Loaded Guns
June 20th, 2007 by Michelle Diener
The inspiration for this blog came from Lynne’s Simpson’s recent blog on Chekhov’s Loaded Gun dictum, and how that relates to Doing Something Meaningful With Your Hero’s Penis. Lynne mentioned this would be a good RWA workshop, and I look forward to the day I see this in the RWA National Workshop line-up. I’d fly a couple of thousand miles to attend that one (and maybe heckle Lynne 
).
But humour aside, it really did get me thinking, and feeling guilty, about something that happens in my current WIP. I’ve written one scene three times now. I had this big idea that two of the three main characters, whose only connection to each other is their relationship with the heroine, and who have never met, encounter each other and exchange gun fire. The reader sees the scene from one POV while its happening, and from the other POV afterwards, and therefore realizes the significance of the encounter.
I wrote it, I carried on writing the story, and then I just had to go back and raise the stakes (this was actually before Edie’s great blog on the subject, but she inspired the third rewrite). I had them not only exchange gun shots, but words, as well. And hero #1 is in a position to kill hero #2, but because what hero #2 says is so similar to something someone else said to hero #1, in a terrifying situation alomst a year before, he staggers back and lets him go. And at that point, the reader knows immediately that they are meeting each other, and why hero #1 lets hero #2 go. Even better. I then went on my merry way, writing the rest of the book.
Then, reminded that more is more by Edie’s blog, I went back again, and when they exchange words, instead of having hero #2 echo the words of someone in hero #1’s past, I have him say something that hero #1 told the heroine while they lay in bed together. A secret he has told to no one else, but which the heroine has told to hero #2. So when the hero staggers back, the reader understands why he does it, but even more, knows there is big trouble in the heroine’s future. Big, big trouble.
Segue to the confrontation between hero #1 and heroine. When he discovers her secret (that she’s a spy, and he’s been harbouring her without realizing what she was), he is very upset, angry, and feels betrayed. But the thing that upsets him most is when he learns about hero #2 (her adopted brother), because the personal nature of her spying comes home to him.
Yet, to be honest, I didn’t need to vamp up that confrontation scene all that much after adding the exchange of words between the two heroes. I decided, the reader gets it. Hero #1 felt betrayed the way I wrote it the first and the second time. He feels even more betrayed the way I wrote it the third time, but the reader doesn’t need me to tell them that. They know it’s coming. I set the loaded gun up in advance and the reader had been waiting for it to go off ever since.
Anyway, that’s how I think it plays out, maybe my CPs will tell me different. Do you leave loaded guns lying around in your manuscripts, and care to share an example?
21 Responses to “Loaded Guns”
Ooh, I’m so eager to read your sub now, Michelle, lol. Great blog!
I’m planting a lot of loaded guns on my wip. In one scene, I had a ghost go ballistic–but without any repercussions. In the second version, the heroine, a ghost whisperer, gets hurt. Then the hero, the brooding owner of the house, decides to leave the house. If he’s does, the heroine will leave too and there’s no story. I guess that’s shooting off a couple rounds of the loaded gun.
Most definitely firing from both barrels, Edie
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Not sure if the scene I’m talking about is in the latest sub, LOL, can’t remember now . . .
Michelle,
I love loaded weapons, both as a reader and a writer.
As a writer they really up the tension and keep the pace going strongly.
And as a reader, we have the wonderful expectations of fireworks in the near, to distant future. Which certainly keeps me focused on the story and characters.
Michelle, you slay me.
Most of my work is fantasy, so there are no guns lying around, but the threats are planted liberally throughout. Let’s hope I haven’t violated Mr. Chekhov’s dictum anywhere.
Theresa, I love what you say about the expectations of fireworks in the near to distant future. Let’s hope it’s nearer.
Lynne, are you sure you don’t have any penis guns lying around?
Michelle, I enjoyed your blog! My brain is on vacation, and trying to think of a loaded gun thing is more than my noggin wants to digest now. LOL. Hopefully, I’ll think of one while soaking up the sun, and get back to ya.
Oops, wanted to say that’s great how you came up with rewrite number three on that scene. Sounds verra interesting!
It’s difficult to know when you have to leave well enough alone. Like you said … your reader will get it without having to repeat. One of my biggest nasty habits, IMO. I tend to repeat.
Like the idea of leaving hints and the “loaded gun”. It definitely ups the stakes and makes the story more exciting.
Terrific subject matter, Michelle.
LOL, Lynne. I still hope to see that workshop
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Threats lying around most definitely work just as well.
I love set up as well, Theresa. Just love it. And foreshadowing as well. Give me a decent loaded gun as a reader, and I’ll read through the night to see when it goes off.
Thanks, LaDonna. When DOTS is done, you can have at it, if you want to
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Thanks, Liz. I agree, it does up the stakes, which makes the process of writing and hopefully of reading all the better.
I like sneaky threads that come back up later, so I probably have a lot of small water guns in my books. I like to read things like that, too. It’s satisfying intellectually when things tie in and circle back, without becoming circuitous, of course.
I meant to add — small water guns with no offense intended to the original Penis Gun
Admit it — you’re just trying to engineer a Google bomb to associate my blog with the word “penis.”
But Lynne,
LOL, Theresa!
Not to mention KRAZY search terms. I already get those from that time when I posted about marijuana forests in Afghanistan!
hmmm–
Penis searches and marijuana searches– I bet the FBI is keeping tabs on your blog as well. Or maybe spies for the Moral majority.
When you think about it though– it wouldn’t surprise me if the same people were doing both searches and hitting your blog twice…
they probably have you bookmarked now. 
I feel the same way, Jody. I just love the threads that come back later, and make you go, ahhhhhhh, so that’s why . . .
Like the idea of small water guns, too
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LOLOL, Lynne, wasn’t it John who was trying to get the word penis in to your comments as much as possible?
Once, Edie wrote a blog on sex scenes, and you do NOT want to know the search strings that came up. We got a lot of hits, but were they hits we wanted? Um, no.
It’s a conspiracy!