Chekov Said

“Chekov said, this is what he said, he said, ‘You introduce a gun in Act I, it had better go off in Act III.’ Or something. I might be paraphrasing. Chekov also said a lot of stuff on Start Trek, but the Chekov on Star Trek and the Chekov that loved talking about guns and Act I and Act III weren’t the same person. I know, I was disappointed too.

“So, you’ve got a gun in Act I. In Act III, it needs to go off. Maybe it can go off in Act II, I’m not too sure, Chekov didn’t really specify. He didn’t really say if you should be shooting something with the gun, either, just that it needed to go off, so I guess the rules on where the bullet goes is a little lax. It can go, I think, in the wall, or in a bookcase, or maybe there’s a rabbit or something that gets shot, or it can go in a person.

“I have a gun.

“Consider everything before this, ACT I.”

ACT II

He stands there, waving the gun around like a real lunatic, while Jeremy is tied to a small, wooden chair, hands bound behind him with a piece of whatchacallit, curtain string? The thing that uh, people use to close their blinds. Anyways, Jeremy is not a happy camper at the moment. This guy, and he’s a big guy, I’m just going to say that now, broke into his house. Jeremy thought, you know, “Robbery in progress!” and told the guy, “Take anything you want,” but the guy didn’t take anything. Just told Jeremy to pull out the chair that belonged to his daughter, the chair being tucked under a desk that his daughter used to sit at before she decided that she loved her mother more, and now Jeremy sat in the same chair his little girl used to sit in, wondering if leaving Erica had been a mistake.

It probably was. Jeremy isn’t a really handsome fellow, and his personality is kind of abrasive-but-not-really. Just the right combination of sarcasm and venom that would turn off just about anyone, despite the fact that he’s kidding.

Then again, at the moment, Jeremy doesn’t really think too much on any of that. He just misses his little Melissa, and thinks that Erica was really good for him, because face it, she was. Kept his clothes ironed, made sure at social functions that he wasn’t constantly taking his foot from his mouth, fixed him breakfast on days when he had to get up early.

Tied to the chair, he questioned just why he left.

The things you think about when a six foot tall bald guy in a trench-coat waving what looked to be a .45 around, but it’s tough to tell because he WON’T. STOP. MOVING, ranting on and on about this guy, Chekov and his rules.

Jeremy tries to speak, but his mouth is stuffed with a sock. His own sock. From his own foot. Now, he’s trying to pull his own foot from his own mouth. Maybe that’s what made him think about Erica.

But wait! The gun-man speaks.

“Act I, to me, introduces the characters. My name is Jeremy, and I have a gun. Your name is also Jeremy, and you do not. Act II puts motivation forward, before finally reaching a climax, correct?”

Chair-Jeremy, Chairemey, nods furiously, if only to agree with Gun-Jeremy, Geremy.

“And what about Act III? If the gun goes off in Act II,” Geremy’s finger is on the trigger, his thumb pulls the hammer back, “then Act III can be a funeral, can’t it? That’s some decent falling action. All the mourners pouring out in the pouring rain to pour their regards over the man who poured his blood out before dirt is poured on the coffin, before everyone purges their thoughts of the man and try to move on. It’s delicious.”

Chairemey is shaking his head, saying, “No! No!” but he has a sock in his mouth, so he’s really saying, “NGH! NGH!”

Geremy releases the hammer – gently – and removes his finger from the trigger box – gently – before sitting across from Chairemey, at the foot of his daughter’s bed. Geremy seems rather distressed and distracted, his eyes darting about the room like he’s trying to keep track of a very busy, but invisible mouse.

“So now here’s the real question, Jeremy. We’re cruising now, 35,000 feet above the Earth, but we’re approaching Dulles and pretty soon the plane is going to have to land. So I have to ask you this question. What kind of climax are we going to have? I’m going to pull the sock from your mouth, and I want you to just say the first thing that comes to your mind. It can be anything. And the end of our little play will be based on the words that come out of your mouth next.”

Geremy reaches over, and quickly pulls the sock from Chairemey’s mouth.

Without hesitation, Chairemey speaks.

“Fuck Chekov!”

ACT III

The crazed gunman stands, and exits, stage left.

Clever story.

Editing note: the comma in the sentence "Consider everything before this, Act I" makes it a very hard-to-understand sentence. It's also grammatically incorrect.

"Geremy" and "Chairemey" gets annoying to read -- although I don't know if that's just me. I'm not sure why their names need to be the same (except for the spelling joke, which maybe isn't all that worth it). Is it a callback to the two Chekhovs? Because that doesn't quite land.

