Chekhov’s gun
Also known as Chekhovs gun · Chekhov gun
Chekhov’s gun is the idea that anything a story makes a point of showing should matter later. If there’s a rifle on the wall in act one, it has to go off.
The idea comes from Anton Chekhov, who made the point in a few letters in the late 1880s, worded a little differently each time, as advice to other playwrights: cut anything that doesn’t matter to the story, and don’t make promises you won’t keep. The rifle was just his example.
It’s a guideline about not wasting the reader’s attention. Readers notice what a story lingers on and expect it to come back. If a writer keeps drawing attention to things that never matter, readers stop paying attention, and then the real foreshadowing gets missed.
The opposite problem is worse. An ending that depends on something never mentioned before is a deus ex machina, which is why a payoff set up three hundred pages earlier feels so satisfying. In long series the “gun” can sit there for several books, a prophecy in book one or a family name dropped in passing, before it finally goes off.
Chekhov’s gun: common questions
What did Chekhov actually say?
He made the point in several letters, worded a bit differently each time: cut anything irrelevant, and if you show a loaded rifle on stage, it needs to be fired at some point. It was writing advice for playwrights, not a formal rule.
What is the opposite of Chekhov’s gun?
A deus ex machina, where the problem gets solved by something that was never set up. Chekhov’s gun pays off something you were shown. A deus ex machina pulls in something you never saw.