I’m a bit of an oddball among writers, because I don’t condemn the television. On the contrary, I believe that everyone, and especially serious writers, should watch a lot of television, including television comedies and dramas, because the audiovisual format provides a perspective that cannot be obtained by reading a novel. This goes against the common diatribe, that television is a scourge that needs to be removed from the entertainment landscape.
On the other hand, the recent trend has been to watch more TV and more movies and read less, and when you do read, read nonfiction instead of fiction. The reasons given range from “Reading is difficult” to “Novels are not informative.” But what most people don’t realize is that the written word, and fiction in particular, provides benefits you can’t get from other media. For example:
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Reading fiction can help you improve your people skills. A 2008 study by Raymond Mar found that people who read more fiction score better on tests of empathy and social insight, and that people who read more nonfiction score better. lower. Perhaps this is because through fiction, you experience the social interactions and relationships of the characters in a way impossible with most works of non-fiction.
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Reading fiction stimulates the imagination. As you read fiction, your mind reconstructs each scene in much greater detail than the author described it. He does this by visualizing non-existent people and places from the story, often basing these visualizations on actual people and places he has seen. This is the human capacity to imagine, to daydream, to speculate, to reflect. The ability to imagine separates us from other animals. It allows us to strategize, plan, reason, learn, create a better world than the one that existed before.
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Books are cheaper hour for hour of entertainment than movies or DVDs. Especially in tough economic times, it makes sense to encourage the enjoyment of written fiction. For the same amount of money as a 2-hour movie or DVD, you can get a book that will entertain you for days or weeks. Or you can borrow it from your local library for free.
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Reading relieves stress and is not overly stimulating like television. Most modern TV shows are designed to grab your attention by constantly rattling your brain with abrupt transitions and sounds. This primes your brain and creates stress. Research at the University of Sussex found that reading can reduce stress levels by up to 68 percent. Or as cognitive neuropsychologist Dr. David Lewis said, “Getting lost in a book is the ultimate relaxation.”
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Fiction allows us to enter the narrative, to imagine ourselves there, in ways that nonfiction cannot. Even a biography is already finished before you start reading it, because it is about a real person. Even if you don’t know the specific story of a particular biographical figure, biographies are rarely written about losers, while the loser is the staple of fictional history. Or, as an English teacher from Wichita, Kansas put it: “The unknowability of fiction makes it very much like life as we experience it.”
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The mind absorbs new information more easily through stories. Human beings are by nature storybook creatures, learning through experience and metaphor. Teaching through storytelling is a tradition as old as human thought itself. This is one of the reasons why, although fiction is about people who never existed and events that never happened, all fictional people and events are based on reality. As psychologists Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell explain in their book dreaming reality“The reason stories are so satisfying and illuminating is that they harness the same process that nature uses for the transmission of knowledge.”
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Reading, and reading fiction in particular, can make you a better speaker and writer. In modern times, communication skills are more important than ever. And because storytelling is a key skill in conveying knowledge, you’ll become a better communicator if you learn storytelling. And the best way to learn to tell stories is to see how they are told. In general, exposure to language, such as when you read, will instinctively improve your own language and communication skills.
Still can’t imagine reading an entire novel? Try the story. Yes, the story has been dying for a while, but that’s because readers haven’t been interested. Still, collections of classic and newly published short stories continue to be published, and for the busy 21st-century citizen, the short story offers the benefits of fiction in bite-size pieces that can be more easily enjoyed.
Fiction should be a staple in everyone’s lifestyle, because anyone who doesn’t read it, at least occasionally, is missing out on the benefits it offers.
