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.
They say it grows so cold up here in winter that a manβs laughter freezes in his throat and chokes him to death,β Ned said evenly. βPerhaps that is why the Starks have so little humor.
Winning gives birth to hostility Losing, one lies down in pain. The calmed lie down with ease, having set winning and losing aside.
All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
Man is troubled not by events, but by the meaning he gives them.
But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.
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