Real Life Stories – Fiction versus Non-Fiction

When I was a kid, I used to love reading fiction.  I also enjoyed watching cartoons.  I never understood why on earth anyone would want to watch something like the news, or read history books.  I also never understood why anyone would want to watch documentaries.

However, as I have grown older, I have found that I do enjoy more and more to learn about reading about and watching real life stories.  For example, in the Up series, we have real life documentaries filmed to take advantage and share with us real people’s lives.  These are not made-up stories.  Instead, these are real stories told by real people.

I really enjoy watching real-life stories now.  I also enjoy watching stories that are based on real life.  An example would be Chariots of Fire.  That film was based on the real lives of two Olympic runners.  For some reason, I now enjoy more and more real-life stories because these are the stories that really make you feel for the people and the characters in the story.  They are really situations that have happened, and you can liken that it could happen to you in the future, or perhaps even have already happened to you.

Therefore, as I have grown older, I have found nonfiction to be more interesting than fiction, and I actually do learn and have learned much more from nonfiction.  This is not to say that fiction is unimportant.  It still is highly important to develop the imagination.  Fiction allows us to do this, but I see this occupying a smaller force in our lives as our society progresses to a more technologically advanced society.