This week on Instagram, I shared some thoughts on fiction vs. nonfiction. I focused a lot on reading, but I gave my two cents on writing them too, check this out:
Monday
What do you prefer reading? Fiction or non-fiction? And why?
If we think of a list of factors or keywords for each one, for non-fiction, they would be educational value, professional development, personal growth, reality-based engagement, informed decision-making. For fiction, they would be escapism, emotional connection, creative exploration, moral or ethical exploration, entertainment, catharsis…
Maybe you like those things when you read and it makes sense to choose one or another as your favorite. But the problem is that, in my mind, I could invert those groups of keywords and they would still make sense to the opposite reading type…
Which makes me think that fiction and non-fiction are not as “opposite” as they may sound.
But I understand that, depending on the purpose of your reading, your cognitive engagement, and your aesthetic preferences, you might prefer reading one or another.
I know many people who never read fiction and many others who never read non-fiction. I was thinking about that last week and I decided that this would make a good theme for our bookish talks.
Tuesday
Why can’t some people read fiction?
The first reason I can think of is that some people prefer facts and the real world over imaginative or abstract scenarios. The other reason: a mild ignorance.
We talked about non-fiction being roughly surrounded by keywords like educational value, professional development, personal growth, reality-based engagement, and informed decision-making, but I bet you can name a few novels that brought at least one of those things to your life or even all of them together.
To say that fiction is limited to escapism and unreal situations is madness. But I was mad once. I have to admit and be honest with you. There was a time when I thought that “little stories” would never be as strong as real facts and objective information written without any flowery language. But I was wrong. Even about the flowery language.
It’s true. You may read useless fiction in your life. There’s no way to avoid that completely. Even among classics, you will find some trash. BUT the thing about fiction is the opportunity to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, you know? When we read non-fiction we tend to apply the information to our lives or the life of people we know. But fiction brings empathy by making us imagine ourselves as a character in the story and living that moment with them and that changes everything.
If you are one of the people who never read fiction, please give it a chance. A good idea, maybe, is looking for realistic authors like Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Orwell, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Machado de Assis, Joyce, Twain… there’s a huge menu for you choose from, to be honest.
Wednesday
What about writing? Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction?
At the end of this post, I’m gonna give you an interesting exercise that I really like doing whenever I’m just practicing. It changed a little bit the way I think about fiction or non-fiction writing.
First, I want to ask you which one you think is easier to write. I mean, when you write fiction, YOU are the one creating the story. So it should be easier because you’re free to say whatever you want, right? On the other hand, writing NON-FICTION should be the easier one to write, because all you need is to repeat facts and write about it in your own words. Do you agree?
I have to say. I think we overcomplicate fiction sometimes. Sometimes we want to be as literary as the big authors we love. Sometimes we want to use smart words or be the best storyteller in the world. And that only prevents us from writing our books.
At the same time, we tend to oversimplify non-fiction. Of course, it’s not just about repeating facts or writing things. It requires research, a level of understanding of the subject well enough to even talk about it, and the writing must be as compelling as any novel you’ve ever read.
So, I think there’s no easier one here. You may be more familiar with one or another. But both require a huge amount of dedication and work, not to mention techniques to make them interesting.
Now, here’s the exercise I talked about in the beginning: you wanna pick any short story and any news article and you’ll rewrite them as their “opposite”, that is, rewrite the short story as a news article and the news article as a short story.
That exercise will force you to rewire your brain and find the main differences between writing non-fiction and fiction for YOU, and it will improve your writing a lot. Not to mention that it will also dispel this crazy idea that fiction and non-fiction are “completely opposite” types of writing.
Thursday
When I think like a nonfiction reader…
When I think like a nonfiction reader, I think of time and straightforwardness. Maybe that’s why I don’t like when nonfiction is too “stuffed” with backing stories more than practical usage of the topic.
Nonfiction authors do that to stick an idea in our minds and convince us that they’re right. They show a concept, value, or method, working in so many different situations, that we believe that what they’re saying is right. I don’t like that. Sometimes.
I mean, if you think about it, that’s how humanity evolved, values and beliefs have been passed on from generation to generation through stories, then in many religious books also through parables and stories. Some involved gods, some involved people, and some just described an episode with actions and consequences that, in a certain way, prove a point. But always through storytelling.
But the opposite can be true as well. As a lawyer, I know that for every argument there’s a precedent or scholarly thesis to back and strengthen that argument. I mean EVERY argument.
Yea. Now back to the initial thought. I like nonfiction when it’s straightforward and practical. Unless it’s supposed to be a story, like a biography or the story of a company, or a history book. When I pick nonfiction to read, I want to find practical ideas to use in my daily life or objective concepts to learn objectively.
And that makes me think that this feeling about nonfiction is not limited to the content, I also care about the form. I care about how the writing is structured, the layout of the page, the size of the paragraphs, the attention to detail like “idea blocks” or the use of bullet points and summaries to close chapters. Things like that, you know?
Oh, and about that “opposite” idea in comparison to fiction. I truly believe that many nonfiction books bring a sense of escapism, emotional connection, and creative exploration… those are not exclusive keywords for fiction. I don’t know, read Into the Wild, for example. Or the biography of one of your heroes…
Friday
Wrapping up…
Alright, we have to admit. There’s one thing that differentiates nonfiction from fiction reading: how our brain reacts to each one of them.
There are a lot of studies with MRI readings and questionnaires and all that stuff, but you don’t have to be a scientist with a bunch of complex lab apparatus to notice this yourself:
When we read fiction, we are more likely to be transported to the protagonist's body, it impacts our physical sensation, and we connect to the story in a very human and sensitive way, not to mention all the hormones our bodies release with storytelling. When we read non-fiction, our brains go to the critical thinking and factual analysis place, and although we tend to be less connected in a soulful way to the text, we absorb the information and find ways to organize the facts, ideas, and arguments, and apply these ideas in our real-world contexts.
Well, to be honest with you, that last part also goes to both. Fiction and nonfiction will always invite us to apply ideas in our real-world contexts.
All that to say we should not prefer one or another. I’m not trying to “change the way you are” nor dictate your preferences. But I guess that the whole takeaway here this week is that, if we want to be good readers and use reading to our improvements, we should not prefer reading only fiction or only non-fiction because of the benefits of both. And I would also say that we writers should not pick one or another, too, but I’m gonna let that discussion to my Substack. It goes a little deeper.
But, yea, both fiction and nonfiction have their unique impact on our brains, emotions, and lives, and they both enrich our reading experience and contribute to our cognitive and emotional development in different yet complementary ways.
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