Learning from Fiction

Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it.

Despite primarily reading and writing sci-fi and fantasy, my all-time favorite work of fiction is Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.

If you are not familiar with this book, I cannot recommend it enough. It’s a great story, well-written, and has an impactful and positive life message in it.

The gist is this – follow your dreams. Don’t let anything get in your way when you seek to live out your “personal legend”.

This is a work of fiction. But it’s brilliant. And it has many ideas and options you can make use of in your everyday life.

For example, probably my favorite quote from The Alchemist,

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

That’s such sage advice (even if you don’t believe in God – you can substitute “God” with the powers-that-be, the Universe, Universal energy, or what-have-you).

Plenty of other works of fiction have messages – both blatant and obvious – applicable to the nonfiction of our lives. Learning from fiction, as such, adds another tool for increasing your connectivity to the Universe and subsequent creativity.

Another lesson that can be experienced from fiction – at least for a fiction writer like me – is how to change things to improve your work.

Lessons for improvement

The website Book Bub sends me emails with links to books that might interest me. As such, I was recently introduced to Alex White and their Salvagers series. I did NOT want to get hooked – but then I was, and as such am just starting book 2 of the series.

Alex White did something in the way they start the story that hit me like a ton of bricks. I don’t do that in my writing. Yet, it’s part of what got me hooked so quickly to the book.

With my recent completion of the outlines for the 6 novels of Savagespace, I developed a new idea for how to approach the beginning. Thanks to Alex White and how they started A Big Ship at The Edge of the Universe – I’m going to be altering how I open the first Savagespace novel.

I had not picked up this book expecting to learn something from it. It was an interesting sci-fi premise that I thought might be a fun read. And damn was it.

That’s an unexpected benefit that comes from reading regularly. Learning from fiction can take you by surprise.

Yet that’s not so uncommon in any art. The work of other artists – writers, painters, sculptors, actors, and so forth – can inform others. Influence from one artist can impact how another works.

It’s not plagiarism – I am in no way stealing anything from another author. They did something other authors I have read have done – but this time it impacted me and my work. It sparked an idea to take something good I’m working on and potentially make it better.

I’ve written before that much of the best fiction – even far-out stories of sci-fi and fantasy – is still rooted to our world in one way or another.

It might the journey a character takes. They could be relatable in a way that resonates with us. There might be a plan someone makes for a fictitious situation that applies to real-life experiences. Maybe the way a problem in a story is solved inspires us to solve an actual problem or situation we’re dealing with now.

Fiction can still have an impact on our day-to-day lives. This is something I’m not sure many people expect nor understand.

Nonfiction is often all about learning lessons. It might be to inspire or warn you via how someone lives in a biography or autobiography. Perhaps it’s money management both tangible and intangible. Or it could be positivity, self-improvement, mindfulness, and similar life lesson/personal development books for experiencing life to the fullest.

Nonfiction is where most turn to learn. Learning from fiction seems more far-out.

What you could learn might be inspiring and life-altering like Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. Or it might be inspiring to alter how you create your work, like my reading Alex White’s sci-fi. And of course, it could easily be both.

But then, from a broader perspective, learning is what makes life most worthwhile.

So long as we’re learning we’re living

Every single day of our lives we learn stuff.

Much of what we learn is rather insignificant and easily not focused on. Or it has zero impact on our lives, such as celebrity news and gossip. But then, at times, we learn things that do impact us in positive or negative ways.

The point is – we’re always learning. In my opinion, one of the most important aspects of life is learning.

Learning is how we grow, change, evolve, and experience more life. Because nobody knows everything – there’s always something to be learned.

To be fair, there are things I don’t know that I have no need nor desire to know. And then there are things I know that don’t impact my life, but I still like being aware of. But I am always eager to learn new things because there are so many things to be learned.

So long as we are learning we are living. That’s how I see it. Thus, learning from fiction or nonfiction is of equal value – because learning in all ways is valuable.

Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it. Learning is a constant state of being – and how we gain more tangible and intangible knowledge.

I don’t know about you – but I love learning. Whatever the source might be – I am a sponge for knowledge.

I love that there is always something new to learn. How about you?

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