Scheherazade and the Art of Weaving a Tale
Scheherazade und the Sultan | Painting by Ferdinand Keller, 1880 | Wikimedia Commons
Once upon a time, a Persian King who had been betrayed by his wife decided to exact revenge on all women. He would marry a virgin and, after their wedding night, have her beheaded. The next night, he would repeat this with another virgin. Three thousand virgins died as his wives but his blood-thirst was just as insatiable. Until one day Scheherazade, the Vizier’s daughter, volunteered to spend a night with the King.
In his chambers, Scheherazade played her first of many tricks. She asked to say goodbye to her beloved sister. The sister came into the room and, as previously instructed, asked Scheherazade to tell her a story. The King listened. Before he knew, dawn was breaking. But he was so transfixed, he wanted to know how the story ends. Scheherazade had bought herself another day.
The following night, she finished the first story and began a new one. Again, the night ended before the King could hear the end. On the third night, the same thing repeated. This little dance lasted one thousand and one nights. By the end, the King was a new, transformed man and in love with Scheherazade.
They lived happily ever after. And we, the real audience, have the classic collection of stories known as “One Thousand and One Nights,” “Arabian Nights,” or “The Nights.”
Scheherazade’s mythos is one of the oldest examples of a framing device. Its purpose is to set the stage for the primary story or set of stories.
But it would be a mistake for any writer to discount Scheherazade as merely a gateway to the “good stuff.” She holds the wisdom of how to weave a tale that captures — and transforms — the audience.
Here is what we can learn from her on the ancient craft of storytelling.
Reading is the key that opens the door
This is how Scheherazade is described in a translation of “The Nights” by Sir Richard F. Burton.
“She had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred.”
Every aspiring writer hears this advice. “You need to read a lot.” But we need to understand why this is so important so that we avoid pigeonholing ourselves or making it feel like homework.
Scheherazade’s storytelling abilities were powerful because she did not limit herself to just one type of book or just one discipline. She approached the act of reading less like a modern-day student and more like a wizard being initiated in the art of magic. She immersed herself in all variations of stories so that she can wield their power.
If she hadn’t done that, her tales — ranging from kings to robbers, from farmers to genies — would have felt unconvincing and two-dimensional. They would definitely not have held the Sultan’s attention for a thousand nights.
How do we apply this to our own writing?
By broadening our horizon and recognizing that everything we read will inform our ability to write.
Reading Fantasy and Science Fiction will teach you about world-building and how to create “something out of nothing.”
Reading Mystery books will teach you about pacing, plotting, planning, and building tension.
Reading Drama books will teach you about character building and development.
Reading Memoirs and Non-Fiction will teach you how to make the mundane extraordinary.
Of course, many great books that fall into one genre also tick off all the other boxes. But as writers, we don’t read just for entertainment. A lot can be learned from books that are not great as well.
Honor the archetypes
The actual stories that Scheherazade tells her Sultan are old Persian and Middle Eastern folktales. Similar to the Brothers Grimm Tales, they are old archetypal legends and yarns that have been collected and retold by one narrator.
And here lies one of the greatest lessons for writers. Every story has already been told.
Writers are often under pressure to invent something new, something never-heard-of before. But the reality is that try as we might, every story we tell will always boil down to something that has been done before.
The writer’s craft lies in how the story is told. The story itself, however, comes from the archetypes. Here is their definition in Jungian theory.
An archetype is a primitive mental image inherited from the earliest human ancestors, and supposed to be present in the collective unconscious.
The creative impulse comes from the same source in our unconscious that has also produced the foundation of stories millennia ago. The archetypes are not something to be avoided, surmounted, or trumped. They are much more like a river that we can keep returning to for as long as we want to tell stories.
What are the main archetypes in storytelling?
In 2004, Christopher Booker published a Jung-influenced book that he worked on for 34 years, “The 7 Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories.” Here are the main archetypal stories he identified.
Killing the Monster (a story about overcoming a powerful antagonist. Example: Star Wars)
Rags to Riches (a story about a poor protagonist acquiring wealth and power, losing it, and gaining it back. Example: Daenerys Targaryen in the first 6 seasons of Game of Thrones.)
