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Fiction certainly can have that downside. But good fiction is also one of the most effective ways--apart from deep listening--of training empathy because it le
by wenc 8y ago
Fiction certainly can have that downside.
But good fiction is also one of the most effective ways--apart from deep listening--of training empathy because it lets you step into someone's inner life. Rarely do we get a chance to see the world through someone else's eyes for long stretches.
If you're not an immigrant, you can vicariously live the life of one through fiction and see what they have to deal with.
If you're not a news reporter or a cop or a tycoon during the Great Depression, you can tag along with one through fiction.
The point of reading fiction isn't about content, but how they change you as a person.
- davegauer 8y agoAbsolutely on the money! You can't walk a mile in someone else's shoes, but with the right book, you can imagine it - which can make you do a complete 180 change in how you see a situation. I've had this happen many times and I attribute a lot of that to fiction!
- sp332 8y agoI might think that of biography, or autobiography. But fiction writers often don't know what it's like to be that sort of person, they just make it up.
- veebat 8y agoThis is kind of analogous to photorealism versus cartooning. A history or biography would attempt to adapt events and experiences directly to the page: "this happened, and then this happened, and it felt like that". Fictional work transforms those same elements into exaggerated characters and scenarios. Both kinds of works require some creativity to build up a coherent story, but fiction has a freer hand to manipulate elements and choose its focus. Just making it up without adapting from anything real usually isn't something that good fiction is built up from, though. That path goes directly to cliche, and it's easy to find cliched fiction.