Original subtitles

SALMAN RUSHDIE: The way of avoiding cliché is to really

look into yourself and to see what it is about that place

that is significant to you and write out of that feeling.

And then you will write something good.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

There are novels which so relish the world they're set in,

There are novels which so relish the world they're set in,

whether it's Paris or Vienna or New York or wherever it may be,

that the portrayal of the place is as done with as much love

and care as the portrayal of any of the people in the place.

And the way in which people live in that place, the place

interacts with them and is like a character.

You know, and I really like that because for me, place

You know, and I really like that because for me, place

is very, very important.

I think it may be because my own place in the world

has changed quite a lot.

I grew up in Bombay.

I mean, I've lived for roughly equal chunks of my life

in Bombay, London, and New York, and three very different

realities.

It has the advantage that it allows me--

it gives me the freedom to set stories in many places.

it gives me the freedom to set stories in many places.

But it also makes me worry about the ground beneath my feet.

You know, and that's to say when a writer is deeply rooted

in one place, they can write about that place

with complete ownership.

This is my place.

The migrant writer, there's always a question mark

above the place that they're in and belonging,

the ability to belong, the willingness

of people to accept that they belong, et cetera.

So I've felt the need to, literally in a book,

So I've felt the need to, literally in a book,

to create the ground that the book stands on.

And only when I've done that can I

begin to have characters moving around in it.

So for me, the place comes first, always.

It doesn't have to be a city.

It doesn't have to be a country.

It can be a street.

It could be a cafe.

It can be the bedroom in which you were a child.

It could also be a lost place because places

It could also be a lost place because places

are lost for two reasons, either because you can't go back

there because of exile or whatever it might be,

or because the place itself has changed

so much that it is no longer the place you remembered.

And maybe what you want to do in your writing is to recreate it,

you know, to allow it to exist on your page in the way

that it actually no longer exists in the world.

For example, Balzac's novel, "Eugénie Grandet,"

For example, Balzac's novel, "Eugénie Grandet,"

he sets it up.

You know, he describes first the town in which he lives,

the neighborhood of the town, what that's like,

the house in the neighborhood in which she lives.

And by the time you get to hers in a room inside the house,

he's already created for you a lot of the context of her life,

you know, and that her life then takes place in that context.

He's built the world first, and he's told you,

He's built the world first, and he's told you,

we're going to have a story which inhabits this world.

Tolkien does the same thing in a different way.

You know, in a hole in the ground lived a hobbit.

You already know what you're in for.

So that's, I would say, the best the best advice I can give

is to set it up, right from the outset, the kind of story

you're going to tell.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

When you're developing a place, I would say,

When you're developing a place, I would say,

think of it exactly in the way that you think

of one of your characters.

You have to be very clear about the when of the place.

You know, even in New York City, a story set

in New York City in the 1970s would

refer to the Pan Am building rather than

the MetLife building.

There would be no trade towers, et cetera.

There would be no trade towers, et cetera.

Or they would be just being built, actually

or just finished.

So you have to think about the specifics of the moment, what

the place was like at that time, which may be not at all what

it's like now.

Or if it's in the future, then you

have to imagine what the place might become.

have to imagine what the place might become.

I mean, there are things about today's world

that would feel like science fiction

to somebody from the 1970s.

I mean, smartphones, you know, laptops, things that we-- you

know, the internet.

Things that we take for granted as part of everyday life

would feel completely surreal.

They'd feel like the stuff of fantasy fiction.

So it's interesting to just ask yourself

what might be the things 50 years from now that we

what might be the things 50 years from now that we

would see as absolutely surrealist that that

could never happen.

Ask yourself exactly when in the past,

or if it's the present, then the present,

and if it's the future, then where in the future.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

If you're writing about a place for which you have a feeling--

which, by the way, doesn't have to be love.

It can be hate as well as love.

It can be hate as well as love.

It could be-- that's just something about which you

have a really strong feeling.

I, for example, really hated being at my British boarding

school and a terrible time.

And so far, I've barely written about it.

I mean, there's about one page in the "Satanic Verses"

which comes out of a memory of being at school.

