There’s this magical place that exists, nestled between the world of fact and lie. It’s a place called fiction.
It’s a place where I like to spend a lot of my time.
Fiction can look like a lot of things. It can be wizards and knights, analogies wrapped up into quests. It can be a simple love story, one where everything happens exactly as expected and tastes exactly like a warm cup of tea. It can be magic or dramatic or unexpected. It can also be eye-opening, and carry with it a sadness that sits with you awhile.
Fiction can take you out of your world and let you see another time and place as vividly as if you were there.
Fiction can teach you to empathize with someone whose story is in no way similar to your own.
Fiction can teach you kindness and grace. To be more gentle. To know the story you’ve been told is not the only one.
Fiction was a tremendous part of my childhood, a place I could go when my world just wasn’t enough for me – or too much. It taught me some of the lessons I might otherwise have missed. Fiction allowed me to lead a hundred lives each school year, turning dull bus trips into adventures.
True, fiction can be an escape, a way to ignore the everyday and disappear into another place.
But sometimes, isn’t that what we all need? A little more wonder?
There’s a wonderful Ted Talk from Mac Barnett on this topic (you can watch it below, or at this link).
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
“We know these characters aren’t real, but we have these real feelings about them.”
“Kids are the best audience for serious literary fiction.”
“You can’t find the seams on the fiction.”
“Metafiction: stories about stories.”
“The best readers deserve the best stories we can give them.”
Let’s create great stories.
P.S. Have you listened to the Chasing Creative Podcast yet? Each week we chat with a creative person or couple and they share their amazing story!
Abbigail! This is beautiful and perfect and everything I’ve been thinking about for months. I don’t have many friends who read fiction (or maybe I do and just don’t realize it)–preferably YA fiction, specifically Realistic/Contemporary fiction. I think more of them read non-fiction–which is great! They’re reading that’s good. And I’m enjoying non-ficiton more now in my twenties than I ever have before.
Anyway, I have friends who always ask what I’m reading and because they don’t read realistic/contemporary fiction they seem to think it’s boring or that the body that this 16-year old kid’s head was surgically attached to should’ve belonged to a serial killer and start taking over and start randomly killing people I guess. They don’t understand the *wonder* of Real Life. Real life is a such a lovely, heartbreaking, funny, boring place and we learn so much living it. and this is why I love Fiction. I’ve been wanting to write a “Why I Read Fiction” blog post for awhile, but I can’t seem to–the words aren’t there yet. It’s still brewing.
I am so glad I found this today. And read it. And listened to ac Barnett’s talk.
Thank you for writing the words and expressing the feelings I can’t yet.
P.S. that very specific example of the head being reattached to another body is John Corey Whaley’s latest book: Noggin. (I just finished it yesterday so I’m still attached to the story #allthefeelings). But other stories that are making me more aware of this is:
– A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
– the movie The Bridge of Spies (with Tom Hanks)
and so many more YA books.
P.P.S. *Mac Barnett
Hi Tracy –
Thanks so much for reading, but also for taking the time to leave your own thoughts! This is what I love about fiction – how we learn about the human condition through it.
For Y.A., have you read Sarah Zarr’s “Story of a Girl”? That’s about as Real Life as I’ve seen Y.A. get, and it’s well done. I also recommend “The Art of Not Breathing” by Sarah Alexander – similar, real-world life about a girl who just needs someone to love her.
I hope you do write about why you read fiction, and that you send me a link when you do!
Happy reading!
Abbie