All language subtitles for Masterclass Salman Rushdie Teaches Storytelling and Writing - 08.Revealing Character

SALMAN RUSHDIE: Bartleby,
quick, I am waiting.

I heard a slow scrape
of his chair legs

on the uncarpeted floor.

And soon he appeared standing at
the entrance of his hermitage.

What is wanted, said he mildly.

The copies, the copies,
said I hurriedly.

We're going to
examine them there.

And I held towards him
the fourth quadruplicate.

I would prefer not to, he
said, and gently disappeared

behind the screen.

For a few moments, I was
turned into a pillar of salt,

standing at the head of my
seated column of cloaks.

standing at the head of my
seated column of cloaks.

Recovering myself, I
advanced towards the screen

and demanded the reason for
such extraordinary conduct.

Why do you refuse?

I would prefer not to.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

What is something
unusual about them?

What is something
unusual about them?

When Joyce introduces
Leopold Bloom in "Ulysses,"

he starts with the
sentence, "Mr. Leopold Bloom

age with relish the inner
organs of beasts and fowls."

The fact that he likes
offal, that he likes tripe,

that he likes et
cetera, all that,

you kind of almost immediately
have a sense of him

because of what he eats,
which is not usual,

because of what he eats,
which is not usual,

certainly not to me.

I mean, I'm not a big
fan of the inner organs

of beasts and fowls.

But I love it that he is.

You need to come up with
some aspect of your character

that is idiosyncratic, that
not everybody would share,

that is special
to that character.

And start there.

Then you can broaden it
into all sorts of things.

If there's a character with
green hair, tell us that first.

I think in Isabel Allende's
"House of the Spirits,"

I think in Isabel Allende's
"House of the Spirits,"

there's a character
with green hair.

And she puts it right up front.

You're immediately intrigued.

When you begin a book, and the
reader can sit there and think,

well the books that think,
you want to intrigue them

so that they want the journey.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The decision between the
first and third person

is really the question
about whether you

is really the question
about whether you

want to have your reader see
your character from the outside

and only gradually
penetrate to the deeper

layers of the character or
whether you want your reader

to see the character
from the inside, see them

as they see themselves,
and then for your reader

to decide whether
the way the character

presents himself or
herself is truthful.

If you're using the first
person, you're usually saying,

If you're using the first
person, you're usually saying,

trust me, I'm your storyteller.

But if your
storyteller is a liar,

then they're
presenting themselves

in a way that is false.

And what you as
the author can do

is begin to point
the reader to see

the discrepancies
between the way

in which the character
is describing themselves

and how other people
might see that character.

and how other people
might see that character.

There can be parts of a
book which are subjective,

written through the first
person view of the character,

and others which
are objective, which

come outside the character
and look at it from outside.

You can have novels in
which there's more than one

first person character and in
which the different narrators

don't always see the
story the same way.

There are some books which
have, really, multiple narrators

William Faulkner's "As I Lay
Dying" is like a relay race,

William Faulkner's "As I Lay
Dying" is like a relay race,

where the narrator changes
almost with every chapter.

And what that does in
the end is to give you

almost a collective
community view of the story.

So yeah, I would suggest
experimenting with all this.

It's worth getting the hang
of all these different things

because it gives you a toolbox.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Essentially, you have three
ways of revealing character.

You can either reveal character
through what they say.

If they say some
terrible things,

then you know that kind
of terrible person.

If you're writing
another kind of book,

you can reveal character
through interior monologue.

You can tell the
reader what is going on

inside the character's head.

And the third thing is
you can reveal character

through action,
through what they do.

As in real life,
sometimes in a book

there is a discrepancy
between what people say

there is a discrepancy
between what people say

and what they do.

When Ralph Ellison
writes "Invisible Man,"

he's entirely inside
his character.

And he sees the whole world
from inside his character.

And so the way in which
we learn the character

is through, as it were,
his own self-portrait.

That's great.

I mean, I actually
love that book.

