I just can't understand fiction!

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I have never been able to grasp the point, follow or recall any works of fiction. I also find writing stories impossible or able to recall facts from read fiction. This goes for books, movies and any plot involved in video games (play them for the gameplay and nothing else. This goes for trying to be artistic in any way, without a given direction, I am completely useless at that, yet when it comes to real facts (histoicial/techinical etc.) I can resite it at ease

When reading a book I cannot for the life of me picture it in my head, if I read a book long enough I forget what happened before hand. I don't watch any movies, I find them pointless and have little meaning. This is also true for games, if the game has more empasis on story rather than gameplay (aka. games like Dragon Age[not hitting on fans!]) I lose interest and is a rather pain just to finish it.

Other things that may be relevant, the quality of my handriting, sentence structure, wording, use of paragraphs, spelling and grammer are terrible. My communication skills are of a 13 year old, but despite that I am educated to a high standard. I have had many years of education to try and improve those skills, (10 years of repeating school level English education from books) it is not working and unfortunately lack this extremely basic skill requirement for even the most basic jobs (and the funny thing is, I have a degree!) A complete and total lack of creativity.

So anyone else find fiction difficult to follow, create, or have zero creativity?

Last edited by PerfectlyDarkTails on 14 Mar 2012, 9:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't care for anything fictional. I don't enjoy reading fiction or watching it on TV. It just doesn't interest me. I also have zero creativity.
I have never considered the idea that my lack of creativity and non-interest in fiction may go together. Kind of makes sense.

I'm just thd opposite. I like listening to fiction audiobooks while at work. I'm listening to The Dresden Files right now and i can pretty much construct a movie in my head by listening to the audiobook while my body's pretty much on autopilot doing work.
I call my ipod my anti insanity device. lol

My son is the same way. He was recently tasked with his first book report and ran into this problem. The school didn't realize he couldn't understand because he's a straight A student otherwise, and understand textbooks fine. He just can't interpret figurative, non direct language. It's not a comprehension problem and he is very smart. This is a hard thing to explain to people, thankfully he's in a private school where the principal gets it because her son is the same way, so SHE is doing the report with him

This is why I like fiction as well. The book is transformed into a whole movie in my head and it makes it that much more exciting! Plus when I watch movies or TV shows I like to take the characters and put them in all sorts of new stories in my head. That's probably why people like my short stories, fanfic and scripts!

I don't have problems like that for the very fact that I "picture" it all in my head. That is however why more complicated non-fictional texts with abstract concepts that cannot be visualised concretely but need to be descried by abstract language confuse me.

Figurative language is sort of "abstract" I guess, but... well, it is figurative, the metaphorical meaning is based on something pretty concrete if someone were to ask me. I can usually work it out because my mind translates it all into visuals or smells or whatever.

With a lot of (simple?) abstract test, I read them slowly, trying to take the information in and still come back blank. Given my IQ and ability to talk, texts like that shouldn't give me so much trouble (or so I was told) but they do because of the abstract language used for which there doesn't seem to be a way to put it in pictures or video sounds or another sensation.

Interesting enough, both can be results of having an ASD - a difficulty to visualise or specifically translate words into visuals (or an equivalent) as well as the difficulty to understand abstract concepts that cannot be translated into concrete examples.

I like fiction but I can be really picky about what I read.

As for something like this I wonder if any science fiction could appeal to the OP? Especially something technical. Maybe the Andromeda Strain. Reading about scientists moving through the multiple decontamination levels into quarantine.

I like reading and writing fiction because reality sucks.

I love fiction (and non-fiction, in terms of biographies, true crime, etc). I think fiction is a great way to 'meet' unique characters that you may not meet in real life, or to 'meet' characters and situations that you relate to, when you don't relate to much in your own life.

While I love most fiction, it still has to resemble actual life for me to enjoy it. My favorite books are usually horror 'coming-of-age' stories, so the horror elements are obviously not realistic, but the people and places that the horror invades are very similar to real life. I like that a lot. I like when fantasy elements enter into a realistic world, like in "Matilda" and even though the books are garbage, "Twilight."

What I do not like is straight fantasy or science fiction. Actually, I loathe them. I can't relate to them at all, because they depict worlds and characters that are completely foreign to me, and then I'm unable to connect on an emotional level. I actually avoided Harry Potter for a long time because I thought it was strict fantasy, but when I finally read more about it, I gave them a shot, and I've been an obsessed fan-girl ever since. If the 'muggle' world hadn't been included, I'm not sure I'd feel the connection as much...nothing to ground me in the story.

I'm the opposite; I'm very good at reading fiction and understanding fiction. I'm okay at role-playing, and can write stories but am not especially good at it.

It's interesting to me that you have trouble following a narrative, but not understanding a complex idea in a work of non-fiction. What do you experience differently between those two things?

One thing I really like is Survival Horror. Commonly associated with the zombie movies but it can involve other monster movies.

For example the movie TREMORS. It's built on rules. You have these big worm monsters under ground incredibly sensitive to vibration. You learn the abilities of the them and form a strategy. Get to high ground or especially rocky terrain.

The original ALIEN movie is good for this to.

Or the original Dawn of the Dead. I thought the characters in the remake of Dawn of the Dead were total idiots.

How are you with history? Reading an account of a battle or a political struggle centuries ago is not much different than reading a story. Does it seem different to you when you know it really happened?

Yeah, that's interesting to me too. Like, for example, if you read a biography of Abraham Lincoln, how do you perceive it differently from a historical novel written with a civil war setting?

I love fiction. I also know that things that happen in fiction are sometimes based on real events or real life experience and the authors can exaggerate it because it's fiction and they can change things around by adding to it. Sometimes they even put real people in their stories and no one knows those characters are actually real but their life style in the story may be fictional. Ann M Martin did that with one of her friends, she put her friend and her husband and their kids in the Baby Sitter Club book and they stayed frozen in time in the series while in real life the two daughters got older and headed off to middle school while in the books they were small children. When I read the biography about her, I noticed the things Kristy and her friends did when they babysat were the things Ann did when she baby sat and she put it in the books. So sometimes there is some real life in fiction.

I also enjoy Fanfiction sometimes and have done story writing in the past.

I prefer fiction over non-fiction, but I don't know if I would say I enjoy it.

I get involved in fictional stories because it gives me something to do as its impossible to do nothing at all.

Thank you.

I can't believe how overrated the remake is.