Original subtitles

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Morning now dawned,

and Sheherazade broke off from what

she had been allowed to say.

"What a good, pleasant, delightful, and sweet story

this is," exclaimed Dunyazad, at which Sheherazade told her,

"How can this compare with what I shall tell you

this coming night?

If I am still alive and the king spares me."

"My God," the king said to himself.

"I am not going to kill her until I

hear the rest of this remarkable story."

And so, they spent the rest of the time embracing one another

until the sun had fully risen.

until the sun had fully risen.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

You know, you may well find that you

want to look at very old stories in order

to learn how to tell a new one.

And in all cultures, we have a kind

of storehouse of those stories, you know, that we call myths,

of storehouse of those stories, you know, that we call myths,

you know.

In some cases, these myths are the leftovers

of religions that people no longer believe in.

You know, once upon a time, the Greek myths

were the texts of the Greek religion.

And these gods were real gods as far as people were concerned.

What's left now are these wonderful narratives.

And these narratives have endured for thousands of years.

And they haven't endured by accident.

And they haven't endured by accident.

You know, they endure because they contain so much truth,

you know, and often, they're just kind of amazing stories.

One of the characteristics of all these ancient stories is

that they're--

even if they're stories about gods--

is that they're truthful about human beings

because, frankly, the gods could be greedy.

They can be vengeful.

They can be sexually aggressive.

They can be sexually aggressive.

They can have many human faults.

And then they can have virtues.

You know, they can have a kind of nobility or kindness

or sweetness, you know.

And so, through these stories, we

see ourselves in a kind of enlarged form, you know.

And it can help us think about ourselves at our own scale.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I was writing a rock and roll novel.

I was writing a novel, "The Ground Beneath Her Feet," which

is about rock and roll singers.

And the thing that showed me how to write it, in a way,

was an ancient story from the Greek myths,

the story of Orpheus and Eurydice,

and the story about him falling in love with somebody

who dies because of a snakebite and following her beyond death,

following her into the underworld,

to try and retrieve her from the arms of death.

to try and retrieve her from the arms of death.

My story is also about-- it's called "The Ground

Beneath Her Feet" because the woman in question

is killed by an earthquake.

Literally, the ground opens beneath her feet.

And it's about the man who is so obsessed with her

that he can't stop loving her, even though she's dead.

And it seemed to me that there, in that-- the story of Orpheus

and Eurydice, you can tell it in 100 words or less, you know.

And that's one of the things that's

interesting about the great myths,

interesting about the great myths,

is that they're very, very condensed.

They're like little compressed balls of energy, you know.

And you start unpacking them, and they can explode and give

you all sorts of possibilities.

So in that case, here, you've got, you know, a triangle.

And at one point of the triangle, there's love.

At another point, there's art, music, poetry,

and at the third point of the triangle, there's death.

And so, the question you can ask yourself

is, can love, through the power of art, overcome death?

is, can love, through the power of art, overcome death?

And so, in this little story, there

are these questions which writers have spent

hundreds of years answering.

And, you know, we can all answer them in our own way.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

One of the collections of old stories

that has been most important to me

that has been most important to me

is the book which, in Arabic, it's

called "Alf laylah wa laylah," which

is 1,000 nights and one night, colloquially known

as "The Arabian Nights."

And these stories have had a very interesting journey.

Most of them originated at some point in India,

maybe the 10th or 11th century, and were written down

at some point in Persian, in Farsi,

which was, at that point, the cult language.

And so, they moved west, first into Persia, and then

And so, they moved west, first into Persia, and then

into the Arabic speaking world.

From the Arabic, it made its way initially

into French and then into English and then

into everything.

So these stories have traveled the world.

And they are stories of--

some of them are love stories.

Some of them are stories of interactions

with supernatural beings.

They're all very exciting stories.

And what they're not is children's stories.

I know because of Walt Disney, we think of,

I know because of Walt Disney, we think of,

you know, Aladdin and so on as being children's stories.

