1 The power of story
Before you explore how reading fiction can affect the reader, you will look very briefly at just how prevalent and powerful stories are, and have been, within human culture. Stories are thought to be a universal form of communication among humans (Rubin, 1995), meaning that storytelling is not limited to particular cultures or geographies. They have been popular for thousands of years and the evidence suggests that early humans exchanged stories (Donald, 1991). Alongside their value in providing entertainment, stories have been recognised as devices that can play a part in bringing about significant societal change. The Indigenous peoples saying that ‘the one who tells the story rules the world’ recognises the rhetorical power of stories to effect change.
You may well be aware of recent examples that demonstrate how stories can cause cultural change. In 2024 in the UK, ITV broadcast a drama series about the Post Office submasters who were wrongly accused of fraud due to failures in the accounting system that they were forced to use. This series had a substantial impact despite the fact that the issues the post masters faced had been reported factually for several years in the news. The story portrayed in the series captured the imagination of the viewers to the extent that it raised the profile of the submasters’ plight to one of the most important national issues of the time and led to policy change and legal consequences.
It may seem surprising that the drama was what led to this change, when the same story told factually in the news had failed to have the same effect. However, researchers who study the impacts of stories will not have found that surprising at all, as stories are known to be capable of substantial persuasion. Before you consider this persuasion in more depth, you will return to how reading a story can affect the reader and some of the benefits that result from reading.