Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SALMAN RUSHDIE: To my mind, issues of rhythm

are absolutely central to-- to meaning.

The way in which a sentence or a paragraph sounds

helps to convey a meaning almost subliminally so

below consciousness.

The reader gets it without quite knowing how they're getting it

because it is a kind of music.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This is maybe the first time in my life

that I've really, in an extended way,

tried to talk about the act of writing.

You know, in a way, this is a sort of creative writing

course.

And-- and what has concerned me sometimes about creative

writing courses is that they're very,

very good at teaching craft skill, you know,

very good at teaching craft skill, you know,

and not so good at individualizing the voices

of the different writers, you know,

so that people can come out of a course having acquired

a considerable amount of skill and--

and an ability to write well, you

know, to write very well sometimes.

But sometimes, I feel this kind of sameness.

Everybody coming out of the same class kind of in a way

writes in the same way.

And-- and in the same way as when one talks about dialogue,

And-- and in the same way as when one talks about dialogue,

the important thing is differentiation to try and make

sure that the characters speak in different ways, you know.

I mean, that's true of writers too, you know.

You want to-- you don't want all writers to sound the same.

So craft is great.

And it gives you a foundation which

is a very important foundation.

But you have to at some point move beyond that

into something more individual.

Style is the manner in which you choose

to adhere to or choose to break the rules of classical form.

Voice is your touch as an author.

It is what makes a piece of writing your own.

These are imprecise terms.

You could say that-- that the style must be suited

to the character and that of the story that you're telling

to the character and that of the story that you're telling

whereas the voice is somehow--

somehow you.

It's the thing that is there in whatever you write, you know,

that you should be able, and--

and we are able in--

in good writers, to see their voice in whatever they write.

There are a few writers who seem to know from the very beginning

There are a few writers who seem to know from the very beginning

something about--

about their voice.

And-- and there are others who you can see

working their way towards it.

Doesn't really matter which, you know.

There's-- there's no--

one is not better than the other as a way of proceeding.

I would say that what you should do with any piece of writing

is to make the style decisions is

to say, what is it that will allow me most clearly

to say, what is it that will allow me most clearly

and effectively to portray the characters

and to tell the story?

And if you do that properly, and you do that over and over again

in story after story, then whatever

it is that may in the end feel like your voice that

may feel like, you know, you as a writer,

who you are as a writer, that will emerge.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

A writer with a unique literary voice is Franz Kafka.

When you read a story like "Metamorphosis" in which,

in the first sentence, we discover

that the main character has mysteriously

been transformed into a giant insect lying

in his bed in his family apartment,

but he's a bug, a human-sized bug,

there's never an attempt to explain why this has happened.

there's never an attempt to explain why this has happened.

It simply is so.

And even though the novel is--

the novel-- the novella, the short story,

is about the character's feelings

about his own metamorphosis and how his family reacts to it,

the emotion is kept very much at a distance.

There's no attempt to--

to draw cheap sympathy, you know.

It's very objective.

It's very objective.

And yet, the result of it is one of the great stories

of 20th century literature.

And in his other books too, you know, in--

in "The Trial," at the very beginning of the trial,

the character, Josef K., is arrested in his own apartment.

Men arrive in his apartment and arrest him

for he has no idea why.

And in the whole book, nobody ever tells him why.

And-- and he is treated to successive indignities

And-- and he is treated to successive indignities

and dangers, humiliations, without any attempt to--

to draw us in and explain things to us.

And his tone of voice is always distant.

The reader is never allowed to be cozy with the author.

And yet, the result of that in his hands is to create these--

these texts which are so unusual that they've given

rise to a word.

The Kafkaesque-- we all recognize what the Kafkaesque

The Kafkaesque-- we all recognize what the Kafkaesque

is, the world according to Kafka,

in which mysterious things happen for no reason.

And your life can be forfeit without your ever

knowing the reason why.

Write in a way which doesn't have a warm, emotional, cozy

feeling, you know, that you're not inviting the reader in.

You're saying, I'm sitting over here.

You're sitting over there.

I'm going to do the writing.

You're going to do the reading.

In a way, some of the most remarkable books

In a way, some of the most remarkable books

have used that distancing technique.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Languages have rules so grammar, spelling, punctuation,

sentence structure, subject, verb,

object, like that, in English, anyway.

And you have to know those rules.

You don't necessarily have to keep them.

You don't necessarily have to keep them.

But you have to know them because what

one might call style is what you decide to do about those rules,

whether you decide to play by the rules

or whether you decide to bend or break them, and--

and if so, why?

For example, if you are writing in the first person

voice of a teenager like, you know, "Catcher in the Rye,"

voice of a teenager like, you know, "Catcher in the Rye,"

for example, if you're writing in the voice of a poorly

educated person, then some of those rules

may need to be ignored in order to effectively portray

the voice of that person.

