All language subtitles for Masterclass Salman Rushdie Teaches Storytelling and Writing - 06.Conceiving Characters

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Speaking
for myself, sometimes

when I'm writing something,
I'm really much more enjoying

writing the bad characters
than the good characters.

Because there's a
kind of freedom in it.

Let yourself be bad on the page.

The heart of the novel,
traditionally, was--

The heart of the novel,
traditionally, was--

you could say it's a line
from thousands of years

ago from Heraclitus,
where he says,

essentially, the
character is destiny.

You know, a person's
character is their fate.

The kind of personality you
have determines the kind of life

you will have.

And the novel as a form
has always followed that.

The character is like this.

Therefore, their future--
their fate is of this kind.

And I remember when
Charles Schulz, who draws--

And I remember when
Charles Schulz, who draws--

drew the Peanuts comic strip,
talked about giving up,

stopping doing it, before he--

I mean, some time
before he died--

a lot of people
wrote in asking him

that, before he stopped drawing
it, there was just one thing

could he please
allow it to happen.

And that was could
just once Charlie Brown

kick the football.

And he never did it.

Because he knew that if Charlie
Brown once kicked the football,

Because he knew that if Charlie
Brown once kicked the football,

he would in some ways
stop being Charlie Brown.

And if Lucy just once didn't
whip the football away

at the last minute, then her
Lucyness would be compromised.

Their character
was their destiny.

It was his character to always
fail to kick the football.

It was her character
to always whip it away.

But now we live in a
world in which character

is often not destiny.

When I was writing
"Midnight's Children,"

I had this sentence,
which was originally very

near the beginning,
which was, "most

near the beginning,
which was, "most

of what matters in our lives
takes place in our absence."

And then, in the end,
I thought, that's

too Tolstoyan in a way
to have as a beginning.

And I buried it inside the book.

But what I meant by that is that
our daily lives are affected

by decisions taken and
things happening in rooms

we don't even know the existence
of, between conversations

between people whose
names we will never know,

who decide things about the
economy, about war and peace,

who decide things about the
economy, about war and peace,

about all sorts of things that
directly impact our lives.

And that seems to me to
be a very modern concern,

the fact that our lives
can be changed by things

we can't affect.

And to put it at its most
tragic, when those planes flew

into those towers, and
those thousands of people

passed away, it wasn't anything
to do with their character.

passed away, it wasn't anything
to do with their character.

Their character was
not their destiny.

And yet, there's
a colossal event

that we have to
come to grips with.

And we have to try and
work out new strategies

to encompass this world in which
sometimes our character is not

our fate.

With character,
sometimes you'll find

that you know the character
very well immediately.

that you know the character
very well immediately.

And if so, then that's
a great good fortune.

Sometimes writers, in
order to have that feeling,

will base the central character
on a variation of themselves.

It gives you a
feeling of confidence

to be somewhere close
to yourself, you know.

And you know, many
people have done this.

So the great American
Nobel laureate Saul Bellow

So the great American
Nobel laureate Saul Bellow

did it all the time
so that the character

of Moses Herzog in
his novel "Herzog"

is not only like
Bellow, but has a number

of things in common
with Bellow's life,

major events in Bellow's life,
like his wife running off

with his friend.

When I wrote--

I think only when I wrote
"Midnight's Children" did

I use the idea of having
a central character who

I use the idea of having
a central character who

was close to me in many ways--

my age just about, give
or take a few weeks,

a child of the same generation,
born in the same city,

in the same social
class, you know,

and going to the same school.

And it helped me.

But, again, what happens as a
character comes to life is he

or she begins to take on
characteristics of their own,

which are not yours.

And then you have to listen
very carefully to what

And then you have to listen
very carefully to what

those characteristics are.

So for example, when
I was 14, I left

Bombay to go to school and
then university in England.

And my life afterwards
became very international.

Saleem never leaves
South Asia, between India

and Pakistan and Bangladesh.

His whole life is there.

So that's one difference.

The other thing is that I
felt that as he grew older,

The other thing is that I
felt that as he grew older,

he became quite passive.

Instead of being a
protagonist, a person who

makes things happen, he became a
person to whom things are done,

and increasingly a kind
of victim of events

rather than a kind
of shaper of events.

And there was a moment when I
was writing it when I thought,

I don't like this.

I want him to be more proactive.

I want him to be more proactive.

And I tried to write scenes in
which he was more dynamic, you

know, took charge.

And they were awful.

They were completely
unusable scenes

because that isn't who he was.

And in the end, I had
to learn the lesson

that once you've
made the character,

you have to respect
who the character is.

My view is that anybody
can write about anything.

Because if that's
not so, then nobody

can write about anything.

can write about anything.

