Guns, non-controversial

[mrissa]

You know how they (where I think "they" is "Chekhov," and not the Walter Koenig kind, either, but I could be wrong) say that if you show a gun on the mantelpiece in Act 1, you have to fire it by Act 5 (or 3, depending on what kind of play you've got)?

Between this book here and the one before it, if I get any more guns, we will be able to reenact the Battle of Gettysburg with them.

Sigh.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

You are right on all counts about the relevant Chekhov.

The problem with that approach, is that, while it tells you that if a gun shows up in Act 1 you need to use it in Act 5, and that if you want to use a gun in Act 5 you should set it up in Act 1, it's no help at all in figuring out what to do about the ninety-foot shark that turned up in the library in the Second Interlude.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Fire it, and hope it wasn't the sole support of its sharkly family.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

A giant shark? It must either eat somebody, or spectacularly *not* eat somebody.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What you've often been is not eaten by sharks? That can't be right....

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

Since I'm conceited enough to think I'm always at the top of the food chain, I think I'd rather grill the shark and serve it w/a sauce of crawdads, spinach and peppers. Umm I could maybe think of adding artichokes too. But then I am a chef.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, perhaps this will solve rysmiel's plot dilemmas, too. Either literally or metaphorically.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

No, because I was in the boat.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's good, because what you've often been is not in boats. Or so I hear.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

If you're planning a trilogy, can you change the advice to show up in book 1, fire in book 2?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, well, it's worse than that. Much worse, in fact. Two or three books worse.

But if you're planning a five book series that's a series-series, not an episodic-series, some of the guns at the beginning of book one must fire in book one, and some of them must not fire until book five.

This is all very complicated, is what I'm saying.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

You know how you always say you're really a novel writer rather than a short-story writer? Is that really correct, or are you really a *novels* writer, as in sequels and trilogies and serials, at heart? Seems like you get issued a lot of very big stories to tell.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

SIGH.

[rosefox]

So if you set the stage on fire in Act 1...

Someone finish this for me. I have no idea.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

...it's warm for the rest of the play.

[rosefox]

Heh! True. I've always been very fond of that philosophy.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

...Acts 2 and 3 had better be very, very short.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

This leads to the story-generation method of simply littering the stage with strange guns, on the premise that you will be forced to create an interesting plot simply by dint of /having/ to fire them all.

I don't do that very much in story-writing (though I do quite often notice that something I thought was a doorstop in act one has started to look gun-like in act two, has been moved to the mantle by act three, and looms through act four, just *waiting*) but I've used it with a lot of entertainment-value in collaborative writing projects. "What am I supposed to do now?" "...Well, I could always fire this gun that's been sitting here for three letters..."

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

"The Fall of the Kings" was a great example of gun-planting. Every single thing I remembered from the beginning showed up in the end.