The Gun and the Reverse Gun

 

‘Chekov’s Gun’ is an old principle in writing. ‘If you describe a gun in detail in the first act, it should be fired in third.’ What it means is that if you put emphasis on a detail, that detail should matter to the story. Then there is the reverse of this principle, the ‘Reverse Gun’: if you want to use something in the climax, it should be introduced beforehand, so the audience is aware that it exists.

 

Not everything you give focus to in the course of a story needs to be a big part of the climax. There may be things which get resolved earlier and don’t play a role then. There may be things which play a bigger role in the second book of the series, too, though try to keep those to a minimum. Yet, if you pay great attention to the details of something, it should be important for the story and not just a throwaway description because you were a couple of hundred words short of your goal. Otherwise, use those couple of hundred words to deepen the characters in the chapter or add to descriptions which will really matter in the long run.

The opposite to this, to put too much emphasis on something which doesn’t play an important role in your story, is the ‘Reverse Gun’ or ‘Deus Ex Machina’ (the god out of the machine). In the climax, some kind of skill or object simply ‘appears’ in the story and helps the protagonist win. This can be as high-profile as an actual god descending into the fight and protecting the protagonist or destroying the antagonist or as low-profile as the hero suddenly being able to use a weapon they’ve never touched before or being able to defeat the antagonist in another way which was never hinted at.

 

It’s easy to say which is worse: the Reverse Gun is. It defies all promises an author makes to the audience - to make the story logical in itself, to make sure that the end will be worth the time taken with the story so far. The whole story builds towards the third act, the climax, where the main plot is resolved and the protagonist wins (or, more rarely, loses) for good. A lot of smaller plots are, directly or indirectly, geared towards it as well, resolving earlier to give the protagonist support or new tools or weapons for the big climax later. So if there’s no logical way within the story for the protagonist to win during the climax (which would suggest this is one of the few stories where the protagonist loses) and then the way to win suddenly appears without warning, the promise to the audience is broken.

That doesn’t mean getting people invested in a detail which doesn’t play a role in the resolve of any of your plots isn’t bad, it’s just not quite as bad. It’s still a broken promise, but on a smaller scale. It’s something the readers invested interest in which didn’t pay off (yet, which is why you should use book one to set up for book two sparsely if at all), but it will not hurt the logic of your story by suddenly coming out of the blue and saving the day.

 

Even the best of writers (or at least the most revered) can find themselves in a situation where they’re taking the ‘Reverse Gun’ way out, but there are ways to avoid using it. The very best way is, of course, good plotting. If you take the time to plot out your story well, you will realize early that you need to include some way the protagonist can win the day in the climax and you can work that in with a few bits of foreshadowing or by showing it off before the climax without having to resort to the Deus Ex Machina. Another way, if a very work-heavy one, is to go back in your story and find scenes were you can hint at the skill/friend/weapon before you use it in the great climax. You can also self-consciously use the Deus Ex Machina and have characters comment on it, but that’s by far the worst solution.

 

Both Chekov’s Gun and the Reverse Gun happen because writers don’t think ahead and consider what they will need to resolve their plots. Everything which is relevant to one plot or other needs attention beforehand. Everything which is just window-dressing needs none. Of course, you can write about the drapes in your protagonist’s room (and thus spark discussions about whether or not the colour is relevant to the protagonist’s mood), but you shouldn’t spend too much time on them, unless they’re going to be relevant to at least one plot. Sometimes, people just become too enamoured with a detail and put it in over and over again, even though it doesn’t have a practical use in the story.

If you look through a story and find that there’s something prominent in it which doesn’t have a use for the climax or any of the minor plots, the only right thing to do - as much as it hurts - is to take it out or at least tone it down a lot. If you look through a story and find that there’s something happening out of the blue in the climax, you should do all you can to go back and at least foreshadow it before it happens. It often doesn’t need much foreshadowing, either, but the basic principle must be there. A character must at least suggest that they have a certain skill or a friend who might step in and help must at least be mentioned before.

 

One reason why Han Solo coming back in “A New Hope” and helping Luke is not a Deus Ex Machina is that there are suggestions that Han’s ‘I only look out for myself’ stance is fake, that he does care a lot, but doesn’t dare to show it. Him coming back after he seemed to leave is not a Deus Ex Machina, it’s a logical conclusion of his character arc in this story, admitting that he does care for more than money, that he’s not just a mercenary. The same goes for Luke trusting the Force with a one-in-a-million shot instead of his target computer. We have seen him train with the Force for a bit before and we’ve seen that the target computer is no guarantee for the hit, either. Using the Force instead is no worse than using the computer - and the computer failed at this task already.