You know, there's a lot of sex and violence

in "The Arabian Nights," which you

wouldn't want your kids to be reading too young, let's say.

But to me, they are a great storehouse of storytelling,

and also, they tell you how to tell stories.

Because at the heart of it, and the reason

why I really love it, is the frame story

why I really love it, is the frame story

of Sheherazade, maybe the greatest, most heroic woman

in literature.

You know, frame stories about this wicked king who allegedly

discovers his wife being unfaithful

and kills her and then decides that he will marry, deflower,

and then execute a virgin every night of his life.

and then execute a virgin every night of his life.

And he has been doing this for some years

until Sheherazade, who is actually

the daughter of his prime minister,

of his vizier, volunteers, thinking that she has a plan

to prevent this from going on.

And her plan is to tell him stories.

So on the wedding night, with her sister

sitting at the foot of the bed, after they'd

made love, the king and Sheherazade,

the sister says, tell me a story.

And Sheherazade starts.

And Sheherazade starts.

And she has the brains never to finish the story

at the end of the night so that the king always

wants to hear the end of the story the next day.

And the king doesn't want to execute her

because he needs to know what the story will be.

So here, you have a story about a woman using

the power of story, the power of literature, in a way

to tame a brute.

And kind of, the beauty of the story

is that by the end of the 1,000 Nights and One Night,

is that by the end of the 1,000 Nights and One Night,

it's clear that he no longer wants to kill anybody.

It's something that has civilized him.

And that idea that somebody, this woman, Sheherazade,

would lay her life on the line, believing that literature

will save her, you know, it's just

such an extraordinary image, you know,

that I think has inspired writers forever after that,

that I think has inspired writers forever after that,

you know, including me.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Well, I mean, actually, Sheherazade

is quite like a commercial storyteller in that she

is very interested in holding the attention

of the reader, You.

Know, so in this case, holding the attention of the king.

So she uses a number of techniques

which are designed to do that.

which are designed to do that.

One is the cliffhanger ending, you know,

so that you need to know whether the person hanging off

the edge of the cliff survives or not.

You know, and the other is a technique which "The Arabian

Nights" likes a lot, which is the kind of Russian doll

version of stories, the kind of the story inside the story

inside the story.

You know, so she's telling a story.

And in the story, one of the characters will say, you know,

that reminds me of a story.

that reminds me of a story.

And at a certain point, it all unwinds,

and it's kind of a-- she does it so skillfully

that it's very enjoyable.

That's a little bit of a tricky technique

to use because it can become very confusing to the reader

if you do it badly, you know.

But if you do it well, it adds to the playfulness

and enjoyment of the text.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I come from a part of the world in which the oral narration,

I come from a part of the world in which the oral narration,

the act of the storyteller standing up

in front of an audience and telling a story,

is still very alive.

Some of this has to do with the fact

that there are parts of the country in which literacy

levels are low--

India, I'm talking about.

But some of it just had to do with the fact

that people still enjoy it.

There are immensely popular oral storytellers who

could gather really very substantial audiences to listen

to them tell a story.

And the thing that's interesting about it to me

And the thing that's interesting about it to me

is that the oral storyteller, everything he or she does,

is designed to keep the audience sitting there and interested.

The moment the audience loses interest,

it will actually get up and walk away.

So if the oral storyteller is going to be successful,

he needs to devise strategies which will keep them sitting

there, you know, and engaged.

there, you know, and engaged.

And what interested me was that the strategies that they have

devised are kind of the opposite of what you're told

in creative writing school.

The famous advice in "Alice in Wonderland"

that the King of Hearts gives to the White Rabbit in court

when the White Rabbit is flustered about how

to give evidence, and the King of Hearts

says, "Begin at the beginning.

Go on until you've reached the end and then stop,"

oral storytellers don't do it like that.

oral storytellers don't do it like that.

They usually have three or four storylines going on,

and they'll intertwine these stories.

And in between the intertwining, there

will be moments where they sing a little song

or do a little dance.

