AScattergood: Sharing the Wealth

AScattergood: Sharing the Wealth

I'm sharing this one. Thanks for posting!

The Clock is Ticking

                                                        or

                      Props as Prompts & Chekhov, Part 2

 If Act One has a gun on the mantel, it had better be fired by Act Three.

                                           

 Or some such.

~ ~ ~ 

    Anton Chekhov's comment is one of the tenets of the dramatic & literary arts. Google it & you'll get examples & interpretations from here to The Cherry Orchard. What he means is that a well-chosen, deliberately placed prop is one of the writer's best tools & is not to be wasted. 

    It serves as a sudden tap on the shoulder, a snap of the finger to the reader. It can foreshadow, develop characterization, build tension, deflect (or enhance) suspicion. It's your job as creative manipulator, to use them judiciously so a properly placed item-of-interest signals the reader without setting off sirens. (Using them as red herrings is another blog altogether.)

Think ~~

✲ Winnie the Pooh's elusive honey 

✽   Miss Havisham's wedding cake

✶   Scarlett O'Hara's draperies

❄   James Bond's Aston Martin

☀  In Part 1 I referred to Augusta Scattergood's use of Junk Poker in GLORY BE.  For Gusty's middle grade readers, that shoe box and the childhood treasures Glory & her sister Jesslyn collected & used for the game come to represent growing pains & the bittersweet angst in coming of age.

                                                                          

♞ I've just finished NO WAY TO KILL A LADY, Nancy Martin's latest cozy in her Blackbird Sisters mystery series. A neighbor trottings into a scene in her four-in-hand & exchanging  pleasantries with Nora Blackbird raises only a ping, but for good or for evil, we know we're going to see that carriage & its driver again. 

✍  As for my shenanigans as author~~

     In the opening chapter of THE CHICK PALACE, my protagonist Johanna, stewing about her role as materfamilias, winds the family mantel clock tended by three generations of women. There's a wing key and discussion of winding against the pressure of the tightening spring. 

So of course there's convoluted family issues & a daughter. 

Yes indeed, that clock gets wound in Act One 

& it's deliberately wound & ticking in Act Three.