On the other hand, the cop-out in the version of Faust written by revered German author Johann Wolfgang Goethe is a Deus Ex Machina in the truest sense of the expression. At the end of the second part, Faust should be going to Hell, as his deal with Mephistopheles has come due. Instead of accepting this defeat, God sends the soul of none other than Faust’s victim Gretchen (whom he left pregnant and alone and who was executed for killing her newborn child at the end of the first part) to take Faust to Heaven instead of Hell. That is cheating of the highest order and shouldn’t be happening. Of course, Faust had to stop striving (which was when the contract would be due in this version) at some point - the play couldn’t go on infinitely. Goethe should have found a different way, though - he worked on the plays for about 60 years, that’s a long time to figure out how your life’s work should end.

 

Do your best to avoid both Chekov’s Gun and the Reverse Gun. Make sure you don’t put too much emphasis on something which is not important to the plot, yet also make sure that everything which goes into the resolution of a plot is introduced in time and doesn’t come out of nowhere.

The Book That Successfully Damselled Sherlock Holmes

No, I’m not kidding. When I wrote the post about the Athena Club last week, I hadn’t completely finished the last book in the series (so far), “The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl” by Theodora Coss. It seems to be the end of the series - unlike the first two books, “The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter” and “European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman”, it doesn’t end with a new call to adventure. From the ending, it sounds very much like the last account of the adventures of the Athena Club (by now having seven members instead of the original five), but there still might be other stories over time. Surely, there’s still material enough and hope springs eternal.

 

There will be spoilers, since I can’t discuss the great plotting without disclosing at least some major plot points.

 

At first glance, from the suggestions at the end of the prior book, the big bad of the third story will be Professor Moriarty - but he’s not. He’s ashes by the time things really get going - unlike Sherlock Holmes, whom he wanted to use as a sacrifice. But let’s take a step back.

When Sherlock Holmes gets made a damsel in distress, there must be a lot going on - and there is. Admittedly, Sherlock Holmes disappears without a trace during the second novel, but since this one is set in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire (pre-WWI), someone disappearing back in England is not a major plot point. In addition, Sherlock Holmes is, after all, known for often working undercover. It’s a thing he’s still doing post-Reichenbach (since the stories are set in the 1890s). Watson being worried for him, therefore, is perfectly normal, but there’s no reason for the Athena Club (even for Mary with her crush on Holmes) to immediately travel back and leave the whole mess of Van Helsing’s experiments unsolved.

It becomes a topic when a second person disappears: Alice, a member of the Jekyll household and gifted with the power of mesmerism, as Catherine Moreau found out in the second novel. Alice is kidnapped in the middle of the night on the very premises of 11 Park Terrace, where the club is situated, which is something the club members can’t and won’t ignore.

 

The end of the prior book already presents Professor Moriarty (who somehow got out of the waterfall, too) as the mind behind the kidnapping and his reasons seem clear: he wants Alice to help him with removing Queen Victoria and gaining power over England. He claims Eugenic reasons, but given he’s behind most illegal trafficking, that seems rather unlikely. In the end, it doesn’t matter.

The novel brings back Mrs. Raymond who was the director of the Society of St. Mary Magdalen in the first book. The strict Mrs. Raymond is much more than that, though: she’s an experiment herself, the daughter of Dr. Raymond, former head of the English chapter of the Society of Alchemists, who experimented on his wife to give her powers above those of regular mortals. His wife was driven mad, but his daughter gained control over her mesmeric powers. Then Mrs. Raymond (this isn’t really her name, of course) became pregnant and let the baby girl disappear. Lydia Raymond grew up under the name Alice and is nobody else than the scullery maid of the Jekyll household. Unlike what her mother thinks, however, she was never treated badly there and never wanted to leave - nor does she wish to work for Moriarty like her mother.

Another woman, Miss Margaret Trelawney (known to people who enjoy Gothic horrors from Stoker’s “The Jewel of Seven Stars”), cuts in and gets Alice out of her cell - it’s her who, unknowingly, teaches Alice the most important lesson she learns in the book: listen and learn, but pretend not to.

Alice soon realizes there is another prisoner in the house - the former headquarters of the Society of Alchemists, now appropriated by the Order of the Golden Dawn. When she discovers it’s Sherlock Holmes (kept drugged with Heroin), she takes steps to change things by diluting the drug he’s given (exchanging about half the Heroin crystals for salt). Yet, the ceremony she’s forced to attend doesn’t end as it was supposed to.