The Quest (a story about the journey to acquire an object or reach a location. Example: The Odyssey)
Voyage and Return (a story about a journey in a strange land from which the protagonist returns transformed. Example: Alice in Wonderland)
Comedy (a humorous story with exaggerated obstacles and a happy, simple resolution. Example: The Big Lebowski)
Tragedy (a story about a protagonist with a big flaw or mistake that leads to their downfall. Sometimes also called “The Faustian Pact.” Example: Macbeth)
Rebirth (a story about an event or experiences that changes the protagonist to a better individual. Example: A Christmas Carol)
Joseph Campbell, a professor also influenced by Carl Jung, in his years-long research of mythology discovered the archetype of the Hero’s Journey. It is is a basic narrative pattern that underpins folk tales, myths, and religious legends from all over the world, and it explains why audiences to this day are transfixed by superhero movies. The pattern contains 17 steps, but Campbell summarizes it in one paragraph here:
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
Archetypes are ancient and powerful. But they are impersonal. They provide the tide for a story, but they need a storyteller to bring this story to life.
Scheherazade teaches us that good storytellers lean into the archetypes. And then use their skills to spin the old narratives in a riveting way.
The cliffhanger
Scheherazade made the earliest recorded use of what we now call “the cliffhanger”: stopping the story just at the point where the audience will want more.
Today, cliffhangers have become almost a mandatory element not only in serialized fiction but even in-between chapters of a single book. But they are also misunderstood as a necessity to leave the audience dissatisfied so that they can keep reading or watching.
To Scheherazade, the skill to use a cliffhanger was a matter of life and death. And yet, she stopped her stories right in the middle of the action only sometimes. She was careful to keep the Sultan hooked but not irritated.
It is a big misconception that your audience won’t read more or watch more of your story unless there is an unresolved plot-line. Just think about all the epic stories that have now concluded, with no loose ends left whatsoever, and yet the audience still wants more. Breaking Bad and Harry Potter are just two examples, and both went on to have their universe expanded with prequels.
One of the best-written TV shows, “Mad Men,” never had a single “traditional” cliffhanger. The creator, Matthew Weiner, specifically said he wants to make each season feel like it could be the last for the show. This approach seems to have been applied to every single episode as well because each one was treated like both a part of the whole narrative and as a self-contained story. The audience had a rich and rewarding experience watching the show and they always wanted more.
A writer’s focus should be to tell a good story. If you feel you are massacring it, chopping up the flow, for the sake of artificially keeping your audience “hooked,” it’s time to take a step back.
Great stories transform us without intrusion
Scheherazade willingly married a mass murderer. By the end, he was a transformed, moral, loving man.
What does this tell us about the art of storytelling?
First, there is a big difference between preaching and telling a story. Scheherazade did not wag her finger at the Sultan and tell him he is an evil man. Instead, she simply showered him with a thousand different stories, drawing from ancient wisdom, and trusted that the stories themselves will work their magic.
And second, she did not force the stories on him. She lured him under the guise of telling a story to her sister and he just happened to be there to hear it.
People have powerful defenses around their beliefs. Confronting them head-on makes them either fight you that much harder or retreat. It almost never changes them.
There are many causes in life that warrant a fight. But the way a storyteller fights is not in a traditional war-like sense. The wisdom of a storyteller is that violence and injustice come from a place of fear and pain. When a storyteller speaks to a violent audience, he or she doesn’t speak to their violent self but to their wounded, scared self.
Scheherazade knew something that later, in the 20th century, was articulated by Carl Jung.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.
The Sultan had suffered a deep betrayal and lost all sense of meaning. Scheherazade restored it by telling him her thousand stories and, as a result, he changed.
The lesson for modern writers?
Storytelling is one of the oldest crafts as well as one of the first human instincts. There is inherent power in it. If we trust it and focus on honing our craft so that we can give it shape and form, then the stories we tell will carry this power as well.
This piece was originally published in the magazine The Writing Cooperative.
