"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions."
~ Albert Einstein
One of the greatest physicists the world has seen said these lines highlighting the power of imagination. Like it is said, you are what you think.
On a lazy weekend afternoon when you pick up your ReantAbook reader to browse through the varied genres and your eyes fall on a fiction book and you decide to download it.
Isn’t the feeling the same as starting a new journey amidst nature?
The book offers you more than just reading a unique narration with a new character and an unknown plot.
Here are 5 ways fiction books not only develop your imaginative power but also improve your EQ:
1. Reading Fiction Can Improve Brain Function And Imagination
Reading broadens our imagination by stimulating the right side of our brain. Neuroscientists have discovered that reading fiction can trigger and enhance connectivity in our brains.
So, when you pick up a fiction book and read through the chapters, you get engrossed in imagining the story and thinking of what is coming next.
It makes you imagine the visuals of the surroundings, the image of the characters, and you get immersed in the storyline.
And of course, especially in today’s context when mankind is fighting the odds of a pandemic, fiction reading also allows you to forget the day-to-day troubles and make the best of our time.
2. Reading Fiction Can Improve Your Emotional Quotient
Every writer tries to pen down an emotion no matter what the context of the story is and the role of its characters.
When I was writing my first fiction novel “Man With No Means”, which is the story of Shankar, a man who lives 4 stages of his life in mere 4 days to vanish every time he encounters a leafless tree, it was no less than experiencing the emotion of the man and moment of truth when the dots get connected to the end that opens the mystery to why it was happening to him.
A fiction book offers an excess of imaginary situations like these where it makes you put yourself in the shoes of the character to think about what they must be feeling. This is where you start relating to the story and its characters.
One of the biggest characteristics in the world we are living in today is to introspect and understand your own emotions consciously and at the same time empathise and connect with people; thereby adapting to any situation.
Fiction reading imbibes this art and it helps improve your Emotional Quotient.
3. Reading Fiction Can Strengthen Your Ability To Make Connections
Ask a recruitment specialist on which is the skill that you find rarest in candidates? The answer will be the skill of making connections to streamline multiple pieces of information into one.
We all face this every day somewhere when we need to connect a piece of information from another place to resolve a problem in hand.
I remember coming across a fast-growing company whose core philosophy was to solve business challenges by learning from nature. Its consultants would spend time out in the greens to find a piece of the answer.
In my philosophical mystery writing “Man With No Means”, I have tried to offer readers a scope to find their answers by connecting small pieces of information about Shankar’s disappearance from each stage spread across timelines to arrive at a climax unfolding the reason.
And no guess is right or wrong, it is your own unique connection to the end.
4. Reading Fiction Develops Creativity
Have you heard of the saying that the best teacher doesn’t just teach but provokes thoughts?
The same goes for a fiction book. It makes you think. It gets out the creative person in you.
Often some instances overlap in fiction writings, and there are topics building in parallel at different timelines or places. And in the middle of it is creativity that you experience.
You experience it because you are guessing the outcome, you are guessing the storyline by creating inferences and imagining them.
5. Reading Fiction Makes You Enjoy A New World. One Without Limitations.
Last but not the least, a fiction book does not have boundaries or limits that seek logic in everything yet intellectually appealing.
It is a new world with imaginary characters and an interesting plot.
It may be inspired by real instances but offers new perspectives to the readers.
On the same lines “Man With No Means” contains certain short encounters from the life of Shankar from his childhood to adulthood and then middle age to old age as he mysteriously fast-forwards from one stage to another that questions the core means of man and fundamentals of time and in an innovative way explores the purpose of existence.
Even this story does not limit itself to realism but has a touch of it in every aspect.
Thus, reading of fiction reveals angles that give you enjoyment to think the unthinkable yet be grounded.
All in all, a fiction book is a perfect blend of an imaginary plot with the emotions of its characters. After reading every fiction book you come out as a better thinker.
Reading fiction books not only develop your imaginative power but also improve your Emotional Intelligence. They also provide mental simulation, boost creativity and help in developing our memory.
People who read literary fiction show higher levels of empathy and emotional intelligence, according to studies published in the Public Library of Science, the Journal of Research in Personality and The European Journal of Communication Research.
Emotional Intelligence, Imaginative Power, Empathy, Stress Relief
The basic purpose of fiction is to tell a good story. They serve to draw a reader into the character’s shoes and imagine the world like the character.
