To entertain. To persuade. To inform. These are some of the technical reasons for writing that we've learned in our language arts classes at school. But really, in the case of fiction stories or novels and in poetry, it is so much more.
First, a lot of the time, it isn't just for the benefit of the readers of the work, it's also for the writers themselves. I, and probably you, if you're a writer, sometimes start to write when bad feelings spring up, like depression or anger, whatever the cause. Writing pulls us into a whole new world, where our past, our troubles, our fears, are all but forgotten.
For just a little while, we can relax and let words of even our own stories or poems carry us away, off to a new life, rather than stick in our own cruddy ones. Though our eyes are looking at a paper (or here, a screen) with words printed on it, our minds - ourselves - are off elsewhere. On a vacation, almost. And wherever in the world we want to be. It doesn't have to be (and often isn't) even in an existing place.
So why not just go somewhere different to escape our everyday lives, like outside the house, or out of town? Or on a vacation?
Well, we could. But there's two major reasons we read instead. First, the obvious ones I know you have in your heads already: a book is so much more convenient. You might have to get a ride to wherever you wanted to go, and it's obviously kinda weird to go someplace just to escape life for a while.
But there's another reason: writing has a certain magical quality to it. As I said, often, writing takes us to a place that isn't even real, or that's impossible in the real world. Think of the Harry Potter series. Where else are you going to find a place like Hogwarts? Or . . . I don't know . . . Twilight. Where else will you meet vampires and werewolves? Even in realistic fiction, it's such a neat thing to observe the life of other people, and to travel to different places . . . all by just reading words and sentences.
Writing is a lot like poetry in this sense. Poetry is generally considered light, beautiful, maybe you might describe it as "magical." Writing is like this too, just not in rhyming phrases and with less figurative language in it.
So why do we really read and write? Well, to entertain ourselves and others is a valid reason. To persuade and inform . . . maybe a little. But it's more to escape the ordinary . . . to go somewhere new . . .
To go on an adventure.
