Why We Need Escapist Fiction
Why We Need Escapist Fiction
A Guest Post Kelle Z. Riley
“Easy reading is damn hard writing” ~ Maya Angelou
I am not a serious author, at least according to literary critics. No, I am a writer of genre fiction, primarily romance and cozy mystery. The literary critics don’t know I exist.
This makes me happy, believe it or not, because I’m in good company. Genre writers like Dan Brown, Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts, and Stephen King all write fiction designed to take a reader away from everyday stresses and into fictional worlds. They write what I call “escapist fiction.”
These days we need escapist fiction more than ever.
Our world is filled with tension, noise, anger, and illness, leading to a rise in symptoms of depression[i].
Escapist fiction offers a door leading to a world that works as we wish it would, not as it does in real life. In escapist fiction:
· Heroism and bravery are rewarded.
· Love conquers adversity.
· Justice is served.
· The outcome of epic battles hinges on the choices of a single person, choosing, for example, forgiveness over revenge.
In escapist fiction individual good wins over evil every time. And for as little as $0.99 you can enter those worlds and live in them, too. A typical 300-page novel can entertain the average reader for about 8 hours. If the book is part of a long running series, those hours turn into days and weeks.
As with real life, readers may experience stress, heart-pounding moments, angst, sorrow, and a range of emotions between the covers of a novel. Yet unlike real life, the promise of escapist fiction is this: no matter how dark the world looks in the book, by the end everything will work out. Heroism rewarded. Love triumphant. Justice served. Individual goodness affirmed. And all for a few pennies per hour. What a bargain!
Genre bashing is a favorite pastime among literary critics and pundits, particularly when it comes to romance fiction. Researcher and author Pamela Regis puts is this way: The romance novel has the strange distinction of being the most popular but least respected of literary genres. While it remains consistently dominant in bookstores and on bestseller lists, it is also widely dismissed by the critical community[ii]. Some hypothesize it is dismissed and downplayed because a romance novel centers on women’s lives and stories, their relationships, and desires. They argue romance novels are empowering to women and thus threatening to the rest of the world. Respected or not, genre fiction outperforms literary fiction by a margin of 2 to 1 when it comes to bestseller lists[iii] and sales. (Aside: every genre author is sure his/her genre is the least respected among critics. The debate rages on in genre circles.)
But back to the importance genre fiction as escapist literature. Here are some of the gifts it gives.
· Fiction is a vacation where you don’t need to pack or even leave your living room.
· You can travel the world. (Readers of my mystery series have gone to Singapore, Thailand, and a small town in Northern Illinois, with more locations to come.)
· You can try on different careers, stepping into the shoes of a scientist, a chocolatier, a literacy teacher, a baker, or a spy. (Those are just from my fictional worlds.) Or maybe you want to be an astronaut, a surgeon, a deep-sea diver, a knitting shop owner, proprietor of a bed and breakfast, or a party planner. You can do it all through books. Heck, you can even be a cowgirl, billionaire, or princess in a book!
· Fiction helps to develop empathy. You slip into the skin of the fictional character and see the world through the eyes of someone else.
· Fiction gives you coping skills for the real world.
I want to flesh out those final two points.
Empathy. Books are magical. They transform you into someone else, showing you the world through the point-of-view character’s eyes. My mother suffered from dementia and as a family we fought against her long, slow slide into forgetfulness. I wanted to break through the tangle of the disease and bring her back to the real world. On days when she cried, wondering where “Kelle” was, I wanted her see me standing in front of her. But she mourned because in her world Kelle had died and been replaced with this older, unfamiliar shell of a woman.
Fictional magic opened my eyes. The book Still Alice by Lisa Genova (ISBN 978-7508678030) transported me inside the mind of an early-onset dementia patient. It let me see the world through my mother’s eyes. In so doing, I emerged more compassionate, and better able to deal with her confusion. I stopped trying to force her back to my reality and entered hers.
Genre fiction excels at putting a reader into the shoes of a character, where she is free to grapple with hard realities in a safe space. Romance fiction is filled with characters working to find compromise for the sake of a shared future. Love and that shared future take priority over individual jobs, locations, agendas, and even world views. Moreover, it peels back the layers of stereotypes to reveal a human underneath.
For example, the environmentalist may vehemently oppose the industrialist, but put them together in a romance novel and eventually they begin to see each other in a different light. They find areas of commonality and places where they can compromise. In a romance novel, the industrialist may end up sponsoring a wildlife refuge while the environmentalist concedes that industry provides jobs and resources. Win-win.
Peeling back those layers to ultimately find connection is more important than ever in a world where we divide ourselves into extremist camps. Which brings me to the next point.
Coping Skills. Genre fiction give us examples of coping skills that come in handy in real life. As a child, I dealt with loneliness and isolation by creating fictional friends. When I had to do something scary, I channeled fictional personas to help me cope. Did I have to stand up in front of the whole class and give a talk? Time to channel my inner princess, who regularly gave speeches before the parliament of her country. Was I dreading gym class? It went much better if I pretended to be a ninja while running those dreaded laps. Were my parents dragging me into an argument? I mentally put on a trench coat and became a cool spy, bringing international enemies to the peace table (…er...I mean my parents to the dinner table). Even today, when faced with irrational fears, I ask myself what would a heroine do?
Everyone—readers and nonreaders alike—respond to storytelling. Stories resonate with us in ways that simple facts do not. Stories take us away from the sound bites that clutter our social media feeds and news casts, and help us see real people, real problems, and, if we’re lucky, imagine real solutions.
Reading gives us both fictional mentors to help us through difficult times, and a story framework through which we can view our real lives and endeavors. It gives us the ability and empathy to see the world from another person’s point-of-view, without sacrificing our own. And it gives us hope that maybe, just maybe, we can influence the world so that love, heroism, justice, and individual decisions in the real world mirrors the fictional word where everything works out as it should.
So, pick up a book. Escape for an hour. Escape for a day. Then come back and make the world better!
[i] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2770146
[ii] A Natural History of the Romance Novel by Pamela Regis ISBN 978-0812215229
[iii] https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjds/s13688-018-0135-y
Why We Need Escapist Fiction: A Guest Post by Kelle Z. Riley
Why We Need Escapist Fiction: A Guest Post by Kelle Z. Riley