If we are going
to limit ourselves

to a world in which, you know,
only straight people can write

about straight people, and
only gay people can write

about gay people, and
thin people can't write

about fat people, and bald
people can't write about people

with hair, men can't write
about women or vice-versa,

then the form of the
novel dies immediately.

So it's very
important to learn how

to engage with realities
which are not yours.

to engage with realities
which are not yours.

The answer to how you
do that is that I think

it should be understood--
you should try and understand

that there's an aspect of
writing fiction which is not

very different
from reportage, not

very different from journalism.

For example, one of
the major characters

in "The Moor's Last Sigh" is
an Indian painter, a woman

painter, called Aurora.

And she's about as unlike
me as it's possible to be.

And she's about as unlike
me as it's possible to be.

I mean, first of
all, she's a woman.

Secondly, she's fantastically
flamboyant, outspoken,

Bohemian, and kind of badly
behaved, and therefore,

great fun.

And in order to know
her, first of all,

I had to think about, who
do I know who's like that?

Are there bits of
them that I can steal,

little mannerisms
that I can steal?

little mannerisms
that I can steal?

I mean, you very rarely steal
the whole of a character.

But you might steal a
way of saying something,

a way of expressing yourself,
you know, or a gesture,

or a certain kind of laugh, or
just something that helps you.

And then I thought about are
there historical models--

there actually was a very
eminent Indian woman painter

of that period, the period
around independence,

called Amrita Sher-Gil.

And she was, in some ways, quite
like my character in that she

And she was, in some ways, quite
like my character in that she

was very outspoken and not
willing to subject herself

to the conventional behavior of
the time and kind of bisexual,

but at the same time, very
influenced by Gandhian ideas.

So she helped me a little bit
just by existing, actually.

Just by being there,
it gave me permission

to invent another Indian
woman artist of some eminence.

So characters are usually
drawn from a collection

So characters are usually
drawn from a collection

of bits and pieces glued
together by your imagination.

My own view has always
been that nobody in a book,

no matter how minor
a character they are,

nobody should feel just
sketched in, you know.

nobody should feel just
sketched in, you know.

I mean, if you think
about a painting,

it would be awful if in
a grand master painting

you had wonderfully
drawn central-- painted

central characters and
then just lightly sketched

in figures on the edges.

It would feel unfinished.

So my view is that,
even if it's somebody

who appears for a
page, for one scene,

you should somehow
try and make sure

you should somehow
try and make sure

that they're there, that
they're as physically

real as you can make them.

We see this in the movies.

Sometimes somebody can walk on
in a movie and have one moment,

you know.

But they're so idiosyncratic.

Wonderful character actors
can inform one scene.

You feel like the character
has a whole story behind them,

even if you're
not being told it.

I think you should just try and
aim for that in a novel too.

The character walks
on, and it should

feel like they have a
whole story behind them.

feel like they have a
whole story behind them.

It's just that that's not
the story we're telling.

In George Eliot-- when
she wrote "Middlemarch,"

she gave herself--

the main male character
in "Middlemost"

is described as being
basically the most boring man

in the world.

And yet, there he is.

He's there all the
way through the book.

How do you write
interestingly about somebody

How do you write
interestingly about somebody

you have said is very boring?

It's almost impossible.

But that's an
interesting challenge,

you know, to set yourself
the task of a character who

is unsympathetic--
doesn't have to be boring,

but a character
who's unsympathetic,

and to try and write
about them in a way that

engages the reader's
attention and doesn't totally

alienate the reader.

I mean, one of the
most remarkable things

about Nabokov's "Lolita" is
that the main character is vile.

about Nabokov's "Lolita" is
that the main character is vile.

You know, the main character,
even to himself, even

in the book, he
tells you that he

knows that he is a vile person.

And he's a pedophile.

And yet, reading the book,
you're engaged with him.

You're right there with
him all the way through it.

It's an almost impossible
thing to pull off,

to take somebody
as wrong as that

to take somebody
as wrong as that

and to make that
the character who

is the person who you accompany
through the story, you know.

I'm not suggesting
that you do that.

But it might be an
interesting exercise

to take a character with
a likability problem,

let's say a murderer, and to try
and write about them in a way

that the audience,
the reader's sympathy

is engaged with that character.

is engaged with that character.

You know, it can't only
be the way-- the case

that you write books in
which good people are good

and bad people are bad.

Life's not like that.

So you need to be able to write
books in which good people have

real bad problems and bad people
can be interesting and engaged

with.

And I think--
speaking for myself,

sometimes when I'm
writing something,

I'm really much more enjoying
writing the bad characters

than the good characters.

than the good characters.

Because there's a
kind of freedom in it.

Let yourself be bad on the page.

It can be fun.