So there's a whole range of things going on

at the same time, kind of, in a way, like juggling.

And you would think and many people

would say that that's a confusing way to tell a story,

you know.

But actually, what you find, when

you see these performances, is that that is what keeps people

you see these performances, is that that is what keeps people

sitting there and interested, that the complexity,

the multiple storyline, is more entertaining, more engaging,

than the simple beginning to end narrative.

I think nowadays, you know, now we

have all these great television series.

And we've all become trained to listen to long stories, which

have many, many storylines.

You know, a thing like "Game of Thrones"

You know, a thing like "Game of Thrones"

had, I mean, I don't know how many storylines, you know,

but a lot.

So in a way, we are now, in a way, relearning

that lesson, that that way of telling a story

can be more engaging, more entertaining than a simple

beginning, middle, end.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In the oral story, I think that's really

a lot of the pleasure, is just watching the performer perform,

do his trick, you know.

And you enjoy the trick because it's so well done.

And you enjoy the trick because it's so well done.

Of course, what it allows you to do in a written form

is to make connections between things.

So if you have two or three different storylines

and you juxtapose by jumping from one moment in one

storyline to another moment in another storyline,

then, you know, if you do it right,

you're saying something about how those moments connect

to each other.

In the written form, you have to be

much more cautious about jumping too often between story lines

much more cautious about jumping too often between story lines

because it can stop being a pleasure

and it can become a distraction, you know,

that the reader can feel that they were engaged fully

with one story that you were telling them.

And if you just suddenly abruptly leave that

and go somewhere else, they can say,

what are you doing that for?

I don't want to be over there.

I want to be over here.

And so, I think the way to think about it in a written form

is that if you're going to have different stories weaving

is that if you're going to have different stories weaving

in and out of each other, is that each moment of each story

should feel a bit like a complete story in itself.

When I wrote "The Enchantress of Florence,"

It intertwines a storyline taking

place in India in the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar

with the storyline taking place in Florence

at the time of the High Renaissance,

at the time of the High Renaissance,

the time of Machiavelli and the Medicis.

And I worried that as the novel hopped between place and time,

that it would be irritating to the reader,

that they would think, hang on, I was over here just now.

Why am I over there now, you know?

And so, when I finished the draft of the novel,

I showed it to a few friends.

And I specifically said to them, tell me

if you get irritated by that jumping back and forth.

if you get irritated by that jumping back and forth.

And if so, tell me exactly where you get irritated.

And so, they did.

And the thing that I learned from those readings

was that I was doing it too much.

I was jumping back and forth much too much.

And it was annoying.

And so, I revised the book so that each section was longer.

And it felt as if each section had

a kind of story arc, a little mini story arc of its own.

So there was a kind of satisfaction,

like the satisfaction of reading a short story in each section.

like the satisfaction of reading a short story in each section.

And that meant that the reader was not so

offended by the sudden switch.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

One of the ways in which you can, in a way,

mimic in print the art of the oral storyteller

is by having a storyteller in your story,

you know, in other words, first person narration.

you know, in other words, first person narration.

If I am telling you the story then I

can be playful in the way in which in real life,

if I was telling you a story, I would be.

You don't necessarily tell them the story

in narrative sequence.

You can say, oh, but you know, this reminds me of.

That can take you off on a tangent

to have a kind of parenthesis story,

to have a kind of parenthesis story,

and then you can come back to the story.

And that's something we all understand

as the way in which we talk to each other, you know.

So if you have a first person narrator,

then he can do something like that,

or she can do something like that, in print.

You can hop between moments of time and place.

And, you know, the future of a character,

the past of a character can be used to illuminate

the present of the character.

In the third person, it's harder because people

In the third person, it's harder because people

have a sense of the third person novel

as being a kind of different sort of transaction.

And I would suggest certainly when you're setting out,

if you want to be like a storyteller,

then try using a first person narrator.

Try using somebody who literally is telling

the story in your story.