Reading Fantasy Expands Our Capacity For Empathy

When I was sixteen, I ditched school to go hide in this shop called Bookstar. It’s a quaint store in Studio City that isn’t much larger than my one bedroom apartment. 

I sat on the floor of the poetry section for hours, and when I finally went to purchase a book, the cashier stopped me. 

“You know what book you need to read?” She pulled out a novel so thick it may as well have doubled as a weapon, “Throne of Glass.” 

The cover looked cheesy, if I was being honest—it was anime style art of young girl holding twin blades at her side with a wicked grin on her face. 

“What’s it about?” I frowned, finding it odd that she would suggest YA fantasy to me when I was buying a book written by a poet who was older than dirt.

She held up the line of customers as she launched into a very detailed explanation about a flawed young heroine with an unbreakable will who falls in love with the prince she is meant to kill. I bought the book, and stayed up until three am reading it.

The main character had a strength and boldness I wished to find within myself. By climbing inside of her perspective and empathizing with her experience, I got to keep some of her qualities because I lived out her adventures. 

I fell in love as she did, grieved her losses, burned with her fiery rage, and sat in the dark with her until she could see the stars again. The character became a part of me.

People often talk about fantasy and fiction being a form of escapism, but what if it’s quite the opposite?

Since our belief is suspended, we are naturally more inclined to read with a level of openness that we don’t in everyday reality. Good writing draws us in through the nervous system. We climb inside of a character and smell, taste, hear, feel every inch of their world.

The best place to tell the truth is in fiction. Why? Because things aren’t so black in white as we wish they were, and fantasy allows for a grey area. Carl Jung believed the writing structure of the hero’s journey was so widely used because all of those key archetypes exist within our subconscious—the hero, the villain, the sage, the fool, the trickster.

I have shared this quote by CS Lewis before, “One day you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again.”

By exploring worlds that never were, we can traverse our own inner landscape with a renewed level of bravery. And, by reading stories written from all walks of life, we innately broaden our world view and empathic abilities by going on a journey with their characters.

Moral of the story: read lots of books.

And, if you are interested in a new fantasy book, mine is finally available for preorder! This story has been four years in the making. I hope you enjoy reading it a fraction as much as i enjoyed writing it.

Legends of Lemuria

Much love,

Your friendly neighborhood scribe.