Plot Device: Chekhov's Gun

The next plot device I would like to describe is Chekhov's gun. This stems from a dictum Anton Chekhov, the great Russian author, was fond of repeating:

"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following act it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there."

Many people mistake this for foreshadowing, a plot device that presents details that hint at events or developments that will come later. It can have that effect, but instead it is meant to be a plea for minimalism:

"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story."

In other words, everything in a story must be necessary and irreplaceable; anything that isn't should be removed.

This principle may account, as much as anything, for the modern trend in minimalist description. It is certainly true that many novice writers include too much description in their narratives, but as with any literary ideal it can be overused. The thing that needs to be remembered about Chekhov is that he primarily wrote plays and short stories, and unless we are talking about Shakespeare, plays have more in common with short stories than novels. He only wrote one novel and five novellas; the rest were all shorter works.

The thing is, that up to a certain point, minimalism is important in short works because you only have a certain amount of room to tell your story. Novels and novellas, however, have more room, so some "superfluous" description is permissible. For example, novels have the room to describe M'Lady's boudoir in exacting detail, even if most of it has no relevance to the story.

And yet, Chekhov's gun can also mean that, if you do go with "superfluous" description, you should make it relevant to the story in some manner. For example, the description of M'Lady's boudoir could be related by a thief posing as a servant while casing her home for valuables, and adding color commentary on what her possessions tell us about her life and personality. Similarly, there's usually no need to describe a businessman character as wearing a tie (it would be more relevant to say if he wasn't wearing a tie), but if you say that he wore his tie like a hangman's noose, that would go to characterization, which is relevant.

So Chekhov's gun is not really an admonishment to ruthlessly eliminate all extraneous elements no matter how trivial, until you're left with a bare-bones minimalist narrative, but rather an encouragement to make every word count, no matter how much wordage you use.