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.
Anton ChekhovRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that a more detached style can highlight a reader's emotions by providing contrast.
In this quote, Anton Chekhov emphasizes the importance of contrasting emotions in writing. By adopting a colder or more understated tone, the writer allows the reader's emotional responses, particularly their grief, to become more pronounced. This technique can create a more impactful experience, as the starkness of the writing serves to enhance and define the emotional payload of the story.
Themes
EmotionsWritingContrastArtGriefReader
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a writing workshop to discuss techniques for evoking emotions.
More from Anton Chekhov
All quotes βThere 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.
Anton ChekhovRead
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
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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.
Anton ChekhovRead
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?
Anton ChekhovRead
Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.
Anton ChekhovRead
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