Playing Fox Mulder on "The X-Files" taught two-time Golden Globe Award-winning actor and author David Duchovny more about being a good writer than his English literature degree from Yale. On "Salon Talks," Duchovny explains to Salon's executive editor Andrew O'Hehir how the '90s supernatural show, above all, taught him storytelling. Duchovny's first book "Holy Cow: A Modern-Day Dairy Tale" is New York Times best-seller and his most recent book, "Miss Subways," is loosely based on the dark, comedic story around the Irish mythology-inspired Yeats play, "The Only Jealousy of Elmer."

Duchovny, who was always destined for a writing career of some sort, emphasizes his time on "The X-Files" set for helping form his writing style. "Any kind of drama better be plot heavy, especially television. It has to be plot-heavy," Duchovny told SalonTV. "It stripped away that pretension of art for art's sake or language for language's sake or a novel is a language experiment or some kind of Wittgenstein conception of language. They were like 'F' you David, give us a f**king good story! I'm gonna write stories and I'm gonna bring my love of language into it for sure, but I'm gonna make sure that I'm telling a story that's worthwhile."