And I think first person
narration gives you

the gift of going inside,
of writing from inside,

looking out.

looking out.

Hemingway is like this, where
almost everything is revealed

through action,
action and dialogue

because Hemingway uses
a lot of dialogue.

It's almost all about
what people are doing.

There's very little in Hemingway
of people reflecting inwardly

about themselves.

It's all out there.

They're drinking.

They're going to bullfights.

They're having sex
with each other.

They're misbehaving
in various ways.

They're expressing anti-Semitic
sentiments in some cases.

You judge them by what
they say and what they do.

I think it's very interesting
in third person narration

I think it's very interesting
in third person narration

to create this tension
between how people speak

about themselves and what they
want and what they actually do.

Hypocrisy is one of the
great things revealed

by that discrepancy,
people who say one thing

and do another
thing is often what

you would call a hypocrite.

In Moliere's play
"Tartuffe," you

have the central
character who speaks

in very holy, moral language,
behaves in an absolutely

in very holy, moral language,
behaves in an absolutely

creepy and dreadful way.

The entire play is about the
discrepancy between the way

he portrays himself to the
world and what he actually is.

"It is a science to stretch
out the strings of conscience

in the service of diverse things
and to rectify an evil action

with the purity
of our intention.

Regarding these secrets,
I shall instruct you.

You need only to allow
me to conduct you.

You need only to allow
me to conduct you.

Satisfy my desire
and have no fear.

I'll assume the sin and
leave your soul clear."

In the end, he's exposed
for being a fraud.

So yeah, you got
those three things.

And it's, again, a question of
deciding, for your story, which

is the best way.

If, for example,
in your story, you

don't want to give away a
character's secrets right away,

don't want to give away a
character's secrets right away,

if there are things you want
to withhold from the reader

until a dramatic moment
when you will reveal them,

then it's best to write
the story in such a way

that the character is
revealed through action.

If you want to write a novel
of inner life, then sometimes

first person narrative is
the best way to try that.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The thing about
dialogue is you have

The thing about
dialogue is you have

to decide what dialogue
is doing in the story.

There are stories
which are almost

all dialogue, in
which everything

about the characters
and the events

is told through how
people talk to each other.

And there are stories in which
people speak very little,

but when they speak,
it's very important.

So just to take
those to extremes,

there's a wonderful
story that Susan Sontag

wrote in the early days
of the AIDS crisis.

It was a story called
"The Way We Live Now."

It was a story called
"The Way We Live Now."

And in the story, the central
character who never appears

is somebody who
obviously has got AIDS.

And the story is
about this whole group

of people who know him,
talking to each other.

And each of them talks to each
other in a kind of circle.

And the space in the
middle, the thing not said,

the thing not seen is
the person the story

is about who's dying of AIDS.

is about who's dying of AIDS.

And there, dialogue is used to
reveal a whole social problem.

In the early days of AIDS when
there was a stigma about it,

people were obviously
very afraid.

And all of that gets revealed
through the way in which people

talk about the absent person.

How do you talk about somebody
when they leave the room?

And there are other stories
in which very little is said,

but what is said is
incredibly significant.

In Herman Melville's story
"Bartleby," just about the only

thing that Bartleby says
is I prefer not to when

thing that Bartleby says
is I prefer not to when

he's asked to do things.

He prefers not to.

And Melville in a
way never tells us

why it is that he
constantly refuses,

even when refusing to
do things is actually

against his interest.

But it makes him this
extraordinarily enigmatic

figure and kind of almost
emblematic figure of refusing,

the person who says no.

And there, the enormously
condensed use of dialogue,

And there, the enormously
condensed use of dialogue,

almost to that single sentence,
tells you a huge amount.

So again the
question that you ask

yourself is, what is
dialogue doing in my story.

If you're trying to write
the kind of story which

wants to say to the reader, this
is as real as I can make it,

this is a story which
is like a slice of life,

if you're trying to
write that kind of story,

then it's a good
idea to try and make

then it's a good
idea to try and make

the characters sound as they
would sound in real life.

