If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.
Interpretation
Chekhov emphasizes that every element introduced in a narrative should serve a purpose, especially in storytelling.
This quote by Anton Chekhov illustrates the principle of narrative economy, suggesting that any significant element introduced in a story should play a role later on. If something is included in the beginning, it is expected to contribute meaningfully to the plot or theme later, reinforcing the idea that every detail in storytelling should be intentional and relevant.
In practice
During a writing workshop, I mentioned Chekhov's principle to emphasize the importance of concise storytelling.
There are still many more days of failure ahead, whole seasons of failure, things will go terribly wrong, you will have huge disappointments , but you have to prepare for that, you have to expect it and be resolute and follow your own path.
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist; he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.
When you want to touch the reader's heart, try to be colder. It gives their grief as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief.
Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?
Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.
Whatever seeds each man cultivates will grow to maturity and bear in him their own fruit. If they be vegetative, he will be like a plant.
One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner
Living creatures possess a moving soul and a certain spiritual superiority which in this respect make them similar to those who possess intellect (people) and they have the power of affecting their welfare and their food and they flee from pain and death.
God! how is it that we fail to recognize that the mask of pleasure, stripped of all hypocrisy, is that of anguish?
When most people said "I'm psychic, you see," they meant "I have an overactive but unoriginal imagination/wear black nail varnish/talk to my budgie;" when Anathema said it, it sounded as though she was admitting to a hereditary disease which she'd much prefer not to have.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.