For those of you not familiar with the concept of Chekov’s Gun, it is often explained by pointing out that if your story describes a gun that’s hanging on a wall, somewhere in that story, someone needs to fire that gun. In other words, don’t put an important element into your story that serves no purpose, because it’s just going to end up pissing off your reader.
What Anton Chekhov was actually saying is that if there is a rifle somewhere on stage in the first act, by the second or third stage, that rifle needs to be fired. Some writers have interpreted this technique as foreshadowing, meaning that the mere presence of the gun like the one which you can buy AR 15 rifles, is an indication that at some point it becomes critical to the story going forward.
Now, keep in mind there are caveats to this where the process no longer holds true, such as a police officer being part of a scene who just so happens to be wearing a gun. The mere fact that police officers are linked with guns by the very nature of their occupation doesn’t necessarily mean that the carrying of that gun will necessitate it being fired. Think of all of the police officers who have gone through their entire careers without ever firing their weapons. It’s somewhat the same for whatever type of story you’re writing. The gun’s appearance may not lead to an outcome requiring usage if it’s more part of the costume of the actor or character who would naturally be carrying one. But when the gun becomes a device in which attention is paid, the eventual discharge of that weapon becomes more and more a given.
There are some really good examples of Chekhov’s Gun available to us to see exactly how this dynamic is played out. Let’s examine a few of them:
WHEN CHEKHOV’S GUN IS ACTUALLY A GUN: An immediate usage of Chekhov’s Gun appears in the first Terminator movie (which is appropriate because it’s basically a movie all about guns). When Arnold, as the Terminator, goes into a gun shop and buys a 12-gauge auto loader from actor Dick Miller, loads it and immediately kills the man. In Terminator 2, Sarah Connor takes Arnold to a survivalist hideout where she has a ton of weapons stashed, and Arnold chooses a minigun. In a later scene, when Arnold is holding off a line of police officers, he is firing the minigun, showing the immense power of that weapon.
CHEKHOV’S GUN AS A METAPHORICAL DEVICE: It’s important to point out that Chekhov’s Gun doesn’t necessarily actually have to be a gun. It just has to be something that is significant enough that when it is finally used in the story, that foreshadowing finally makes an impact.
An interesting example of this was utilized by the actor Patton Oswalt in the television series Justified. In this show, Oswalt played a constable who spends much of his screen time trying to validate himself in the eyes of others, who often see an elected constable as a joke rather than a prominent law enforcement official. The main protagonist of the show, Raylan Givens (played by Timothy Olyphant) is a larger than life U.S. Marshal, who befriends Oswalt’s character not because he’s as much of a bad ass as him, but because he is a good man who he quickly realizes will put his life on the line for all of the right reasons. One of the first times they talk, Oswalt’s character is trying to show he has it in him by acting out what he would do if he ever came face to face with the “bad guys”, using an elaborate knife technique that seems more humorous than dangerous. Raylan, who really doesn’t get impressed by pretty much anyone, just nods, almost as if he’s humoring Oswalt.
However, in a later episode, Oswalt’s constable ends up being the only one to hold out against a vicious mob gang that is trying to get information on a witness that Raylan is protecting. They take Oswalt’s character hostage and torture him, but through a set of actions that show very little expertise, Oswalt’s character gets a critical moment and actually succeeds in doing exactly what Oswalt had showed Raylan in that earlier demonstration. The clumsy constable ends up being the only one to walk out of that encounter alive.
Later on, when the head of the mobsters realizes that Oswalt’s character, named Bob, is the only one backing up Raylan, he laughs, but Raylan responds with: “People underestimate Bob at their own peril.” And then the camera pans to Bob, who you can see is realizing that he has finally achieved the respect he has fought so hard to receive.
What works best with Chekhov’s Gun is to softly make the connection that you want to make, but not spend a great deal of time focusing on it. The Marvel Cinematic Universe does a wonderful job of doing this, quite often with a simple quip in one movie that doesn’t have a payoff until a subsequent movie. An example being numerous moments involving Tony Stark, such as in Iron Man 3, Tony says: “I can’t sleep.” Then in Endgame, Pepper tells Tony that both of them know he will not rest until the world is saved. At the last climactic moment of Endgame, she says to him, as he’s dying: “You can rest now.”
It’s a great technique to use, and if used sparingly, it can build great moments in your writing.