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Chandler's Law: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[Saving Private Ryan]]'' has a scene that also feels like this trope. The squad regroups with an American unit in a building, only to have part collapse, revealing German soldiers occupying an adjacent room, resulting in a standoff. Captain Hamill ([[Ted Danson]]) and one of his men show up with Thompsons unnoticed and shoot all the German soldiers, ending the standoff.
* 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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== [[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, unknown antagonist leap into the king's throne room and immediately start cracking heads or, if the party is bored of constant fighting instead of talking, to suddenly have the monster's boss walk in, surrender and attempt to talk it out.
* 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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[[Category:Rule of Drama]]
[[Category:Laws and Formulas]]
[[Category:Chandler's Law]]▼
[[Category:Mechanics of Writing]]
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