How fiction can help you become a better writer
At some point in time, one needs to master the skills of writing because it is an essential communication tool we use in everyday life – in both casual and professional setting. As such, one would always love to improve our skills.
Our train of thoughts to work towards this goal tend to incline towards non-fiction titles:
- Tricks to Explain Your Product Better
- Writing 101
- Brilliant Rules to Make Your Product Speak for Itself
Are you familiar with these? A non-fiction book offers you practical ways to improve your writing skills. It explains with examples (sometimes they include case studies), it is scientific and straight to the point, it is rather objective, and of course, suggesting steps that you can take to write better.
Or so we thought.
Well, it will help you to become a better writer for sure. But, even in writing, there are some challenges that cannot be easily overcome just by following theories.
Other than using a clever technique, writing also requires ideas, inspiration, and imagination, that is often not well-explained in some non-fiction books. It sounds unfortunate, doesn’t it? To clarify, I am not writing this to stop anyone from reading non-fiction. What I want to offer is a different and unscientific perspective to improve your crafting skills, with a bonus point of understanding others better. Please take this with a grain of salt!
Usually, when reading a non-fiction book on writing, you would find these steps on crafting a brilliant piece of writing, which typically only give you the perspective from a content creator. By following such clever techniques, we can make our product looks so perfect because it goes accordingly with our own strategy. What about the customer’s point of view? At least for me, I will say that following the most clever technique is not enough.
We don’t exactly know how the customers will respond to our work because if we keep creating things through the creator’s eyes, we would not be aware of the complexity of problems which our customer might face later. How do you know if your work will be really helpful for them? The key to get to the customer’s eyes is by using your empathy; one of the most important things to have as a writer.
When you find it rather difficult to place yourself in other’s shoes, this is where fiction can actually help you – it helps you become the other parties.
Empathy through fiction
Reading fiction allows you to relate to the character’s story – to read a person’s mind, to be in their shoes, and to see things from their perspective. It helps you become more empathetic. You will find yourself trying to understand how a character is built with such complexity.
When you finally can understand your customers better, it will be easier for you to solve the kinds of problems they might encounter later when experiencing your product. In the end, you are not only giving them options, but you can actually meet their needs.
My favourite fictional character shot a man with a gun four times, killing him on the spot, just because he felt the sun was too hot that day.
That was so absurd. Meursault from the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus is probably my favourite character. Meursault was an honest guy, even though he is emotionally indifferent to other people; even to his own family, he tried his best to be harmless. Instead of calling him laid back, “amoral” would be the perfect adjective to describe him.
One must wonder, how is it possible for a man to kill someone else and blame it solely on the sun? How did the massive and untouchable sun provoke him so much to the extent of ending another man’s life? I was so confused and I could not stop thinking about it. I became more curious and tried discussing it with my friend who had finished the novel first. Thankfully, no one was there to say, “stop stressing so much about it, they are not even real!”. My friend and I ended up looking for many possibilities that could be the causes of why Meursault took someone else’s life.
“Finding the world so much like myself, so like a brother, really, I felt that I had been happy, and that I was happy again…”
— How Albert Camus described Meursault’s thoughts in The Stranger as Meursaut felt how similar the world is to him; both are indifferent to each other no matter what happened, therefore, in the end, they are going to be okay. The more I read, the more I become like Meursault, and the more I read, the more I become one with Meursault as I finally understand him from the inside; all his sole purposes of his actions.
Exploring your literary preference in fiction
Learning how to understand a character does not have to be as dramatic as this (well, Meursault is just a really interesting character to me!). Explore your preference in the world of fiction and pick something that is your cup of tea. There are so many fiction genres that you could find according to your literary preference. Do not dwell on something that is unpleasant to you as that will not be beneficial either.
Start by reading the genre that is the closest to your favourite genre in other forms of artwork! For example, if you like romantic movies, you can go to the romance genre. Other popular genres in fiction are fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, horror, and you will probably discover more preferable genres afterwards.
To find a good book, you can always start from the most popular or most recommended title from the genre you have chosen. Reading book reviews could help you big time as well (but beware of unintentional spoilers!).
Other than that? I say, read anything you think is fun to read! If it is good, then it is good. If it is bad, then you will know it. You will end up knowing what is good from a book when you are already used to reading everything. I say, nothing to lose if you think of it as a learning process.
Fiction is so much more than just a cliche fairytale with a happy ending.
Fiction tells you the complexity of characters that will shape the whole story. Enjoy the ride of uncovering how each character plays a part in building that story, the turning point and their relationships.
Through this simple exercise, you can improve your empathy towards others, understand your customer’s needs better, and last but not least, provide content that can help your users experience the product on a different level.