So-- so style is what you do in order

to most effectively communicate what

to most effectively communicate what

it is you're trying to say.

First of all, you need to know the rules of the language.

I mean, you really do need to know

about grammar and syntax and sentence structure

and paragraph structure.

The paragraph is sort of the basic unit of prose.

And-- and it needs to have a little internal cohesion

of its own.

And when a new thought comes in, then you

need to have a break in the paragraph.

So-- so yeah.

So-- so yeah.

It's very important to know those rules

even if then you decide to break them.

There are wonderful examples of writers who more or less

abandoned paragraphing and--

and present you with a long unbroken text.

For example, in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel "The Autumn

of the Patriarch," he suggests to us, the readers,

he suggests that the dictator, the patriarch,

he suggests that the dictator, the patriarch,

whose rule is stifling and absolute somehow

stops time from moving, you know, that nothing changes.

Everything is always the same.

And the fact that the book is written in these very, very

long unbroken sections is in a way of saying, here

is a kind of stagnation.

Nothing is moving forward.

The world has just stopped like this.

The world has just stopped like this.

And the long sentences and the unbroken paragraphs in a way

give you that feeling.

So he is breaking the rule.

But he's doing it for--

to-- in order to communicate something.

So every decision in writing needs to be-- you

need to know why you're doing it, you know.

I mean, read Strunk and White.

Their book, "The Elements of Style," is a very good start.

When you feel confident at the use of classical style,

When you feel confident at the use of classical style,

then you can ask yourself from project to project,

from book to book, from scene to scene almost if that's the best

way of doing it or if some deviation from classical style

will actually help the reader's understanding.

I think the main thing that I would

say about developing a prose style is don't think

about it as being about you.

about it as being about you.

Think about it as being about what you're writing, you know.

If you think it's about you, then-- then ego intrudes,

you know.

And it can actually get in the way.

If what you do is focus on thinking about what

is the most effective and powerful way of telling

the story you've set out to tell,

the rest will take care of itself.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In terms of exercises, I think all you can do

is to say give yourself a task of saying

if I want to write a love scene, what

is the best language for doing that, you know.

And-- and you might initially think that the best language

And-- and you might initially think that the best language

for doing that is something lyrical, you know,

something in which the emotion is very evident

and on the surface, you know, because--

because you're trying to talk about two people who

are falling in love.

That might not be the case.

It might be that actually to take a little step back

and to write a little more dispassionately about it would

actually have a very interesting effect in a way

actually have a very interesting effect in a way

to write against the grain of what

you're trying to write about.

You can try it both ways.

Try-- try writing it as a very emotional passage,

and then try writing about it very unemotionally.

Same event.

Same thing happening.

And see which works better for you.

It can sometimes be very effective

not to write about it in the most obvious way.

This is a passage from "The Moor's Last Sigh"

in which the narrator is-- is talking

about a kind of profound moment really that in which

he's not present at the first moment at which his mother

and father made love to each other.

They just-- when they-- after they had met.

And I found myself wondering how would one do that?

And I found myself wondering how would one do that?

How would one talk about something

as in a way forbidden as that?

And it led me into a kind of wider thought

that one of the hardest things to write about is sex.

Because it can be so crass, you know, when written about.

And-- and, as it were, the gymnastic elements of sex,

And-- and, as it were, the gymnastic elements of sex,

you know, can be the--

the ones that just, if you write them out,

you know, they seem absurd.

And so what I thought I'd do is to give that awkwardness,

that embarrassment about writing about it, to the narrator who's

writing after all about his parents

so he doesn't know quite how to do it.

So he-- so he does it by not doing it.

He does it by leaving things out.

I mean, in a way, I think it is quite lyrical.

It's sort of-- sort of comic lyrical but with the emphasis

It's sort of-- sort of comic lyrical but with the emphasis

on--

on comic.

"Way up there near the roof of Go-Down Number 1,

Aurora de Gama, at the age of 15, laid back on pepper sacks,

breathed in the hot, spice-laden air, and waited for Abraham.

He came to her as a man goes to his doom,

trembling but resolute.

And it's around here that my words run out.

And it's around here that my words run out.

So you will not learn from me the bloody details

of what happened when she and then he, and then they,

and after that she, and at which he,

and in response to that she, and with that, and in addition,

and for a while, and then for a long time,

and for a while, and then for a long time,

and quietly, and noisily, and at the end of their endurance,

and at last, and after that, until phew, boy, over

and done with."

So it's just a way of writing about sex without--

while leaving all of it out.

