The long game, the ragged edge

We all know about Chekhov’s gun. The playwright wrote to a young dramatist saying: “One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn’t going to go off. It’s wrong to make promises you don’t mean to keep.”

And quite right too. Bang, bang, do svidanya, tovarishch, and all that.

But? Oh hang it:

• He was Russian, and Russians drink black tea with jam, and how far can you trust anyone who does that?
• He was a dramatist and we write novels, and those two things are obviously related but they’re also obviously not the same.
• He was clearly rather prone to giving that advice, since he’s recorded as giving it at least three times, and at a certain point, you do wonder if he wasn’t simply enjoying the aphorism as much as truly believing it.

The biggest difference between the novel and the play is simply that of length.

Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard runs to about 18,000 words. Macbeth runs to 17,000. King Lear, 26,000.

Now, I don’t know about you, but my character’s barely pulled on her jeans and pistol-whipped her first victim by that point in a book. She’s barely done brushing her teeth. If your chosen art form is (by our lofty standards) rather short, then damn right you can’t fool around with guns that don’t fire.

Novels, I think, can be messier. They are built to resemble life, and life is messy, so I don’t really see why novels can’t be messy.

Now there are strict limits here, of course. Your plot needs to be plotty. Your resolution needs to feel like it’s summarising and concluding some important thing that has occupied the reader for the past 350 pages.

The ragged edge

But a ragged edge? Some questions answered only with a shrug? For me, that’s fine. Here’s an example from one of my books. The question is how Parry (a kidnapper) ended teaming up with a bunch of monks. Here’s all I say about it:

Parry’s living in this valley. Maybe starts going to one or two services in the monastery just for the hell of it. Or because he had a guilty conscience. Or to build himself some cover. Who knows? Anyway, he gets serious. He finds God—or his own crazy and violent version of God—and he decides to make some changes in the way he operates …

And Parry’s new buddies, these monks, are more than a bit crazy themselves. They have this big silence and reflection and abstinence thing going. They have a deep sense that people who grew up with God in their lives have become deaf to His word …

Now, quite honestly that’s more of a hand-wave than an actual answer. Structurally speaking, what I say here is “Maybe … or … or … who knows? Anyway …”

For me, that’s fine. Even in a crime novel whose purpose is to solve mystery, that kind of thing is fine.

Here’s another example, at the end of another novel:

‘All a bit messy and last minute, but anything to get the job done.’

‘Yes, exactly. If we work hard enough, I expect we’ll find a link between Devine and Wormold. At any rate, I’m pretty sure that Devine gave the order.’

Jackson thinks about that. Gathers more daisies. We’re motoring now. Him gathering, me stitching them.

What we have here is a slightly disengaged conversation about how Bad Guy A ended up conspiring with Bad Guy B, but in the end, the business of making a supermassive daisy-chain seems more important and that thread is never picked up again.

I think so long as the text somehow acknowledges that yes, some questions remain unanswered, it doesn’t really matter that they exist. And, me – I prefer it. It feels more authentic, makes the world more real.

The long game

And at that same time, I also love the ridiculously delayed punchline – a way of tying things up neatly, but 10s of 1000s of words later than the reader might expect.

So in one of my books (chapter 29) this bit of dialogue takes place:

‘Twll dîn pob Sais,’ I say.

‘Pardon?’

‘Doesn’t matter. The address of the cottage, please.’

That phrase in Welsh isn’t explained. The matter is just left. In Chekhovian terms, that gun may be unimportant, but it feels very not-fired.

Except that, a full twenty chapters, later, we get this:

[In deepest Glasgow,] Two kids pass my car. One of them raps on my window. I wind my window down and say, ‘Yes?’ The kid says something in an accent so thick I don’t understand it. I reply in Welsh, the same thing as I said to Sophie Hinton.Twll dîn pob Sais. Every Englishman an arsehole. He goes off muttering. He might as well be speaking Icelandic.

