Observation: Chekhov’s gun is to fiction as cognitive dissonance is to life.
(The above probably needs to simmer for a while to reduce into something pithier, but I think the recipe is right.)
(Emerged from an extremely lengthy ramble about a larp game I played on the weekend, which the foolhardy among you can find here.)
Hey, I read your writing on the larp – fascinating! I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be involved in such a thing, and your analysis and relation of it to story writing is great and really thought-provoking. Hope the writing’s going well! 🙂
You’ll have to play in something with me sometime…
I would have said Chekhov’s gun is dramatic consonance, as long as it gets fired. It’s dramatic dissonance if it doesn’t.
That sounds convincing. I just made up my terminology.
Yeah, I made up mine too!
🙂 in that case I think we have to start two rival schools of dramaturgical philosophy