Bestselling author David Farland has taught dozens of writers who have gone on to staggering literary success, including such #1 New York Times Bestsellers as Brandon Mull (Fablehaven), Brandon Sanderson (Wheel of Time), James Dashner (The Maze Runn...
Why do people read for recreation instead of doing something else? Why not go skiing, watch a movie, play chess, or hang out on the Hollywood Boulevard?
Why do We Crave Stories?
I've never seen a definition that encompasses all types of entertainment, and there are many forms—sports, listening to music, attending parties, watching movies. When I was a prison guard, I knew killers who killed for pleasure, women who tried to seduce men for enjoyment. What do these have in common with fiction?
We have to answer that question before we can move on.
Years ago when I first began asking myself why people read, I really felt that the answers didn't mesh.
Professors in college said that we read for escape, or because we enjoy the beautiful sounds of words, or for insights.
Fine, I thought, but I can escape by getting out of the house. If I want beautiful sounds, I'll listen to Dan Fogelberg. If I'm looking to understand the world, I might be better off reading the encyclopedia or a newspaper.
Why do People Crave Stories, Good Stories, Written Down?
One clue came to me almost by accident. I happened to meet a professor who was talking to a friend. The professor was one of my favorite writing instructors, a woman who vehemently forbade her students from writing trashy genre fiction—romance, science fiction, fantasy, horror, westerns, or anything of that ilk. She discouraged her students from even reading it, fearing that it would subvert their higher impulses as artists.
So imagine my astonishment when I heard her discussing with another professor how she had wept the previous night after reading a trashy romance novel. I was flabbergasted to discover this . . . this deceit. Why, she was nothing but a hypocrite!
So I confronted her, asking why she would even bother to read a romance novel. She explained that she read romance to relax. When life got stressful, and her job got hectic, it was a good way to unwind.
Indeed, once I began asking others why they read, the words "stressful" and "relaxing" began to crop up more and more.
But on the face of it, that answer seemed absurd! When we read, we take part in a common dream. We vicariously experience what is happening. People go through tremendous difficulties in a novel. People get run over by cars or stalked by serial killers. People get raped, beaten, sold as slaves, and struggle through constant turmoil. And it isn't happening to others—it's happening to us, as readers.
Books aren't relaxing at all, are they?
And that's when I saw a possible answer.
In an early writing class, one instructor talked about Feralt's triangle. Feralt was a French writer who studied what made successful stories. He said that in a successful story, the tale begins with a character that has a problem. As we read, the suspense rises, the problems become more complex and have more far-reaching consequences, until we reach the climax of the story, where the hero's fortune changes. Afterward, the problem is resolved, the tension diminishes, and the reader is allowed to return to a relaxed state.
He put it on paper like this:
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