Today, I watched my daughter fight a dragon.
She sat cross-legged on our porch swing, book propped open, completely still except for her eyes and the occasional flick of a page. Yet everything in her body language, the tension in her shoulders, the slight lean forward, the barely audible gasp, told me she was somewhere else entirely, locked in battle alongside characters who existed only in ink and imagination.
“What’s happening?” I asked when she finally looked up.
She launched into a breathless explanation about betrayals and moral complexity that would impress most therapists. She mapped out a social world with insight I hadn’t realized she possessed.
I’d always thought fiction was about escaping life, but I realized it’s about rehearsing for it.
Stories don’t distract us from reality. They prepare us to understand it better.
Reading fiction makes you better with people
Reading a good story does more than fill your time. It builds your social brain.
When you open a book and step into a character’s world, you’re not just reading words on a page. You’re training your brain to understand people better.
The brain on fiction
Your brain doesn’t always know the difference between real and imagined experiences. When you read about a character feeling sad, angry or happy, your brain fires up the same areas that light up during real social interactions.
Brain scans show that reading fiction works out the same neural circuits you use to:
Think of fiction as a simulator for social situations. Each story gives you practice at seeing life from someone else’s point of view without any real-world risk.
Why stories make us human
Humans have told stories since we first gathered around fires. These tales weren’t just entertainment, they helped us learn to work together and build communities.
Stories taught us:
This skill for understanding others through stories gave our ancestors a survival advantage. Groups that could share knowledge and work together through storytelling thrived.
Fiction builds better social skills
People who read fiction regularly score higher on tests measuring:
One study found that people performed better on tests of empathy and social awareness after reading literary fiction, even after just one reading session.
Stories let you try on other lives
Fiction gives you something no other medium can: direct access to another person’s inner thoughts. You learn about their fears and hopes and how they make sense of the world.
When my son read “Wonder” by R.J. Palacio, he talked for weeks about how having a facial difference like the main character would feel. The book gave him a window into an experience he’d never had.
This mental “trying on” of other lives builds real-world empathy. It helps you:
Fiction vs. non-fiction
Both fiction and non-fiction have value, but they work on your brain in different ways.
Non-fiction gives you facts and information. Fiction gives you experience and emotional understanding.
Reading about how depression works in a psychology textbook teaches you facts. Reading “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath lets you feel what depression is like from the inside.
Studies show that literary fiction, with its complex characters and social situations, builds social skills more than genre fiction or nonfiction.
Reading fiction in a digital world
In a world of short attention spans and quick dopamine hits, fiction offers something rare—deep engagement with complex human experiences.
When you read a novel, you practice:
These mental skills translate directly to real relationships, which also require patience, attention, and comfort with complexity.
How to read for social growth
Not all fiction builds social skills equally. For maximum benefit:
Real benefits in real life
The social skills you build through fiction translate to concrete advantages:
All this from an activity many dismiss as “just reading.”
The bottom line
Think back to the last time a book moved you to tears, made you laugh out loud, or kept you awake long past your bedtime. That wasn’t just entertainment. It was brain training.
Each time you slip into a character’s mind, your brain builds new pathways, strengthens old connections, and practices the social skills you need in real life.
This brain training works because fiction gives you something no other medium can—direct access to other minds.
Want to strengthen your social brain? The prescription is simple. Turn off Netflix. Put down your phone. Read fiction for 30 minutes daily.
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