In this society that places “productivity,”
STEM, and cold, at the highest value, the arts and humanities get frequently short-changed and undervalued.
People are reading physical books less and less, and what they are reading seems to be more geared toward self-help and other reality-grounded texts.
These are all well and good and definitely do have their place, but it’s simply a tragedy to miss out on the abundance of fiction stories to feel more “productive.” Reading fiction is productive, and here’s why:
Building Sympathy and Empathy
You can build empathy for others through reading fiction, plain and simple. In fiction, of all genres, all kinds of emotional situations can occur. If you haven’t experienced loss, reading a book where someone needs to confront death can make you think about how it feels, as well as how it would feel if something happened to you.
Emotional intelligence and ethics are often brushed over in everyone’s education, and reading fiction is a great passive way to improve your empathic capacities.
It’s impossible to live the life of another, but through books you can get as close as possible. For example, if you’re white and the protagonist of a book is Black, you may learn things about their experience that you never even considered.
If you’ve never been bullied and read a book about someone who has gone through it, you might put your actions in the past into a whole new context.
By reading the experiences of others, whether real or fabricated, it’s easier to understand what others go through. It can change the way you interact with other groups you’re not familiar with, since you can gain sensitivity to other cultures and societal subgroups through literature.
Author’s Perspective
Somewhat related to the last point, you can also gain insight into the lived experiences of the author through their fiction. Starting with just the way that authors write the texts, they might use cultural terms or emphasize parts of situations that you would never think were relevant.
This might come through by emphasizing microaggressions, aspects of the landscape or scenery in the book, or using adjectives and other terms related to the author’s culture. The way authors characterize their protagonists and other characters is also an interaction with their culture. Some characters have jobs or cultural stations that were unknown to you before, and the characters may speak or act in ways that give you insight into the authors themselves.
Diversifying your reading pool is vital to gaining a better understanding of other cultures and people. Reading books by people of all races (but particularly people of color, who are frequently snubbed by critics and bestseller lists), people who are members of the LGBTQ+ community, and people who are a gender that’s not your own can give you insight into the experiences and obstacles those communities face daily.
If you don’t have any friends, access to any other means of learning their experience or just need a more immersive way to learn about others, fiction is a great way to do so. It’s kind of like sneaking your veggies into your favorite foods, only with literature!
Improve Imagination
There are plenty of people who are just unable to paint mental pictures, but in one way or another, reading fiction will improve your imagination. If you’re someone who’s a very visual reader or someone who can paint mental pictures really well, fiction and its descriptive language will make creating those pictures easier and more sensorially full.
For example, if someone tells you “imagine a house,” you can make it, but it might just be the image. A skillful author can craft a very specific moment. It’s not just an image, but a whole moment full of sights, smells, sounds, and even tastes.
If you can’t make mental pictures, that’s completely fine, too. The descriptive language can give you a much better idea of what a place will look like so you don’t need to fill the details in yourself. Even if the author doesn’t provide that many visual details, they might be able to pique your senses of smell, taste, touch and sound.
In a more sparse text, these details might not be overtly stated. That’s a good exercise in imagination as well – maybe as you read more, your imagination and ability to create mental images might get even better.
Escape and Connection to Real Life
Escapism is not always the solution, but when confronted with life problems both serious and trivial, it can be easy to want to escape just for a bit. Reading fiction is a great (possibly free) way to do so, especially if the book has nothing to do with the real-life problems that are being faced.
Just indulging in a story, whether it’s a romance, crime thriller, or any other favorite genre of yours, can be a way to forget about your issues for an hour or two.
While it can be escapism, reading fiction might provide an outlet for passive introspection. Even in stories that are completely fantastical and separated from life experiences, such as sci-fi, there are moments in which characters may be facing similar emotional predicaments to the reader.
When you see how they resolve it, you might agree or disagree with their actions, deliberating why as the book goes on. When you examine your own reaction, you might be able to use that to determine how to solve your own problems.
Vocabulary
Finally, this is a more practical reason, but building vocabulary is another reason why reading fiction (or anything, really) is particularly edifying. Reading, in general, is an incredible means of passively beefing up your lexicon.
If you’re uninterested in more dry reading that might bolster your vocabulary in the same way, fiction can make it a lot more painless to learn those new words.
Fiction has always been one of the most powerful means of teaching lessons and giving people emotional experiences without actually going through it themselves.
From the Greek fables to Shakespearean plays and even online fan fiction, whatever your favorite is, read it and increase everything from your emotional knowledge to your linguistic competence!
