How Reading Fiction Affects Our Brains

Many people think that non-fiction holds a superior position to fiction. It’s not entirely wrong to have that opinion, as non-fictions provide us with everything you might need to expand your knowledge.

A friend of mine also told me that reading non-fiction, self-help kind of books help them know the cheat to survive their daily lives. In short, that kind of genre helps them understand something that was never written or explicitly taught.

On the other hand, fiction presents fantasy. Hence, the writing itself aims to let us run through our imaginations. There is no limitation of how we will fantasize about all of the events occurring in the story.

While fiction will mostly be read as a leisure activity or to kill time during commuting, it surprisingly has more positive impacts on our brains. In this article, I will try to point out why reading novels is enticing and effectively improves how we think.

First of all, when we read a novel, we will be presented with a narrative that involves several characters. The story’s build-ups carry us away with the atmosphere and make us feel as if we are part of the story.

The feeling of being included with the characters and atmosphere presented in the narrative is associated with empathy. The more often we read fiction, the better we recognize social cues and how people think differently.

Since I have mentioned that reading fiction helps us understand social signals and how others feel differently, it will ultimately guide us to identify the motives behind each person’s behaviour.

Additionally, novel authors typically refer their stories to the real-life event and actual problems. Eventually, after we finish reading the novel, we unconsciously apply it in our lives.

Your increased understanding of the motivations of these people means that your emotional intelligence level also increases. When your EQ level is relatively high, you can easily be diplomatic and know what to do in different social settings. And how to solve problems with people you encounter in your daily life.

The series of sentences presented in fiction books immerse us in the story and give us the freedom to imagine. Imagination that arises from reading a novel can avail the brain to think creatively.

This advantage is certainly not what we can get from non-fiction books. With content that focuses more on conveying facts and knowledge, non-fictions are more standardized. The goal is not to invite readers to imagine but to provide accurate information to the audience.

Reading fiction as a mentally stimulating activity has been shown to improve language skills. The growth in language skills is often followed by the increasing number of vocabulary that we master.

Remembering vocabulary is easier to do by reading exciting stories than memorizing them one by one through a dictionary. Therefore, the more you read the novel, the more you will be exposed to new words.

In addition, novels are usually written by writers who are passionate about literature. Therefore, the author’s choice of words is often more comprehensive and varied. Eventually, we can increase our vocabulary.

Every fiction writer also has a different writing style. Therefore, the more diverse the works you read, the more writing styles and vocabulary you will master.

However, reading novels alone is not enough to enrich your vocabulary. You may want to put more effort into jotting down words that are still unfamiliar to you. After writing it down, you can look up the meaning of each foreign word. Don’t worry; Google Translate and Thesaurus are enough to determine the meaning.

When we read fiction, we tend to get carried away with the atmosphere in the story. In addition, we are also taken on an adventure with one or several main characters.

The process of wandering with a character in a narrative allows us to see the world from the character’s point of view. Automatically, we also face the various problems they experience, training our brains to solve conflicts in the story.

As mentioned before, reading fiction can improve your empathy because we’ll see the problem from the characters’ point of view. Other than enhancing your empathy, reading a novel can also increase your tolerance.

You can see how life goes from the perspective of marginalized people and how the system’s injustice continues and complicates their lives. Without meeting directly with marginalized people, you can already understand their situation.

With an understanding of the life of the opposite community, you can hone your tolerance. Things related to empathy make us understand all the differences that exist.

If someone says reading fiction is unimportant and just a waste of time, I disagree. During this time, I got a lot of accurate information by reading novels. For example, I can learn about mystical things in Mount Lawu through Dee Lestari’s Aroma Karsa.

I can also understand how racism against black people and the Great Depression in the United States occurred in the 1930s by reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The presentation of facts packaged in the form of stories helps me learn in a much more exciting way.

As you have finished reading this article, I need to emphasize that we should no longer view the novel as less informative than non-fictions. This is because the leisure activity itself has positive impacts such as improving empathy, boosting vocabulary, helping with problem-solving, and many more.

So, what is your favourite non-fiction?

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