Scheherazade stays her execution by ending each night mid-story, so the listener's desire to hear the ending overrides his intent to kill. Deferral works because an incomplete story creates an obligation in the listener that postpones any decision until resolution arrives, which she perpetually withholds.
Characters facing punishment bargain by offering a tale, and tales contain further tellers offering their own tales. Each embedded story functions as evidence in an implicit case, where the quality of the narrative, not its literal truth, purchases mercy or reprieve for the one telling it.
The king who vows to marry and execute a new bride each dawn is changed not by argument against his cruelty but by a thousand nights of being made to care about fictional lives. Sustained exposure to stories reshapes his judgment incrementally, so that the resolve to kill dissolves rather than being defeated head-on.
Beggars turn out to be princes, the rich are ruined overnight, and the condemned are freed by a chance tale, so any single state of a character is treated as a temporary position in a turning wheel. Reading events through this lens, present misfortune carries latent reversal and present success carries latent collapse.