Reading Notes: Arabian Nights Part A

This story is part of the Arabian Nights unit. Story source: The Arabian Nights' Entertainments by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1898).

In this part, Scheherazade uses several stories to persuade Sultan Schahriar not to kill any ladies. I really like how this story builds the characters' personalities during some small details. Scheherazade is politic, beautiful, and knowledgeable. She would like to stick to her thoughts even though there are dangers waiting for her. Also, she is brave enough to voluntarily confront the dangers. In terms of Sultan Schahriar, although he is rude and merciless, I realized that he is also rational and sober when I reading the plots about him. For instance, when the grand-vizir said that he agrees to sacrifice her daughter. His performance was surprising and incredible. Besides, he agrees that Scheherazade's request to tell her story. After the first story, he even shows curious about the following stories, which means that he is not a pure killer. Maybe he also feels tedious about his decision - keeps killing people. 

However, after I read several stories from the beginning of this semester to now, I think many stories would not show any characters' inner thoughts. Their behaviors and experiences constitute all stories' plots. This is actually the point that I want to show in my rewriting stories. I want to build some characters with some unique emotions. During the description of their emotions and inner worlds, I could do a supplement for the original stories. 

Then, there is a method of writing stories that I could learn in the part A. The whole part A's stories start from the Scheherazade's experiences. At each stories ending, there are some hints or information which are used to tell the next story. I think this is a good method to write a series of stories. For me, using this strategy in my storybook would be an excellent choice. 

Arabian Nights. Web Source: Pinterest.