The Two Reasons Stories Matter
By: Ginger on January 23, 2026
Most writers never stop to ask why they write fiction in the first place. We just sit down, open a document, and start moving imaginary people through imaginary worlds that somehow feel deeply personal. In this week’s blog, Ginger looks for the answer to why we do this and discovers there are really only two. And as it turns out, the same reasons we write stories are the same reasons people love to read them.
It’s a battle between control and experience. The urge to shape outcomes and the need to relive emotion in a safe space. As Ginger explains, writing can be a form of power, a way to fix what life refused to fix, but it can also be a way to walk back through pain with the comfort of knowing the story eventually ends. When these two impulses meet, something powerful happens for both author and reader. So if you’re curious why some fiction feels therapeutic, or why certain books hit harder than others, or simply why stories matter in the first place, read on.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why we do this thing we do. Why we sit down at our keyboards, day after day, and pour ourselves into fictional worlds. Why we obsess over characters who don’t exist. Why we lose sleep over plot problems that have no bearing on our actual lives. I actually wrote a whole article about it!
The more I think about it, though, the more I’ve come to believe there are really only two reasons any of us write fiction. And, as it turns out, they’re the exact same reasons people read.
Reason One: Control
Let’s start with the uncomfortable truth: as authors, we’re basically playing God.
We control the worlds we write about. We invent the characters who inhabit them. We can make those characters do whatever we want, say what we need them to say, feel what we want them to feel, act however we choose. We’re essentially sitting in a sandbox, banging our action figures together as we play out a story.
And if you’re anything like me, many of the characters you write about have shades of real people in them. You probably see glimpses of yourself in the protagonist. Maybe your love interest is based on someone you knew. That antagonist? Yeah, we both know who that really is (I once had a Facebook friend joke: “I hope you haven’t killed me in a story” and I totally had. Twice.)
Gore Vidal once said, “Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about five, and Samuel Beckett one—and perhaps a clone of that one. I have ten or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.“
That resonates with me deeply. Because as the creators of our entire fictional universe, we have the freedom to do whatever we want. We can make characters say the things we wish real people would say. We get to feel about the characters and their situations any way we choose, and then we have the power to resolve their conflicts in ways we find satisfying. Not just satisfying, sometimes downright cathartic.
I think many of us treat writing almost like therapy. We can write about negative experiences that mirror those we’ve faced in real life, but we have the God-like power to give them a happy ending—or at least a cathartic one.
You can write a love story with a girl based on the-one-that-got-away and have them get together in the end, instead of watching her walk away forever. If somebody hurt you in real life, the character you base on them could be held accountable, or more! You can base a character off a real person and kill them in all sorts of gruesome and well-deserved ways and there are literally no real-life consequences for doing so!
(I know I’ve murdered a few more people I know than just that Facebook friend, and you shouldn’t judge, because I’m sure you have too.)
This sense of control is like therapy because we get to fix what’s broken about ourselves and other people, or right the wrongs that have haunted us for as long as we remember them. We get to tell our first love how we really feel. We get our father to look us in the eye and tell us he’s proud of us. We get to plunge a dagger into the heart of our greatest enemy and watch with pleasure as life fades from their eyes.
In the real world, you can’t get the people you care about to do or say the things you want them to do (although many people try. They’re called narcissists.) But somehow, you just know that it would heal you if they did.
Well, that’s what writing is for.
The other week I was chatting with Terrance Layhew and we called writing “therapy dupe” (which means a duplicate for therapy if you’re not familiar with brainrot dialogue.) I think that’s accurate. Writing is deeply therapeutic that way.
Reason Two: Experience
It’s deeply therapeutic in another way, too, and this is where it gets interesting. Because there’s a second reason people write, and it’s almost the opposite of control.
Some of us don’t write to control the worlds we’re creating, we write to share the experience of living in them.
All stories have ups and downs, with emotional highs and crushing lows. Victory is often preceded by defeat, and all stories require our protagonist to sacrifice something they care about. Experiential writers want to experience every moment of that story, to feel the deep emotions in the safety of a fictional setting, but one you can walk away from instantly.
To do that, however, you have to take the whole journey. You have to be willing to experience the same trauma and challenges your protagonist does.
But in truth, as the author, you probably already have.
The reason you can write about the sad, scary, or painful parts of a character’s journey is because you’ve lived it yourself. This, too, is a deeply cathartic experience. But unlike with control, you’re not writing to change the outcome of the experience, you’re writing to live it once again. Only this time, perhaps with the healing context of knowing it was a moment in a story, not a lifelong condition.
When we speak about a trauma we experienced to a therapist, they often try to help us reframe it by placing it within the context of our greater life. Sometimes the most difficult things we faced and suffered through were what made us strong enough to be victorious or successful further down the road, and it can make us feel better about our trauma when we understand that.
By pouring your experiences out onto the page, you get to do so with the safety of knowing there’s a happily-ever-after at the end of it. Or, if not that, at least a deeply satisfying conclusion.
(So yes, I’ve hammered this home twice now. Writing is like therapy.)
The Reader’s Side of the Equation
Here’s the thing, though. These two reasons why we write are the same two reasons why readers read.
Think about it.
Readers pick up power fantasy books and escapism when they want to inhabit a world they feel they have control over. They want to be the unstoppable hero, the brilliant strategist, the chosen one. They want to experience what it feels like to have agency, to make choices that matter, to bend the world to their will—even if it’s just for a few hundred pages.
But readers also gravitate toward books featuring characters who have experienced the same traumas and challenges they’re going through. They want to see someone else walk through the fire they’re currently in, because it gives them hope that there’s a happy ending awaiting at the end of all the trials and trauma.
When a reader picks up your book and sees themselves reflected in your protagonist’s struggles, something magical happens. They’re not alone anymore. Someone else understands. And if your character can make it through, maybe they can too.
The Sweet Spot
Good writing is a blend of both.
It’s one of the reasons I love Ian Fleming’s James Bond books. There’s the power fantasy element of being a deadly secret agent—the control, the competence, the ability to shape outcomes. But there are also the wonderfully descriptive passages about food, travel, torture, and love. Fleming lets you experience Bond’s world in vivid detail, both the pleasure and the pain of it. That’s the sweet spot. That’s where the magic happens.
When you can give readers both the sense of control they crave and the emotional experience they need, you’ve created something special. You’ve given them a reason to keep turning pages long past their bedtime. You’ve made them feel something real about people who don’t exist.
Perhaps reading is also therapy dupe.
If writing is how we authors process our experiences and exercise our need for control, then self-publishing is how we share that healing with others. We’re not just telling stories, we’re offering readers a way to work through their own stuff, to feel powerful when they feel helpless, to know they’re not alone when they feel isolated.
That’s why we do this. That’s why it matters.
That’s why, despite the long hours and the rejection and the uncertainty, we keep showing up to play God in our little sandboxes, banging our action figures together and calling it art.
Because sometimes therapy dupe is exactly what the world needs.
Or, at least, that’s what I think. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.
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Ginger is also known as Roland Hulme - a digital Don Draper with a Hemingway complex. Under a penname, he's sold 65,000+ copies of his romance novels, and reached more than 320,000 readers through Kindle Unlimited - using his background in marketing, advertising, and social media to reach an ever-expanding audience.
Thanks, Ginger, for another great article! I love reading your blog, it’s so spot on. I learn a lot from your articles and look forward to the next one.
Cheers,
Cynthia Star