Well, it does end as it was supposed to, but the seven male members of the Order didn’t know how it really was supposed to end. Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, Quincey Morris, Jonathan Harker (all four were in with Van Helsing’s experiments on Lucy Westenra, as told in the second novel), Dr. Raymond, Colonel Moran, and Professor Moriarty himself are the sacrifices chosen for the ritual by Miss Trelawney and Mrs. Raymond. All seven are burned to ashes while the ‘official’ sacrifice Sherlock Holmes is still alive, although mostly drugged. By the time Holmes is again clear enough in the head to act, the ritual is done and Queen Tera (also from “The Jewel of Seven Stars”) has been brought back to live. As with Ayesha, the 2000-year-old Priestess of Isis (and Tera’s pupil at one time) introduced in the second book, Tera has abilities far above mere mesmeric power - she, too, can electrocute people without touching them. This is a power which keeps Holmes under control for a little while, until he’s safely locked away again. And once he’s out of the cell and ready to charge into the fray of the big final battle, he’s shot and out of it. The big battle only has female participants on either side - with the two kept out of the main battle (Diana Hyde and Laura Jennings) to look for Holmes, Alice, and Mary actually taking down Queen Tera and turning the tide.

 

The way the book keeps Holmes out of the action is very clever and worth looking at, which is the main reason why I’ve focused on this book instead of the others in the series. First, he’s kept drugged, which means he’s out of it. As a more or less regular consumer of Heroin, he’s easy to keep down with regular injections. As long as he’s in the drug-induced state, he’s no danger to his captors and completely at their mercy. When the drug loses power over him (due to being diluted), he’s facing Queen Tera who can kill people without even touching them. Just as a gun pointed at him, her powers make him defenceless - perhaps even more so than the gun, since they’re harder to dodge than a bullet. Locked away without food (although Alice feeds him in secret) and without any tools he could use to crack the lock, he’s unable to free himself from his cell, although he surely considers all possible ways. Finally, when freed from the dungeon and on his way into the fight, he’s shot in the shoulder - the shot almost kills him, it’s Ayesha who keeps him alive with her healing powers. He’s in no state to help the Athena Club then, either.

 

If you need a damsel in your story, this is a way for doing it you should look into. Holmes is not helpless, he’s not mentally or physically weak, he surely has a lot of skills to bring to the table - he’s not your classic damsel in distress. From the way the book handles his capture and captivity, though, he’s in no better situation than the most damselled damsel to ever be damselled. It’s not about not giving him agency (although the drug takes it away for a while, keeping him in a state in which he can’t act), it’s about not giving him the means to escape, no matter how much he tries. He’s not sitting in his cell with his hands in his lap, waiting for the rescue, he’s in a situation in which his impressive skills are of no use to him. He’s not helpless himself, his captors simply have the means to keep him imprisoned despite his skills.

 

Take note of the book (and give it a go - it’s fun and I’ve never read a book with more fully-realized female protagonists and antagonists) and take a good look at how it handles making a damsel out of the last person you probably thought could ever be successfully damselled. It’s much more interesting when a damsel (no matter who they are) isn’t merely sitting around, but clearly kept locked up despite their best efforts to free themselves.

Review: The Athena Club

I’m not sure when the first crossover story between the big characters of Gothic and Victorian literature was  created, but there have been a lot of them over time - the last big one, perhaps, having been the TV series “Penny Dreadful”. Usually, though, they try to bring together the characters from the novels themselves, the main ones, the title ones, such as Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde. But does the story end with those characters? Is there nothing that comes afterwards?

 

Well, yes, there is, at least in “The Amazing Adventures of the Athena Club” by Theodora Coss, a currently three-part series about those who come after the big male names: their daughters and experiments (usually both). In the first book, “The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter”, the readers meet the members of the club, starting with Mary Jekyll and, soon after, her sister Diana Hyde. They meet up with three more women who have been experimented on: Beatrice Rappaccini, whose father turned her poisonous by exposure to poisonous plants, Catherine Moreau, who was once a puma and turned into a woman by Dr. Moreau (before killing him), and Justine Frankenstein, the female creature Frankenstein officially never finished (and made from the body of the young servant executed wrongly for the murder of his younger brother). Learning about the Society of Alchemists (named French in the novels as Société des Alchimistes), they find a common goal: to prevent more experiments on young girls, just because their bodies are more malleable for biological transmutation.