I'm also not sure how much of Gun-Jeremy's character you've really thought out. He just doesn't seem like a person; rather an amusement thought up by a writer. I'm not saying you have to give him some backstory about a dying girlfriend, but he doesn't have any more depth than a novelty at the moment. The whole situation seems pointless -- and not in the clever, satirical way, but the why-on-earth-did-any-of-that-happen way.

Editing note: "Geremy seems rather distressed and distracted, his eyes darting about the room like he’s trying to keep track of a very busy, but invisible mouse." Why would his eyes be darting around if the mouse were invisible? "...like he's trying to keep track of a very busy mouse" makes more sense (and I think is a funnier description, because it's uninterrupted by the comma and the fairly clunky word "invisible").

Finally, the pacing at the end is weird. I mean it kind of has to be weird and I get that. And I also can't think of a way to make it less weird and still serve the action of the story, but that doesn't make it not weird.

You need to work on your conversational tone of writing. It should either sound like it's naturally being read aloud or something that has been written down. When you combine the two it tends to sound stupid.

I don't like my narrators to sound omniscient, though. I'm sorry it sounds stupid, but I like the mix.

This was just a tiny little story that I didn't edit in the least, that I just wrote in about ten minutes. It's not meant to be thought out, motivations are not meant to be explained - it's kind of the point, the convention defying. The narrator stumbling around trying to find the word for 'blind-cord', the gun not going off, there being no real deeper meaning to the proceedings. It's about a guy who wrote down some rules a hundred years ago that people took as gospel, and defying them for the sake of amusement.

I'm finding more and more that this forum tends to be hypercritical over anything else. Most of these errors I realize after re-reading it, but I can't be assed to go back and fix them because at the end of the day, posting it on this forum generally ruins any shot the story has at publication.

I feel a slight air of condescension when I post my work, and it's not for nothing. I do like criticism, but I tend to think people underestimate my ability or self awareness when it comes to writing.

I'm critiquing what I see on the page, not you. I'm not saying your unaware or that you're aware -- but do you want me to get inside your head before I talk about your work? And I don't often point out what I like, because that's not really as useful as what can be fixed.

It's true, but at the same time, not pointing out what you like is incredibly discouraging. I'm not saying I need a blow-job of encouragement, but as a writer sometimes a little nicety goes a long way.

Well, yes. As a writer, I know. But I'm still not good at it, and my not saying it doesn't make criticism less worthwhile -- just uglier and sometimes harder to swallow.

We have "known each other" a few years, now, though, and you should know by now that I enjoy your work and your voice a lot, and admire you as a writer. I feel saying that each time would come across a little sycophantic. In this case, it's a clever story -- and that's the best and most notable thing about it: its narrative cleverness.

If I'm going to be totally honest (and I think I may have said this before once), my only real recurring problem with your writing is that it tends to be a little same-same. You tend to rely on similar tricks and tropes from story to story, and your narrative voice is almost always just your voice. Which is a great voice, but it's not enough to be kooky to make a narrative voice interesting, you have to be the right kind of kooky for each story. A lot of my criticisms of your work come down to that -- many of the things that jump out at me do so because they feel like the voice saying them is not quite right for the story.

I'm not going to lie or anything like that, or try to explain away the use of 'my' voice when it comes to writing, because it's a safety thing. The main reason I haven't been posting much is that I'm editing a novel I'm working on, and I haven't really devoted a lot of time in the last year or so to changing up my voice or working on my short story skills, as I've been trying to make sure my book flows well enough for people to want to read it.

I do take criticism to heart, and I do try to change and improve with each thing that I write. Often times I'm blinded by how clever I think a concept is and I make simply finishing the work an end point. The original concept was the narrator was a gun-runner delivering a load of illegally salvaged hardware to a warehouse in the middle of a desert that would double cross him, but through pure coincidence, all of the guns would end up going off. I opted for something a little shorter. Not that this has anything to do with anything, I'm just rambling now, so I'm going to cut the mic.

lol

look this forum is hypercritical because it is full of faggots

i thought the idea was nice, and i like the angle you have for most of your short stories

i haven't actually read this through beyond surface reading to say anything really critical about it

just by the by i wrote a play once and its first title was chekhov's gun but since i never actually discussed the quote of chekhov's i thought nobody would get it so i ditched the title

fun fact the play was shit

Quote:

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I might be paraphrasing. Chekov also said a lot of stuff on Start Trek

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typo found on second line; stopped reading.