Submitted by I_Am_Slightly_Evil t3_10mwf5g in books
There’s a series that I’m reading where the in the second chapter of the first volume main character gives a side character two items which they use the fist one just about right away. Later they use the second of the items given to them towards the end of the ninth volume.
Do you have other examples of long waits for when something is presented and used.
Blood Rites, Dresden Files #6.
Dresden tells one of his enemies, >!And next time, anvils!!<.
We didn't see the payoff on this until Battle Ground, Dresden Files #17. >!Dresden drops an anvil on an enemy.!<
So, 16 years, 11 volumes, and 2 collections of side stories later we finally got the pay off.
Butcher is a master of the long game.
In Dead Beat (book 7), Dresden is being attacked by a former Denarian, and is in dire straits, and is lamenting "Where's Michael, where's the Knights of the Cross?" Who should show up to save his ass? >!Butters!< We don't think much of this at the time, as that's a character who was already involved in this situation.
But then, in Skin Game (book 15), >!Butters takes up one of the Swords and becomes a Knight of the Cross!<.
It's not as long of a gap as yours, but it's considerable foreshadowing of a major event, and not just a throwaway line into associated gag.
Uncle Ben in Game of Thrones
Yup. This is the right answer. Benjen Stark.
...Hodor.
In the books, there's also a (somewhat) long setup for a literally shitty joke; in book 1 >! Twin Lannister !< is introduced, and it is mentioned offhand that some people joke about how he's probably >! shitting gold. !< Towards the end of book 3, >! he's shot while taking a dump, and his killer dryly notes that he did not, in the end, shit gold. !<
I don't remember?
He’s north of the wall in the first episode of season 1. He comes back again in the final season.
In ASOIAF he comes back a lot earlier. He helped Samwell Tarly and his wildling girlfriend get to the Wall when they were North.
We don't know that Coldhands is Benjen
Yes sorry your right. I forgot that. It's been a while since I read them and the show had a habit of blending multiple characters into one e.g Sansa/Jeyne. It's quite possible that Coldhands isn't Benjen.
My mistake.
No worries, I may have sounded more curt than I intended! There's a strong chance they are one and the same, but just wanted to clarify that it's not a certainty.
There is a good chance they are, but we don't know that yet bookwise.
I didn't find your comment curt at all, by the way.
John Irving is good at this. A Prayer for Owen Meany comes to mind. When I first read Irving, he was frustrating because I wasn't sure he'd tie up loose ends. But he does wonderfully in Owen Meany (and also The World According to Garp).
A Prayer for Owen Meany is one of my all time favorite books.
Peter Hamiltons Nights Dawn trilogy. He introduces an alien religion in the first book around 450 pages in. It becomes very important (and not seen again) until about 3000 pages later in book three, and no that number is not hyperbole.
He does the same thing in the first chapter of Pandora's Star, where the protagonists find the energy harvesting tech. The pay-off is at the very end of Judas Unchained.
Isn't the Harry Potter series full of these things? Stuff from book 1 resolves or is explained in like Books 5 and 7, etc etc (things from each book play roles in subsequent books)... I no longer have the memory to recall examples, but I was always impressed with her attention to detail or impressed by the amount of patience she had to keep so many secrets for so many pages.
Yes but it's not really chekovs gun stuff that often, because for that you have to have planned to use it whereas JK tends to just act like she planned it the whole time.
…and GRRM calls the same technique his “gardening method” of writing…throw something out there and find a use for it later.
I'm not so sure that's the same thing as what JK does.
Fairly early on in Eragon, he is given a fortune/riddle and the final part of the fortune only comes to fruition near the end of the final book
Both of mine are in webcomics, unsounded and order of the stick. Both have had several such reveals many, many years after they were seeded.
I loved OOTS! I have forgotten all about it and need to get back to reading it. Thank you!!!
It's gotten so, so much better. Some of the reveals are just... brilliantly executed. Lmk when you've caught up I'd love to hear your reactions. Also I cannot possibly recommend unsounded enough, it's gorgeous and bleak yet beautiful.
Noted. I'll have to set a calendar reminder to come back to this thread.
Probably gonna be Kvothe's box from Name of the Wind.
3 books and a million years.
You just know it's going to be a single copper jot in there. No significance to it at all.
Not exactly Chekov's gun but in The Wheel of Time (book series) there's a minor (named) character in The Eye of the World (1990) who shows up in A Memory of Light (2013). They do not feature and AFAIK are not referred to at any point in between.
In Sartre's Huis clos (No Exit), there's a coupe-papier on the mantlepiece that's mentioned in the first scene (it's like a letter opener, for cutting the page edges of new books --since in France books were often sold with uncut pages so customers couldn't read the books in the store).
It's only a one-act play, but the coupe-papier does get used in the last scene.
I feel like A Gentleman in Moscow pulled this off pretty well.
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The Rifle, by Gary Paulsen. The book starts off describing a rifle hanging over a fireplace mantel. The book ends >!with a character being shot and killed by it.!<
Oh, about ten years or so for many of the ones started in the Kingkiller Chronicles. Still waiting, to be clear.
I know people don’t care for it, and I can’t blame them, but Ready Player One actually did this pretty well.
There’s a character who first appears in book five of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series whose arc memorably concludes in book thirteen.
Which one? I’m curious, love those books.
I didn't keep track of the book numbers but I suspect he's talking about >!Andrew Wray!<
Indeed.
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Checkov's Gun. My favourite writing technique in storytelling.
Early on in The Moon, the Stars, and Madame Burova, Billie, a woman who's looking for her biological parents, makes friends with a piano player. In the last couple of chapters, she learns that >!he's her father!<.
The Charterhouse in “The Charterhouse of Parma” by Stendhal is not mentioned till the last page of 500 page novel.
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mittenknittin t1_j65mela wrote
Well, it's not originally a book, but in the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court, the main character loses an item in chapter 8, written in 2006.
She gets it back in chapter 60, written over 10 years later.