It’s not an easy goal to reach - the Society isn’t a place you can just walk into to make demands and will not change just because someone says so. While the experiments of Dr. Jekyll (and others) in England destroyed the English chapter, experiments are still going on elsewhere. In Amsterdam and Vienna, Abraham Van Helsing is trying to turn his own daughter into a vampire without the vampire’s weaknesses (after failing with her mother and Lucy Westenra already). Back in London, Mary’s former scullery maid Alice is proving her ability to mesmerize and gets kidnapped by none other than the infamous Professor Moriarty (yes, Sherlock Holmes does also exist in the books - Mary works as his secretary of sorts).

 

What I love about the series is that the main characters have their strengths and weaknesses, they feel three-dimensional, and they become good friends during the stories. Each of them contributes to their home (in the beginning of the first book, Mary has to bury her mother and is left almost destitute, so they all need to make money to pay their bills), each looks out for the others. Even Diana, who might often pretend she doesn’t care for the others, becomes a vicious enemy when her friends are threatened. Especially the latter books (the first is dedicated to bringing the club together) introduce quite some other female characters who have either been characterized differently before or were only side characters in the stories they come from: Irene Norton (formerly Irene Adler - yes, the Woman), Mina Harker, Carmilla von Karnstein and Laura Jennings (who is not her victim in this story, but her lover), Margaret Trelawney, Queen Tera and others.

The narrative may be seen, to a degree, as a mirror of how society in the 1890s was, especially in England: the men experiment and the women have no say in what happens to them. This also shines through in a major plot point of the second book, where Prof. Van Helsing is trying to unseat the female president of the Society with violent means (a gaggle of vampires), if necessary. He fails, because Madam President is a 2000-year-old priestess of Isis who can electrocute people without even touching them. Men use women, but they better not be around when the women come into their full powers. As Dr. Moreau learned when his only successful try at a beast-woman freed herself and ripped out his throat, not buying his godliness. As Adam (Frankenstein’s first creature) learned when Justine beat him down with a skillet and escaped from him for good. As Van Helsing almost learned the hard way when Lucinda (his daughter, whom he turned into a vampire) almost killed him, stopped only by Justine - for her good, not for his.

This might be a little on the nose, but only on the first glance - all of the mad scientists acted first, none of the girls (except for the priestess in question who chose her fate to a degree) asked for what was done to them. Even Carmilla and her godfather Dracula didn’t become vampires out of their free will, both were changed by others without their consent. So the demand to the Society that such experiments be not allowed or only allowed when the subject of the experiment agrees to it is not that far-fetched for the dawning twentieth century.

Romance, on the other hand, plays a very secondary role. Mary is too rational to easily fall in love (although she has a crush on Sherlock Holmes), Diana is a bit too young and immature at fourteen, Beatrice is reeling from a very sad romance in her past (and can’t touch anyone), Catherine has little interest in romance (but then, she’s a puma), and Justine is still traumatized from Adam’s unwanted advances (she’s also quite shy sometimes). Lucinda, who joins later, doesn’t think about romance since she’s still working on getting her bloodlust under control.

 

What I love on the side of the writing is how the books pretend to have been written by Catherine Moreau - who adds to the household income by writing pulp novels - and there’s fourth-wall-breaks in the books where some of the characters discuss what has just been written, mostly because they don’t agree with it. In those breaks, Catherine also advertises the other books of the series (not in the first book, obviously, but in the other two), all available at your local bookstore or railway kiosk for two shillings. It’s a nice way to break up the story, to hint at what is to come (such as the kidnapping to Styria in the second book), and to give a deeper look into the characters’ minds without having to change the POV. There are POV changes, sometimes several in the same chapter, but they’re done well and it’s never unclear whose mind the reader occupies.

 

All in all, I really love the three novels about the Athena Club. The premise is interesting, the characters are diverse, the stories are varied, making use of different skills of the main characters. They’re a good read, keeping me interested throughout, so I can definitely recommend them to others. If the kind of stories I described above interests you, give the books a try - I read the first one, then bought both of the others together, because I knew I would like them.

The Right Kind of Conflict

There’s something I wonder about when I look at some of the most popular YA series. They’re all about dystopian futures and how they are changed by the Chosen One main character. Then I wonder why they lasted until the Chosen One was of age. Then I wonder why the writers were so invested in the dystopian setting. Why they didn’t fit the conflicts to the setting a little better. Why they didn’t choose some sort of setting and conflict that hadn’t been done to death by others before.

 

On one hand, I get it. Dystopian settings allow for a look into the darkest parts of our society and they form a proper ‘grimdark’ background for a story. Everything is bleak, everything is horrible, people are treated badly. Finally, someone rises up against the evil government and things are changed. That is a nice setting, you can get a lot of action out of it, the stakes are high. On the whole, that makes for a good conflict.

