Writing Right with Dmitri: Necessary Violence
Created | Updated Jun 16, 2019
Writing Right with Dmitri: Necessary Violence
You know that rule about Chekhov's Gun, right?
If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.
Anton Chekhov
What Chekhov was saying was that fiction has different rules from reality, just as photography has different rules from just looking around. If I'm just looking at my desk, I don't have a problem with stray content like a half-drunk glass of V8 juice. If I want to take a photo of the desk, I will remove the V8 juice. Why? Because that is all the viewer will see. And they'll all be asking themselves the exact same question: Why is that there? Is that some kind of statement? Okay, some will be opining that the viscous, tomato-y coating on the glass is unaesthetic, others that it symbolises the state of the world. What it represents, of course, is me not having finished lunch yet.
That is why, my friends, you want to be selective with the details. Readers are easily distracted. This is also why you want to be sparing with the violence. Violence tends to distract audience focus away from what you're talking about, and you don't want that unless all you're talking about is the violence.
The only thing I saw was the gun.
Multiple eyewitnesses at multiple crime scenes
This is also true of explosions (nuclear and other), car wrecks, declarations of war, and shark attacks. Speaking of such, please be sure to read Freewayriding's story in this week's issue. It's a good one. It was almost different, though. When he sent me the first draft – yes, people, h2g2 is so cool we have people on it who know how to write first drafts, an advanced skill – I protested that the original ending was too much of a downer. FWR replied by explaining the inspiration for the story, and teaching me about Scottish folk customs involving magpies. I said, 'That's the really interesting part!' So the story got tweaked, to my (and Mrs FWR's) complete satisfaction. Rewriting is an art.
Last night, I watched a film called Frozen Ground, over Elektra's initial protests, as she didn't see why she should sit through a story involving 24 dead bodies being found in Alaska in the early 1980s. It's a true story. I insisted, because I'd read a review or two. In the end, the film was worthwhile, and I recommend it. The story is really about the dogged perseverance of an Anchorage police detective, who not only put a stop to a string of horrible murders, but also helped to rescue a homeless teenager in the process. (She survived to raise three kids of her own.) To tell this story, though, you have to deal with some pretty awful violence. You have to do it, but you also have to figure out how to keep that violence from swamping the rest of your story. The director did an amazing job. Casting helped: John Cusack played the perpetrator, who is known from the beginning, in such a way as to keep the focus off him. He's not glamorous. He makes your skin crawl. You'd rather look at anything but him. You want him to be caught and go away quietly, without ever telling you what he was thinking. This opens up room for the rest of the elements in the story: the cops, the potential victims in the strip clubs, the snow, the bears… Watch it, if you get a chance.
In other words: violence is often necessary in storytelling. However, if violence is the only point of what you're writing, you're writing porn. And if the violence is getting in the way of your story, get rid of it. Don't use violence as a lazy narrative shortcut. There are other ways of getting and keeping the reader's attention.
You don't believe me that violence can't be the only point of what you're writing? Imagine you're the writer who had to come up with this. What's more important, the rhetoric or the cartoon violence? Both. You need both to make WWE 'wrestling' work. The stunts are so much more satisfying when couched in terms of an ongoing storyline. John Oliver, a big fan, would probably agree. This was true even in the days of 'studio wrestling', the low-budget ancestor of WWE. That's The Crusher insulting Pittsburgh's hero Bruno Sammartino. Sammartino was not only a superb athlete and inspiration to immigrants, but he was a valued booster for the Pittsburgh opera scene. See? There's always more to the story.
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