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Chandler's Law: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}{{Mechanics of Writing}}
[[File:JesusGunDoor.jpg|link=Jesus|frame|The readers will never see this coming!]]
{{quote|''"When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand."''
|'''[[Raymond Chandler]]'''}}
As codified by pulp novelist [[Raymond Chandler]], [[Chandler's Law]] is a concise but evocative piece of advice for writers who have somehow painted themselves into a corner, plotwise. The addition of a new opponent or complication, usually amidst a burst of violence, can free a protagonist from where he has become mired in the current plot.
Although expressed in a form very specific to the genre in which Chandler was writing, the Law can be easily generalized to handle any type of story.
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Not to be confused with ''anything'' to do with [[Friends|Chandler Bing]], nor [[Sonichu|Christian Weston Chandler]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Naruto]]'', The [[Tournament Arc|Chunin Exam Finals]] culminate in a series of seven one-on-one single-elimination fights between the remaining eight participants. By the middle of the third battle, the Tournament was no longer progressing the story by itself, so the author chose that moment for [[Big Bad|Orochimaru]] to reveal his Evil Plan to destroy the Leaf Village.
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== [[Comic Books]] ==
* [http://markwaid.boom-studios.net/2009/06/15-minutes-with-waid-my-good-friend-jack-daniels Mark Waid]{{Dead link}} has two of these :
** Take two characters who would otherwise have nothing in common or anything to discuss and [[Locked in a Room|put them into the same room]].
** Make a list of all the horrible things that could possibly happen to your character and consider going down the list.
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== [[Fan
* ''[[My Immortal]]'' abuses the concept so much that it becomes a [[Random Events Plot]] very quickly. It's pretty coherent (Ebony and Draco meet, date, screw like bunnies, break up) until Voldemort shows up. And Snape becomes a pedophile. And Draco gets captured. And Dumbledore turns evil. And Draco commits suicide. And comes back to life. This is all in about 2,000 words, by the way.
** Which is, in itself, a kind of [[Mind Screw]], just to keep up with what little coherency the story has.
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* While ''[[The Boondock Saints]]'' is practically made of "People Busting Through Doors and Shooting At People," there is one scene that particularly feels like this trope: The main characters are even bored, and the plot is kinda on hold; suddenly, their best friend kicks through the door and starts waving his gun around and screaming for everyone to pack their shit.
** ''Feels'' like it, but the friend bursts in panicking because {{spoiler|he just shot and killed three people in broad daylight.}}
* ''[[Saving Private Ryan]]'' has a scene that also
* Done by the protagonists in ''[[Defiance]]'' while raiding a local police station for antibiotics.
* Happens in ''[[Casino Royale]]'', when Bond is being tortured by Le Chiffre for information. Bond points out that he will never give up the information, and Le Chiffre can't kill him without it. Armed men enter and kill Le Chiffre.
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* Used in [[Raymond Chandler]]'s novels, [[Trope Namer|naturally]]. ''[[The Big Sleep (Literature)|The Big Sleep]]'', ''The Long Goodbye'', ...
* [[Lawrence Block]] also does this. In a book on writing, he illustrated how to maintain conflict between a protagonist and a grizzly bear until the protagonist starts escaping down the river. "Then you give the bear a canoe..."
* [[Chuck Palahniuk]] has said that, if you want to move a plot along, the best way is to just have another character enter the room and make them say something disturbing.
* Chandler's successor, Robert B. Parker, used this trope often with [[Spenser]]. Being [[Boring Invincible Hero|Spenser]], he usually turns the tables on his attackers. He ran into this so often that you kind of started to think that if the bad guys had just sat tight, Spenser wouldn't have had any leads to follow.
** In at least some of these cases, Spenser is actually being [[Genre Savvy]]. He actively attempts to bait the bad guys into making a run at him so he can thwart them and have someone to get answers from, especially if he doesn't know exactly who the bad guys are.
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== [[Live
* In the American version of ''[[The Office]],'' Michael Scott misuses this trope constantly at his improv class. Any time he is called to act in a scene, he pulls out a gun to increase drama because "you can't top it". Of course, nobody can top it and it ruins every improv exercise the class attempts.
** In fact, improv classes usually state as one of the first rules of scenework that pulling a gun is a "weak choice"—as pointed out above, it keeps everyone else in the scene from contributing anything. Not to say it never happens, of course.
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* [[Jim Henson]] once commented on his pre-Muppet puppet sketches that when he couldn't think of how to close a sketch, he'd either have an explosion or have one character eat the other. It's pretty clear that this carried over to [[The Muppet Show]].
* ''[[Two and A Half Men]]'' has Alan, while writing a movie in a coffee shop, geting writer's block several times and solving it by having a meteor hit the characters.
== [[Music]] ==
* ''[[Trapped in the Closet]]'' by R. Kelly follows this trope so much it goes from [[Once an Episode]] to [[Drinking Game]] pretty quickly.
** Parodied in the ''South Park'' episode of the same name, where R. Kelly is ''constantly'' pulling out his gun, usually for no reason at all.
* Many of [["Weird Al" Yankovic]]'s parody songs are like this. A particularly egregious ([[Refuge in Audacity|but not]] [[So Bad It's Good|actually unpleasant]]) example would be ''Everything You Know Is Wrong''.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* This is very common advice for GMs, newbie and veteran alike. Any GM of any description has experienced the awful feeling of their table group starting to screw around and make their own fun because they've grown bored with the plot. This is the smart GM's cue to have a surprise,
* The ''[[Dungeons
* Mentioned by name in the Tabletop RPG ''[[Feng Shui]],'' in the "GM's advice" section.
* This is one of the most emphasized pieces of advice for ''[[Spirit of the Century]]'' GMs.
* ''[[Warhammer
** Or have it turn out that the governer/inquisitor/whatever was actually an agent of chaos/tyranids/generic evil all along.
* ''[[Unknown Armies]]'' alludes to it in the GMs section when explaining how to plot a game, suggesting that GMs throw in another faction "in case you need somebody to come through the door with a gun"
* Quoted and explained in ''[[GURPS]]: Mysteries''.
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* [http://www.wikislessons.com/index.php?date=2005-10-26 This] ''Wiki's Lessons In Life'' comic applies this principle to conversations.
*
** [http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0005.html This page] uses the explosion version.
** [http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/1914.html This page] uses and [[lampshade]]s the trope.
* ''[[Girl Genius]]'' uses the rather natural combination of this trope and [[Moment Killer]] [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20090511 here].
** Earlier on, the trope is discussed with regard to throwing pies instead of sudden violence [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20050511 here].
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Rule of Drama]]
[[Category:Laws and Formulas]]
▲[[Category:Chandler's Law]]
[[Category:Mechanics of Writing]]
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