Industry Month In Review: For The Love Of Fiction

We’re rolling out the red carpet for the first “Industry Month in Review”.  Brought to you every last Monday of the month by moi (curses, there’s that Canadian in me again).

For this IMIR, I’ve chosen an article I found particularly interesting.  One whose question dates back hundreds perhaps thousands of years.

The article is slightly older, April 29, 2012 to be exact but I think still relevant a month later.  It’s entitled "Why Fiction Is Good For You", written by Jonathan Gottschall and published in the Boston Globe.

This is the article you can use as backup when you tell others you’re writing a book - a fiction novel no less and they give you that lifted eyebrow – you know the one. 

Who needs fiction and story telling in their lives?  From the studies in this article it looks like all of us.

Fiction has its haters, as Gottschall notes but new research in psychology and broad-based literary analysis shows that fiction molds us, influences us and for the most part (here’s the good news) for better, not worse.

 “Fiction enhances our ability to understand other people; it promotes a deep morality that cuts across religious and political creeds.  More peculiarly, fiction’s happy endings seem to warp our sense of reality.  They make us believe in a lie: that the world is more just than it actually is.“

Enjoying your weekly dose of Modern Family or Glee?  Gottschall cites studies that show that:

“Reader attitudes shift to become more congruent with the ideas expressed in a [fictional] narrative…..So when we watch a TV show that treats gay families nonjudgementally, our own views on homosexuality are likely to move in the same nonjudgmental direction.”

It’s a feel good read that'll have you singing the praises of fiction and thinking about how your view of the world has been influenced by the stories you love to read and the shows you love to watch.

Still looking for more novel news in review?  Check out Nathan Bransford’s May 15th blog post where he highlights a number of newsworthy items including the cultural phenomenon known as what else, Facebook, a nice debate on the future of publishing and (more good news!) the 72% uptick in Chidren’s and YA book sales (yay!).