In a letter to his older brother Alexander, dated 10 May 1886, Anton Chekhov set out his six principles of writing: ‘truthful descriptions of persons and objects; total objectivity; extreme brevity; compassion; no political-social-economic effusions; audacity and originality: eschew cliché.
From Marginalian:
…no depiction of reality is realistic unless it include an empathic account of all perspectives, which might be the defining characteristic not only of Chekhov as a writer but of any great storyteller.
Here are his 6 rules, with a few examples pulled from his classic short story, The Lady with the Dog (1899):
1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature
Repeated and bitter experience had taught him that every fresh intimacy, while at first introducing such pleasant variety into everyday life, and offering itself as a charming, light adventure, inevitably developed, among decent people (especially in Moscow, where they are so irresolute and slow to move), into a problem of excessive complication leading to an intolerably irksome situation.
2. Total objectivity
3. Truthful descriptions of persons and objects
He could remember carefree, good-natured women who were exhilarated by love-making and grateful to him for the happiness he gave them, however shortlived; and there had been others — his wife among them — whose caresses were insincere, affected, hysterical, mixed up with a great deal of quite unnecessary talk, and whose expression seemed to say that all this was not just love-making or passion, but something much more significant
4. Extreme brevity
When the Christmas holidays came, he packed his things, telling his wife he had to go to Petersburg in the interests of a certain young man, and set off for the town of S. To what end? He hardly knew himself. He only knew that he must see Anna Sergeyevna, must speak to her, arrange a meeting, if possible.
5. Audacity and originality: flee the stereotype
Anna Sergeyevna was accompanied by a tall, round-shouldered young man with small whiskers, who nodded at every step before taking the seat beside her and seemed to be continually bowing to someone. This must be her husband, whom, in a fit of bitterness, at Yalta, she had called a “flunkey.” And there really was something of the lackey’s servility in his lanky figure, his side-whiskers, and the little bald spot on the top of his head. And he smiled sweetly, and the badge of some scientific society gleaming in his buttonhole was like the number on a footman’s livery.
6. Compassion
And it seemed to them that they were within an inch of arriving at a decision, and that then a new, beautiful life would begin. And they both realized that the end was still far, far away, and that the hardest, the most complicated part was only just beginning.
Let me know if you like them!