But if you're not trying
to write a slice of life,

if you're trying to do
something more highly invented,

then that doesn't
matter so much.

If there's clearly
a level of departure

from everyday reality,
then the dialogue

can be a departure as well.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Spoken language
has speech rhythms.

And you want to find
the speech rhythm

And you want to find
the speech rhythm

that best suits the character
that you're creating.

Some characters
are very articulate

and speak in long,
flowing sentences.

Some characters speak in much
shorter bursts, little staccato

bursts of sentences.

And so the way in
which they speak

tells you quite
a lot about them.

So that's something to think
about when you're representing

how a character speaks.

how a character speaks.

One of the difficulties that
I had in some of the books

that I've written which
deal with South Asia

is that the characters
would not realistically

be speaking English, they would
be speaking other languages.

And yet I have to represent
that speech in English.

So the question then
is, how do you do that?

English speakers' idioms that
can sound completely idiotic

coming out of their mouths.

So you have to create an idiom.

So you have to create an idiom.

You have to create what's
called an idiolect, which

is a way for them to
speak, for their speech

to be represented in English
which indicates to the reader

that this is, if you
like, a translation

from another language.

That's one of the
hardest things,

I think, to do is to
represent in one language

something that's actually
being said in another language.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

There are writers
who take great pain

to make sure that
their characters speak

as people would in real life.

If you read the short stories
of Raymond Carver, for example,

his characters are predominantly
working class, often very poor

indeed, often with
problems of drink.

And he had an amazing ear for
the accurate representation

And he had an amazing ear for
the accurate representation

of the speech of people of that
class and that time and place.

So in the case of
Ray Carver, yes, I

think his characters speak
as they would if they

were in the room with you.

In the case of
other writers, no.

Writers develop
conventions of speech.

If you read the great American
novelist Don DeLillo--

I think maybe Don
DeLillo may be, I think,

the greatest living
American novelist.

All the characters speak
in exactly the same way.

All the characters speak
in exactly the same way.

All the characters have
exactly the same tone of voice.

And that tone of
voice is deliberately

flattened, unemotional.

It's quite clear that he's
doing that on purpose,

that he's trying to create
a world in which there

is very little affect.

The people's ability to
emotionally communicate

with each other is withdrawn.

People speak in
this very flat way.

People speak in
this very flat way.

So in the case of
DeLillo's characters,

no, I don't think people
like that would speak

like that if you met them.

And in other people's work,
writing can be very heightened.

So if we talk about, like,
Alice Walker, Toni Morrison,

they're very influenced also by
a kind of biblical tradition,

almost like Old
Testament, almost

like sermons, given a kind
of poetic heightening.

like sermons, given a kind
of poetic heightening.

Again, yeah, people
don't talk like that.

But you believe it
because it comes out

of a tradition of speech
which has to do with church

and with all kinds of elements
which come from that culture.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Just as an exercise,
try and write

a scene in which you
don't say who's talking.

And show it to somebody.

And see if they can
distinguish the characters,

And see if they can
distinguish the characters,

even if the characters
are just called

A, B, and C. See
if somebody can say

who's talking at which moment.

If you've really understood
how they each speak,

then the reader will know who's
talking without your telling

them because only that
character would speak like that,

and only this character
would speak like this.

And it can be, for example,
that one character speaks

And it can be, for example,
that one character speaks

in a more didactic way, is
always telling you what to do

and what they think
and why you're wrong

and why you're right.

And another character might
be more timid in the way

that they speak.

It's a craft skill.

And it's something
you can polish

and you can get better at
because it will help you.

Differentiation is
what it's called.

If you could properly
differentiate

If you could properly
differentiate

the way in which each character
acts, speaks, behaves,

then they exist on the
page without you having

to spell it out all the time.

And so it's worth
practicing differentiation.

[MUSIC PLAYING]