Storytellers need to know this principle!

The famous author Anton Chekhov was known for his very concise short stories.

There are a great many principles that authors today can learn from these. One of the best known and easiest to understand is commonly known as ‘Chekhov’s Gun’.

It derives from the following quote by the writer:

“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.” — Anton Chekhov (source).

But what exactly does this mean?

What Chekhov was saying is that nothing should be there without a reason or purpose.

If a rifle is mentioned, why is it there? Skilful writers don’t fling things in at random. It should have a purpose, connected with characters, plot or setting.

This relates strongly to what I was saying in another article about the level of description in your fiction:

This doesn’t mean that we have to make everything minimalist. Rather, think of descriptions and scenery as being like spices and herbs in a stew. You can get too much of a good thing.

In fiction and TV

Nowadays when I hear people talk Chekhov’s Gun, it’s often used by podcasters and YouTubers who are analysing an episode of a TV show.

They use this principle to speculate about what’s going to happen next. And it’s not just about guns.

For example, if a TV show has a news item that mentions a virus that’s spreading around the world — as happens in Episode 1 of ‘The Last of Us’ — then you can be pretty sure this will come into play in the plot. And indeed it does (not a massive spoiler… that’s what the entire show and video game is about!)

Many different items and events can follow the principle of Chekhov’s gun . Examples might include:

• A main character finds an object (a ring? A mysterious wardrobe?), or some money. Or loses something.
• A new law is announced (will it be used against your new character?)
• They learn that a family member is going to visit (it will surely affect our main character or cause conflict in some way).
• We hear that a business is in trouble (perhaps the main character will later lose their job…?)

Hopefully you get the idea. Things that seem to be part of the background are there for a reason — but often, this will be revealed much later.

So when you notice things like the examples above as a viewer or a reader, you might start to speculate why the author put it there.

On Editing

Chekhov’s Gun can be challenging for authors who are ‘pantsers’ — that is, people whose creative writing is unplanned.

However, this is where editing comes in!

Perhaps you wrote in a side character that you thought might become important, but nothing ever happened to that person. They seemed interesting at the time.

Well, if they became irrelevant to the plot later, edit them out.

Or perhaps your main character had a particular bit of backstory, an injury of some kind, or some bit of equipment, or there was something special about where they live.

Maybe at the time you thought that it seemed cool, and could come into play in a fun way. But the story took a different direction.

Again, if nothing ever came of these details, they should disappear in editing.

You can use the editing process to add things, too.

Something becomes important later, but you don’t want it to come out of nowhere? Go back and seed it into an earlier chapter.

It’s much better than writing, “Oh, and there happened to be a gun on the wall that I never mentioned before”. 😅

Have fun!

And read more about Chekhov’s gun here.

By the way, just for the lols… when I first tried to create the header image in MidJourney, I meant to write “a rifle hanging on a wall above a fireplace” and accidentally typed: “a writer hanging on a wall….”

This is what it came up with:

Draw your own conclusions 😅

Psst… before you go, you can find my fiction and poetry here, as well as my articles about creativity writing and author skills right here. Or simplify things by getting my posts direct to your inbox. Do that here! 🧠 Thank you! 🌟