Reading Fiction Can Literally Save Your Life

Time to bring out the inner hero.

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.” —Anna Quindlen

Reading a good story is not mere entertainment — it’s a powerful tool for growth. Books are exactly what Stephen King called them: “uniquely portable magic.”

Have you ever heard people call reading fiction “mind candy” and “entertainment,” as if it were not something of productive value? I have, and it’s absolutely wrong.

Reading fiction, getting lost in a story, projecting into another world, coming home and feeling that eagerness to lay in bed reading for an hour to pick up where you left off — there’s something powerful in it, something that changes our lives, and it’s backed by science too. I’m not talking about just an increased vocabulary. I’m talking an enhanced intellectual horizon, better health, and a better lease on life.

Reading might just be exactly what the doctor ordered.

It Reduces Stress

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” ―Mason Cooley

Every reader knows this intrinsically. We open a book, dive in, and for those blissful moments on the page whatever’s assailing us outside falls away, and we are free.

What does science say? Reading a good story for even six minutes can reduce stress levels by as much as 68%. According to that research, it can be more effective than other forms of stress reduction and relaxation. I know this very well. As a paramedic, I find reading to be the most accessible and effective tool for taking my mind off what has happened or what might happen.

For anyone during stressful times, reading can act as a form of distraction-based coping. A book truly is, as Neil Gaiman said, “a dream you hold in your hand.”

It Nurtures Your Emotional Intelligence

Reading fiction, even for fun, can make you a better person.

Even just reading a single story, according to various experiments, improves one’s capacity to understand and mentally react to others and social situations. A regular habit of reading fiction can therefore enhance our social awareness.

Why is this so? Some call it Emotional Transportation — compared to non-fiction, with fiction we are more emotionally transported into the story, to its characters and their lives. By projecting ourselves into stories, into the shoes of fictional characters going through nonetheless very real experiences — real for them — we mentally tune ourselves in to the social forces at work. This effect is even more pronounced the more you envision what you read, with the most imagery-generating readers being 3 times more likely to exhibit pro-social behavior.

The Bottom Line: Imagining creates understanding. We can learn so much through vicarious experiences that we would never have otherwise known!

It Prolongs Your Well-Being

“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” — Joseph Addison

Reading fiction is not only good for your mind, but it can help you live better, longer.

Studies have shown that reading books provides a survival advantage — and I make the distinction, books, not magazines or newspapers or comics or Facebook posts. In the elderly in the aforementioned study:

“A survival advantage persisted after adjustment for all covariates (HR = .80, p < .01), indicating book readers experienced a 20% reduction in risk of mortality over the 12 years of follow up compared to non-book readers.”

Just thirty minutes a day, according to such findings, or “a chapter a day” can have this effect over time. Reading fiction can be a powerful prescription in and of itself — sans any side effects.

In Sharpens Your Focus

“Reading takes solitude and it takes focus.” — Augusten Burroughs

In this rapid digital age, our attention spans are shrinking dramatically, and with it our focus.

Reading is a workout for your focus. To sit there and read something for an hour straight, without going off to check social feeds or emails, is impossible for many people — but like any muscle, focus can be exercised, and reading a story is a wonderful way to do it.

It Amplifies Your Creativity

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.” ― Albert Einstein

Art thrives off art, and imagination thrives off imagination. Stephen King was right when he said that if you do not have time to read you do not have time to write, for to be a good writer, you must first be a devoted, passionate reader.

When you have a habit of reading, you’ll find ideas pop into your head faster, and many you can trace back to the fiery passion and excitement brought about by that story. I know I can. My best writing has always been on the coattails of my most intense and enthralling readings.

Behind every prolific creator, there is a prolific reader.

It Brings Out Your Inner Hero

This may be me just harping on, but in past hard times, I often found myself wondering what one of my favorite characters would do. How would she face this? How would she persevere? I always knew she could, she was that sort of person, one of my childhood heroes.

That has never failed to give me courage. I quickly realized that I could replicate what the character would do in myself as well — that I had it in me too, the same qualities I admired.

Don’t all us readers know a character like that? Don’t you?

When we read fiction, and see trials and hardship through the eyes of those who demonstrate heroic qualities, courage, love, devotion, forgiveness, we feel them too, and realize on a deep level that we have those too within us.

Your fictional heroes give you courage, for every hero is a reflection of our beautiful human potential.

The Takeaway

“Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we’ve never met, living lives we couldn’t possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character’s skin.” — Ann Patchett

While no book is for everyone, for everyone there is a book out there to enjoy — and we owe it to ourselves to find it. Reading is not only one of life’s greatest pleasures, but one of the simplest and most effective medicines we can ingest.

Fiction can not only enrich our lives, but save them.

Happy reading!

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