On the other hand, humans are not known for suffering situations like this for a long time. Most regimes which cut back on their citizens’ rights do so discreetly, not cutting back more than is necessary. Needless to say most of those regimes topple with the death of the original dictator on top, too. It’s very hard to keep your populace of millions of people from rising up against you when they’re feeling like death might even be the better choice. It’s hard to keep people from refusing to cooperate and attacking your troops when you regularly take their children or sort them into professions by arbitrary rules. That is why dictators with something akin to historical understanding cut as little personal freedom from their subjects as is possible while keeping their regime going.

Now take something like “The Hunger Games”. All of the districts live in poverty. Regularly, the children of the districts are ripped from their families to compete in a life-or-death challenge which is then broadcasted in the districts. By rights, there should be a rebellion well on the way before the story even starts - people don’t take well to that kind of situation. With a few tweaks, the story would actually work, though. First of all, make the districts not quite as poor. They’re not living in luxury, but they have enough of the basic necessities of life. Next, don’t take their children by force. Set up an agency which looks for young people who want to work in the Capital, to become servants, clerks, etc. Emphasize that they might send the money they make back to their families. That will get you more than enough volunteers. Finally, do not broadcast the games, keep them available only for the rich in the Capital who sponsor a servant in and bet on the outcome. This is a system which can run for a while. This is a system which is only exposed once one of the participants gets away and tells the general populace about it. This is where the Chosen One comes in, breaks the game’s rules by getting most participants to work together, and then exposes the government for the dictatorship it is, inciting riots, supporting the formation of an uprising.

 

YA books are not the only ones where conflict and general story don’t go together too well, though. Another big problem are books which are not that grim or dark, but suddenly turn into a gory mess, because the author wants high stakes and seeks them by spilling a lot of blood and guts, thinking this is the only way to keep the audience invested.

Don’t get me wrong - there’s stories and conflicts which will never work without the grim and dark aspects. However, if you start a story by giving the impression that your setting is relatively calm and safe, then you will shock your audience unduly by suddenly adding body horrors or brutal torture or suchlike to the mix.

So, first of all, you need to ask yourself what kind of story you want to tell. What kind of world do you want to show, what kind of characters do you want to use? From this, you can make a good guess at what the stakes can be, what kind of conflict will work.

Keep in mind that not every story has to be about ultra-high stakes and brutal fights. ‘Conflict’ in case of a story doesn’t automatically mean fighting. A conflict arises as soon as your protagonist has a goal and there’s something or someone keeping them from reaching it. That can simply be a flat tire on a car. That can also be a monstrous creature blocking the path. Both are equally valid as a conflict, but belong into different settings.

If you want a heroic protagonist who spends their time mostly fighting, you may need higher stakes and even a body count (although funny fantasy shows you can even then do without). If you want an everybody protagonist who has to solve their problems with their mind and, perhaps, the right friends, lower stakes might serve you much better. There’s a place for both kinds of conflict and many, many more.

 

If you want a grimdark story, then everything must fit together and you must show the setting from the beginning. Even if your protagonist lives in relative safety at the beginning of the story (being from the ruling class/wealthy/protected), there must be suggestions that this is no paradise, that there is danger around. Your protagonist must be suited for such a setting, too, even if they appear as a harmless young lady or a gentleman of leisure. They have a talent which doesn’t quite fit with that. Perhaps the young lady can wield a gun, perhaps the gentleman of leisure knows how to box. They have a way of keeping themselves alive, one way or other. Then you can drop them into the dangerous situations where others perish and can start up with the fight for survival. Having a character who has never before shown any indication to injure themselves in a setting where it’s not to be expected suddenly use their own blood to write something to get themselves out of a situation means to unduly shock people. Having a young lady in a dangerous situation pull out a gun and shoot three bandits is not, provided you have established that she can handle a gun and that such situations happen.

If you wish to write about a dictatorship or another form of dystopia, think about what people would normally do in such a setting if your major conflict were happening. Look into history and see what people were doing in similar situation in the past. Is it likely the populace would accept it? Is it likely there wouldn’t have been uprisings already? If it’s not, then you have to change the conflict or the setting.

 

There’s the right kind of conflict for every story you wish to write, from the low-stakes slice-of-life story to the high-stakes rescue-the-universe one. There’s also an audience for every kind of story with every kind of conflict. Low-stakes conflicts draw another audience, but for everyone who wants blood and gore and guts on the floor, there’s also someone who prefers fluffy bunnies and weird situations with a light finish. Sometimes it’s even the same person on different days.