But I think I could, if I wanted to--

if I wanted to spend my life hating something,

I could definitely get into writing a story about being

at boarding school because I have real deep feeling for it,

at boarding school because I have real deep feeling for it,

you know.

But to have deep feeling is what I'm

saying, that that's a good guideline, that that's

a place that you might want to include in your story.

And, you know, love is better than hate,

so if there's a place that you have strong positive feelings

about, then you should explore those feelings.

Why do you think like that?

What was it about--

or is it, if it's the present time--

that makes you feel that?

that makes you feel that?

Does it have to do with the physicality

of the place with its beautiful mountains,

or it's by the seaside or it's in a forest?

Or is it to do with natural beauty?

Is it to do with the people you associate with the place,

you know, whether that's your parents or your beloved

or your children or your friends?

Does the place mean to you being amongst those people?

What does it mean?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I mean, I sometimes ask people, as an exercise,

to just choose a place that means a lot to them

and to write a few hundred words, 300 words,

about that place without using any adjectives.

about that place without using any adjectives.

Adjectives are things that allow writers to be lazy sometimes.

But if you can't say that somewhere

is beautiful or green or ugly, if you can't use an adjective,

what it forces you to do is to tell a story about it.

The way in which we, your readers,

can be made to understand the place,

if you can't use adjectives, is that you

if you can't use adjectives, is that you

have to tell us a story about it, which we connect,

which we relate to.

So cutting adjectives out forces you into narrative.

I mean, I'm not saying never use adjectives--

I'm saying as an exercise to show yourself

how telling a story about a place

is the best way of getting your reader

to enter into that place.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It's important to write about place visually.

It's important to write about place visually.

I remember, actually, a great film director, Nicholas Roeg,

who was actually not very interested in screenplays,

I have to say--

he was a very visual director.

He said to me once.

He said, you know, if somebody comes to see a movie,

and they go out and there's six pictures in their head

that they'll never forget, that's a good movie.

And I think that you could apply that to a book.

You could say if somebody reads a book

and there's half a dozen moments in that book

and there's half a dozen moments in that book

that they will never forget, that's a good book.

You know, and the visual is a very good part

of-- a very powerful tool in creating those moments.

One of the stories I really love is in a collection

by Italo Calvino, the Italian writer, called "Cosmicomics,"

which is a series of, more or less, fables,

fairy tales, about the beginning of the universe.

One of the stories is historical all at one point, which

imagines a world before the invention of space and time,

imagines a world before the invention of space and time,

i.e, before the Big Bang, when therefore, you know,

there wasn't much room.

So all of the characters are kind of

squashed in at this point.

And I mean, it's written, obviously, as comedy.

And one of these proto characters

in this moment pre-Bang is kind of an Italian mama.

At a certain point, she says to everybody else squashed in.

She says, "Oh, if only I had some rum.

She says, "Oh, if only I had some rum.

How I'd like to cook some noodles for you boys."

And at that moment, bam!

There's rum.

And the idea of the universe being created, space and time

being created by the first generous impulse I think

is very beautiful.

The way you do it in writing is just to make it as vivid

as you can, you know.

And in that story, Calvino talks about the sudden rushing

And in that story, Calvino talks about the sudden rushing

outwards, you know, and people being

flung to impossible distances from each other.

And the Italian mama is lost.

You know, she's somewhere lost in the galaxies

and never gets to make the noodles.

The question of the visual in writing is, I think,

very important.

There are some writers who we kind of disapprove of making--

writing too visual, you know.

And I'm not one of those writers.

And I'm not one of those writers.

I mean, I think it may partly be because I have, in my life,

been maybe as strongly influenced

by cinema as my literature.

You know, I think, as a consumer of art,

you know, I think I've been at least as

much impressed by my great movies

that I've seen as by great books that I've read.

And so, I find that the visual is a very important element

of what I try to do.

of what I try to do.

And it's kind of the answer to how you dramatize

things which are not verbal.

You know, you have to make pictures in people's heads.

You know, and I think if you just set yourself the task,

how can I make a picture in somebody's head,

then you create the world of the book very immediately.

You know, and I've always thought

that what you're trying to do, writing a book,

is to create a world that the reader wants to be in.

is to create a world that the reader wants to be in.