There are some strange folks out
there who don’t like fiction. Or rather, they
don’t understand its purpose.
Robert Mitchum--otherwise an
actor I greatly admired--said he never read fiction
because it wasn’t true, so there was no point.
To any budding novelist this
attitude is as heinous as it is incomprehensible.
Unfortunately it is also surprisingly common.
My father for one thinks that
novels are too hard to follow so he never bothers with
them.
‘If it’s any good,
they’ll make a movie out of it,’ is one of his
favorite lines.
How many times have you heard
this?
The implication here is obvious.
To non-readers, it’s not the writing that’s
important. It’s the story.
Whilst great writing might
profoundly impress you or me, most people just want the
message, rather than the medium.
People like stories for 4 main
reasons:
Entertainment
Enlightenment
Validation
To gain hope & salvation
These reasons have been the
‘point’ of telling and listening to stories
since the beginning of time.
As a species, we need them.
They divert our attention from
the mundane and take us out of ourselves for a while.
They can show us things we
didn’t know about ourselves and others. We may gain
valuable new perspectives to help us to better understand
our neighbors, foreigners, even our enemies.
We need stories to make us feel
better about ourselves--as human beings, as well as
personalities. That’s why we like to identify with
heroes and warriors--indeed, anyone who can show us how
to overcome obstacles.
Finally we need stories to help
us make sense of life and the world around us.
In real life, there are no
beginnings and endings, just infinite sequences.
You know how it is. You listen to
the news. Everything is a segment, a teaser, a sample of
every day life. Nothing makes sense because there’s
no structure.
Without the confines that fiction
offers us, we are drowning in a bewildering sea of
actions and feelings and urges with no meaning.
Stories ‘frame’ real
life into manageable chunks that have tangibility,
involvement and purpose, whether for us individually or
as a race.
Surely that’s what we were
placed on this earth to do!
