I’m a bit of a freak among writers, because I don’t condemn the television. On the contrary, I think 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 you can’t get from reading a novel. This goes against the common rant, that television is a scourge that must be removed from the entertainment landscape.
On the other hand, the recent trend has been to watch more television and more movies and read less, and when you do read, read nonfiction instead of fiction. Reasons given range from “Reading is hard” to “Novels are not informative.” But what most people don’t realize is that the written word, and fiction in particular, provides benefits that 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 higher on tests of empathy and social acumen, and that people who read more nonfiction score higher on tests of empathy and social acumen. lower. Perhaps this is because through fiction, you experience social interactions and character relationships in a way impossible with most works of nonfiction.
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Reading fiction stimulates the imagination. As you read fiction, your mind reconstructs each scene in much more detail than the author described it. He does this by visualizing non-existent people and places from history, often basing these visualizations on actual people and places he has seen. This is the human capacity to imagine, daydream, speculate, 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 enjoyment of written fiction. For the same amount that a 2-hour movie or DVD costs, 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 doesn’t overstimulate like TV does. 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 history of a particular biographical figure, biographies about losers are rarely written, while the loser is the staple of fictional history. Or, as an English professor 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 that 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 the stories are so satisfying and insightful is that they tap into 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 for passing on knowledge, you’ll become a better communicator if you learn to tell stories. And the best way to learn to tell stories is to see how they are told. In general, exposing yourself to the language, as happens 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. Even so, 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-sized pieces that are more easily enjoyed.
Fiction should be a staple of everyone’s lifestyle, because anyone who doesn’t read it, at least occasionally, is missing out on the benefits it offers.