There Are No Fictional Stories

August 14, 2025

In partnership with

“After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world” -Philip Pullman

Time for a makeover on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Or maybe not. The pyramid starts with physiological, then safety, followed by love. Philip agrees, where there’s a perceived divergence is that he places stories where Maslow has esteem and self-actualization. But all Philip is really doing is showing a means to the end.

Why do we tell stories? At first glance you could say it’s for entertainment, but Pickleball is entertaining and no matter what level of obsession you’ve reached I’d hardly call it self-actualization or esteem. Stories have been a vessel for religion, history, science, and more broadly life lessons that we can transmit down and across generations. Their value is in our ability to substitute ourself into the plot in place of the protagonist.

You may lack courage today, but when you hear the story of Ernest Shackleton’s expeditions of Antarctica you’ll stiffen up a bit tomorrow. You might see yourself as an outsider or unfit for a particular task but reading about Frodo Baggins saving Middle Earth allows you to see your perceived shortcomings as strengths.

Fiction is defined as something based in imagination or is untrue. To me, the definition excludes just about every book classically placed in its genre. If a “fictional” book helps in the esteem and self-realization of actual people does it not cross the imaginative barrier into reality?

There is no fiction, just stories that can be reflected into our lives.

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