Storytelling: Fictional Narratives, Imaginary People, and the Reader's Real Life

Why People Make Connections to Fiction

Why is it readers become so involved in the alternate reality that an author creates? Yes, there are very simplistic answers to this question: "Because I was able to connect to it" or "because I liked it" are the most common. However, these statements reflect the simplistic thinking my students perform when reading fiction. I would feel guilty of accusing my students for not questioning their surroundings if I didn't explore the realm of fiction for myself. For this unit, I wanted to seek a scientific approach as to why people connect and are allured to fiction. I also wanted to delve deeper into the writing process and learn what decisions an author makes to create a fictional narrative.

Neuroscience's Approach to Reading and Connecting to Fiction

"Reading great literature enlarges and improves us as human beings. Brain science shows this claim is truer than we imagined," writes Annie Paul Murphy, writer for The New York Times. ¹ In her article "Your Brain on Fiction" she discusses the latest research on how reading fiction benefits readers and the common links between reading a work of fiction and the activities of everyday life. "What scientists have come to realize in the last few years is that narratives activate many other parts of our brains as well, suggesting why experiences of reading can feel so alive." ² There is much overlap between brain networks used to understand stories and the networks used to understand people's interactions, in particular when it comes to understanding others' thoughts and feelings. In the conducted studies where scientists had people read passages while scanning their brain waves, it showed that fiction stimulated the brain in other areas besides the language-processing areas (where scientists assume the most activity would take place.) For instance, when the passage involved reading about motion and the characters moving in some way, the motor cortex of our brain that controls movement was also stimulated. Also, if vibrant language was used in the passage to describe something - like using a metaphor or other forms of figurative language- it roused the sensory cortex that we use to control our senses such as smell or touch. Your brain responds to descriptions of smells, textures, and movements as if they are real, so it understandable that the interactions with fictional characters are treated the same as real-life social interactions.

To further prove this, Professor Keith Oatley of the University of Toronto claims that reading produces vivid simulation of reality. "Fiction—with is redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions—offers an especially rich replica." ³ In using Ray Bradbury's science-fiction short story "All Summer in a Day" as a part of the unit, the figurative language used by the main character—she refers to the warmth of the sun being like a blush rising upon your face— will allow for students to be stimulated through the use of language and connect as if it were real.

Researchers found little difference between the brain functions when reading about an event and when encountering it in real life. Additionally, two studies published in 2006 and in 2009 claim that individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective. Another study released in 2010 performed by Dr. Mar stated that she found a similar result in preschool-age children: the more stories they had read to them, the keener their "theory of mind" or their capacity to evaluate and make sense of other people's intentions and interactions. These scientific findings of the neuroscience realm affirm that the experiences of readers while reading fiction can have an impact on their own behavior and change the way we act in life.

Psychological Approach to Reading and Connecting to Fiction

In Suzanne Keen's book Empathy and the Novel, she quotes the work of psychologist Victor Nell. In Lost in a Book: Psychology of Reading for Pleasure he writes that "novels do more than entertain, inform, soothe and excite their readers. For immersed readers, entertaining fictional worlds allows for a refreshing escape from ordinary, everyday pressures and preoccupations." From the psychology viewpoint, one of the big mysteries of the mind is reading and its power to absorb the thoughts of the reader completely and without any effort; it also has this remarkable ability to change a person's state of mind. For years, studies have been looking as various comparisons to help us better understand this connection we have with fiction books. A number of studies have been comparing the reading of books to dreams. Dreams, as Victor Nell claims, should also be considered a narrative device (means of storytelling): "Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other words." ⁴ Both dreams and fictional books share the similarities: both have the power to create new worlds and the effortless absorption that allows for these alternate realities to linger in our memories. Both have the power to affect our emotions and states of minds. For instance, I become both anxious and nervous after reading a horror book. I feel exactly the same way after having a nightmare. The experience and feelings linger for a while, which I think is a part of being enveloped into the world I created with my mind. The defining difference between the two narrative activities is that we have no control over what we dream about. We do have a choice in what we read. We dream, day dream, tell friends stories, listen to stories, read, and watch television. These are all various narrative activities that function within our minds, mimicking the process of reading for pleasure.

Victor Nell remarks "The special kind of absorbed attention that a narrative can command because of the heavy consciousness demands it makes, and the ease with which such absorption maintains reality awareness while allowing what appears to be complete involvement in the fantasy experience." ⁵ In the psychological world, storytelling has often been described as a hypnotic process in that it consumes the thought of the readers or those listening to an oral story telling. There are the common characteristics of someone reading fiction: he or she sits quietly in silence, her eyes glaze over, and her body is completely relaxed. This is all due to being in this hypnotic mental state where someone's consciousness of her brain is so absorbed in the content that the reality around the reader disappears for a moment and she is enveloped into the world the author created for them. Author Richard Wright beautifully describes the reaction he had when he first listened to a work of fiction:

She whispered to me the story of Bluebeard and His Seven Wives and I ceased to see the porch, the sunshine, her face, everything. As her words fell upon my ears, I endowed them with a reality that welled up from somewhere within me... As she spoke, reality changed, the look of things altered, and the world became peopled with magical presences. My sense of life deepened and the feel of things was different, somehow. Enchanted and enthralled, I stopped her constantly to ask questions. My imagination blazed. The sensations the story aroused in me were never to leave me. ⁶

As we see with Wright's experience, an author has the ability to sway our thoughts and minds through his or her craft. This power that the author holds strongly parallels the induction of hypnotic trance. I found myself in a hypnotic trance when I was reading The Help. Kathryn Stockett successfully created a piece of fiction that I was lost in due to the characters and situations I connected with.