Does a strong imagination make a reader gullible?
I thought I would change up the blog for tonight to bring up an interesting topic for conversation. I won't go too deeply into this article, simply because I am actually hoping that you, dear reader, will help me to get a better grasp on the answer.
I have always valued writing for tweens and teens. Part of this is because though my target audience is comfortable enough with reading that I don't need to oversimplify my word choices, they still have a very active imagination. That being said, I feel I can tell a more imaginative story with this audience in mind.
There's a group of readers out there who will not touch speculative fiction unless it is "real", or has this sense of "realism" based on modern accepted scientific practice. For example, these ones frown upon alien life forms in literature. They want to know the specifics of spaceship travel. And they are more concerned with the inner workings of a blaster that can melt your face (and perhaps write this off readily as impossible) than with how awesome it would be to turn your enemies into puddles at will. We call this branch of speculative fiction "hard sci-fi". I want you to be assured that, if you are of this mindset, I have the greatest respect for you though I don't share the mindset personally.
While I value a certain degree of realism in a story, I don't believe that speculative fiction needs to be accurate on a scientific level to maintain a feeling of realism. But if I encourage my audience to believe in something that cannot be explained, and perhaps even something that is altogether impossible, am I encouraging my readers to be gullible? I hardly think so. I prefer to think I am helping to strengthen the imaginations of my audience.
How do you view it? Does cultivating the imagination make a reader gullible? (Please respect other posters.)
I have always valued writing for tweens and teens. Part of this is because though my target audience is comfortable enough with reading that I don't need to oversimplify my word choices, they still have a very active imagination. That being said, I feel I can tell a more imaginative story with this audience in mind.
There's a group of readers out there who will not touch speculative fiction unless it is "real", or has this sense of "realism" based on modern accepted scientific practice. For example, these ones frown upon alien life forms in literature. They want to know the specifics of spaceship travel. And they are more concerned with the inner workings of a blaster that can melt your face (and perhaps write this off readily as impossible) than with how awesome it would be to turn your enemies into puddles at will. We call this branch of speculative fiction "hard sci-fi". I want you to be assured that, if you are of this mindset, I have the greatest respect for you though I don't share the mindset personally.
While I value a certain degree of realism in a story, I don't believe that speculative fiction needs to be accurate on a scientific level to maintain a feeling of realism. But if I encourage my audience to believe in something that cannot be explained, and perhaps even something that is altogether impossible, am I encouraging my readers to be gullible? I hardly think so. I prefer to think I am helping to strengthen the imaginations of my audience.
How do you view it? Does cultivating the imagination make a reader gullible? (Please respect other posters.)
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Thanks for the comment, Owen. Very useful to contemplate.
There may be a counterargument, as I recall reading some time ago a teacher who taught kids in the 15-18[?] year-old range, who said that he'd observed a reduction of his students' grasp of basic physical principles over the past decade or more. Examples he cited (as I recall) were: you can't actually stand on the tail of a spinning aircraft as it crashes (a Die Hard movie), and two men cannot leap from speeding motorcycles and grasp each other in mid-air. I think there may have been something about outrunning explosions too. He averred that a surprising number of kids believed these things and suggested movies were (partly?) to blame.
I'm personally a bit dubious about any such conclusion, but it is possible that some kids may get confused by movie stunts, especially if they have little real-life experience.
Assuming there is some validity to the point, I would wonder if it applies to books. Movies have strong visual appeal: they engage the mind and the imagination in a very different way than reading. If I had to guess I would suspect that reading and engaging their imagination make kids less gullible than movies, in which the imagination is not really engaged. (I think overwhelmed might be more accurate?)
In essence, I think being gullible is a byproduct of having the imagination suppressed, so a person more readily accepts whatever is presented to them. Reading does does the opposite of that.