That’s the punchline. We didn’t understand what Fiona said to pretty Sophie Hinton at the time, but now we do, and the delay is entertaining. It’s like the author was remembering that twenty chapters back, the reader felt a little moment of discomfort – tiny, but nevertheless a little negative prick – and, ta-daa, the author, smiling says, I hadn’t forgotten you. Surprise! Here’s your little gift. In the process, we understand something more about the Fiona / Hinton relationship. The whole thing feels more delightful because of the absurdly long pause.

Or here’s another example. Fiona is talking to the abbot of a small monastery in Wales:

‘You’ll recognise our patron, of course?’

It takes me a second, but I realise he’s talking about St David, a Welsh bishop of the sixth century and the patron saint of Wales.

‘David,’ I say. ‘A local boy.’

‘Local enough. He was preaching at the Synod of Brefi to a large crowd. Because those at the back couldn’t hear him, a small hill rose up beneath him. The dove here settled on his shoulder.’

‘That’s his big miracle?’ I ask. ‘Making a hill? In Wales?’

It’s hard to think of a more superfluous achievement.

That moment is complete in itself. No little prick of disappointment for the reader. But then, ten chapters on, we get this:

I chide him. ‘You’re thinking modern again, Inspector. You need to think medieval.’ That doesn’t illuminate things for some reason. So I explain, ‘This is the monastery of St David. He’s their patron saint. Now David’s big thing, his signature miracle if you want to put it like that, was raising a hill at Llandewi Brefi—’

‘A hill? In Llandewi? Why would anyone—?’

‘I know, don’t ask. But …’

And what this does is to bring the reader onto the inside of the joke. It’s like we and the reader are old buddies, with a shared set of jokes and references. When Inspector Burnett stumbles into the set-up, the reader has the delight of recognising it – “Oooh, I know this one!” We don’t even have to complete the joke properly to get that pleasure, and Fiona moves rapidly on.

One last example. In the Deepest Grave, Fiona proposes to fake an antiquity. Here she is talking with her two co-conspirators:

George stares at Katie. Stares at me. And back again.

‘Do you mean what I think you mean?’

Katie nods. ‘Exactly. Yes. She wants to make—’

I interrupt. Say, ‘Caledfwlch.’

Katie: ‘What?’

‘Caledfwlch. The damn thing is Welsh, not some fake Latin, medieval French knock-off.’

Now there’ll be some Welsh-speakers who know their ancient history and for whom that little passage is as plain as day. But the vast majority of readers, will be thinking huh? On the one hand, Fiona has just told us exactly what she intends to make. On the other, virtually no one has any idea what she means.

It’s that Chekhovian gun again, very not fired.

Only then … and again, many chapters later we get an incident at an archaeological dig in the south of England. The researchers have just extracted a remarkably ancient sword from a burial pit, when armed robbers swoop in, and steal it. Here’s what happens afterwards:

[The robbers] drive off. The whole thing takes two minutes, maybe less.

For a moment, just a moment, there is perfect stillness.

A bird, a lapwing maybe, calling aloft. The burr of the motorway.

Then Tifford, Dr Simon Tifford, Senior Archaeologist and a man now very close to tears, breaks the silence.

‘They’ve stolen Excalibur,’ he wails. ‘They’ve stolen fucking Excalibur.’

And, aha!, now we know what Caledfwlch is. We solve that little moment of mystery some 75 pages earlier, but there’s laughter here too. The reader’s saying, “Ah! You even told me what the thing was, and I didn’t guess, and I probably should have done, and now you’ve got an archaeologist wandering around swearily talking about the world’s most famous-ever sword. Yep, you got me there.”

It’s the length of the delay that delivers the pleasure – all the joy rests in that huge delay.

The ragged edge, the long game

So yes, I do love a ragged edge to a story. A sense of nothing ever too tidy, questions still nibbling like minnows. But I do love jokes and puzzles where the punchline takes an age to come – that gun finally fired, but long, long after it was expected.

That’s it from me. Last night, I ate stewed apricot, served very cold, with big soft pillows of whipped cream. Toasted hazelnuts on top. Oh my. Summer is lovely.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / The long game

Do you have any much-delayed punchlines or reveals in your book? Things held out of sight for a long period, then released to delight? Tell me about it. I want some quotes. Let’s feast on some actual text again – it’s been too long.

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Til soon.

Harry