Why your story needs a gun

In the theatre, Chekhov’s gun is an essential part of the narrative.

In the land of investment stories, I’d bet it’s barely left its holster.

The great Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov, suggested that every part of a story should be necessary. Anything else should be left out.

And, if a loaded gun appears at the start of the play, someone should fire it later on.

It is of course a metaphor, although some of his plays indeed feature weapons. The Seagull and Uncle Vanya are two. You can probably guess what happens.

The gun could be that falling share price, the investment paying off in the end, the brilliant new product that revived a company, a struggling Chancellor with an idea paying off.

The problem with investment content is that many people create it with the academic structure. This is where conclusions (the important bits) appear right at the end of an awful lot of process.

It’s probably because the business of managing money is an academic pursuit: a contest of ideas, the primacy of empirical evidence, peer review, an obsession with appearing clever. The list goes on.

But this is a massive problem in an age of distraction. People don’t read online articles to the end, they skim for the main points, and they react poorly (note: not neutrally) to complexity and jargon. Check out our Readability Report for these sources – and lots of other analysis.

And academic style articles have no room for the things that keep you glued to the page: heroes, challenges, twists ?… and Chekov’s gun.

The next time you write something for your company – or client – have a think about the gun.

You don’t want your material to continue firing blanks.

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