Anton Chekhov’s Writing Masterclass
Actionable advice to improve your writing from a modern master.
Anton Chekhov was a man who knew how to work. He balanced being a practising physician with writing some of the finest short stories and plays modernity has to offer. He was also a prolific writer of letters and dispenser of advice to fellow artists. ‘How to Write like Chekhov’ (affiliate link), edited by Piero Brunello and Lena Lenček, offers excerpts of this advice for the budding artist. I pass Chekhov’s counsel along and expand upon it, in the hopes you find it useful for your own writing.
Honesty
For Chekhov, the bedrock of any good writing is honesty. Not just honesty with yourself, but honesty with your audience. Without this, Chekhov is convinced your work simply will be unreadable — it will be immediately sniffed out as a fabrication. In an undated letter, he offers this observation:
‘Art has this great specification: it simply does not tolerate falsehood. One can lie in love, politics, and medicine: one can mislead the public or even God; but there is absolutely no lying in art’.
Honesty, though, is about more than just having the right intentions. It is an imaginative window into the lives of your characters. Like an actor seeking to embody their role, the…