And I thought that might be the kind

of embarrassed, awkward way in which the character would

face such a-- such a moment.

face such a-- such a moment.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

To be in charge of language, to have a command of language,

means that--

means that it works for you.

You don't work for it.

There's an enormous spectrum here

because there are writers with--

who deliberately use a very large vocabulary

and feel that they need that.

Vladimir Nabokov is a writer like that.

Vladimir Nabokov is a writer like that.

On almost every page of Nabokov, there

are words that you have to scratch your head about.

He's, you know, he's slightly--

his style is slightly "show-offy."

And he-- he likes to display his erudition.

There are other writers whose writing

comes from a much smaller group of words

but which served their purpose very well.

You know, Dr. Seuss decided to write everything he ever

You know, Dr. Seuss decided to write everything he ever

wrote in what in those days was called basic English, which

was a very small vocabulary that people

needed to know in order to be able to communicate in English.

And all his-- I mean, the colossal success of these books

is because they're written in this ultra simple language.

You know, "I do not like green eggs and ham."

You know, "I do not like them, Sam, I am," you know.

There's no long words.

There's no complicated ideas.

But there's a kind of brilliant musical use

But there's a kind of brilliant musical use

of very simple language.

To me, the rhythm of a language is--

the rhythm of a sentence is very important.

And-- and I do spend a long time on that, you know.

Sometimes, I'll change the order of words,

if that lends a better musicality to the sentence,

if that lends a better musicality to the sentence,

add a word sometimes or subtract a word

if that improves the music that I'm hearing

in my inner ear, so to speak.

And to my mind, issues of rhythm are absolutely central

to-- to meaning, you know, that the way in which a sentence

or a paragraph sounds helps to convey a meaning almost

subliminally, you know, so--

subliminally, you know, so--

so below consciousness.

The reader gets it without quite knowing how they're getting it,

you know.

So-- so I-- yeah.

I mean, one way of doing this is to try reading what you've

written aloud and listen to it.

Listen to it.

See if it sounds nice, you know.

And if it doesn't, see what you can do to kind of even

it out and to--

and to give it some rhythmic quality

because it is kind of music.

because it is kind of music.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I want to read you a passage from "The Satanic Verses" that

makes use of musicality in its language.

"Gibreel, when he submits to the inevitable, when

he slides heavy-lidded towards visions of his angeling,

passes his loving mother, who has a different name for him.

Shaitan, she calls him, just like Shaitan, same to same.

Because he has been fooling around with the tiffins

Because he has been fooling around with the tiffins

to be carried into the city for the office workers' lunch.

Mischievous imp, she slices the air with her hands.

Rascal has been putting Muslim meat compartments into Hindu

nonveg tiffin carriers.

Customers are up in arms.

Little devil, she scolds, but then folds him in her arms.

My little faristha.

Boys will be boys.

And then he falls past her into sleep,

growing bigger as he falls.

And the falling begins to feel like flight.

And the falling begins to feel like flight.

His mother's voice wafts distantly up to him.

Look how you grew, enormous, brava, applause.

He is gigantic, wingless, standing with his feet

upon the horizon and his arms around the sun."

I wanted to-- in this-- in this moment, I--

I wanted to evoke somebody falling

into a dream-like visionary state

because this is where we begin to see

because this is where we begin to see

the extent of Gibreel's descent into a kind of insanity.

And-- and I wanted it to feel like that.

I wanted it to feel like a descent, like a fall

from sanity towards insanity.

And one of the things that I studied

when I was writing the book was how

people who have talked about seeing visions

talk about them-- talk about them.

Joan of Arc, St. John the Divine,

Joan of Arc, St. John the Divine,

all sorts of people who have been--

who have had this kind of visionary experience--

what does it sound like when they talk about it?

And-- and one of the things that I found was that they--

it does feel like they're--

like they're falling into something,

you know, that into like another reality.

And so that's what I wanted that moment to feel like,

that he's falling out of the real world

into another reality.

into another reality.

First of all, it's a--

it's a very long sentence.

It's a sentence that could be broken into many sentences.

Instead, it's just broken by commas.

And in a way, the sentence is too long, you know.

And so the-- the realities in the sentence begin to,

you know, to-- to blur into each other.

you know, to-- to blur into each other.

Part of it has to do with the speech rhythms of-- of how

his mother speaks to him are the speech

rhythms of a kind of Bombayite Indian English.

So she's-- she's talking in nonstandard English.

So that immediately creates an air of something--

So that immediately creates an air of something--

something not straightforward, something

different in the language.

The idea is that he's falling into a vision,

and he's seeing things.

And the first thing he sees is his mother,

and then he falls past her into the full vision

of being the angel.

So it's an attempt to represent the--

So it's an attempt to represent the--

the phenomenon of-- of seeing visions.

[MUSIC PLAYING]