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The Science & Sorcery of Story: How Fiction Shapes Our Minds and Hearts

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Photo by Wolrider YURTSEVEN—Pexels

I’ve read many stories—in both short and novel-length forms—that have touched me, lifted me up, taken me on memorable treks, and enlightened me.

One that I remember having an instant and lasting impact was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. In particular, it was the scene in Chapter 11 when Meg and the other kids are on planet Ixchel, and they take part in a “conversation,” without speaking a word, with the Aunt Beasts—a name first given to one particular Ixchel creature with whom Meg has bonded.

As a soothsaying, claircognizant, energy-shifting Word Witch, this is not fiction to me. I read A Wrinkle in Time as an adult, to my kids, and remember the profound sensations I had at the time. Reading that scene depicting a meaningful interaction between characters without the use of dialogue validated my lived experience and confirmed my belief in some humans’ abilities to move through the world a little bit different.

Science has only recently started explaining what storytellers have always known— that words can alter reality. Alan Moore, English author of Watchmen and V for Vendetta, put it this way…

“There is some confusion as to what magic actually is. I think this can be cleared up if you look at the very earliest descriptions of magic… Magic in its earliest form is often referred to as ‘the art.’ I believe that this is completely literal.

“I believe that magic is art and that art, whether that’d be writing, music, sculpture or any other form is literally magic.

“Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images to achieve changes in consciousness.

“The very language of magic seems to be talking as much about writing or art as it is about supernatural events.

“A grimoire for example, the book of spells, is simply a fancy way of saying grammar.

“Indeed, to cast a spell, is simply to spell, to manipulate words to change people’s consciousness.

“And I believe that this is why an artist or a writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world that you are likely to see to a shaman.

From The Mindscape of Alan Moore—documentary film created and directed by DeZ Vylenz.

Story Is in Our Blood

As Jonathan Gotschall argues in his book, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, we are built for narrative. It is deep- and hard-wired in us.

Humans have always spent an astonishing amount of their lives in story. From ancient firesides—when cave drawings were the sole means of communication—to daydreaming to TikTok, watching films to reading books, we pass on not just facts, but meaning.

Gotschall points out that evolutionary psychology says stories were our first survival tech. We need stories to survive.

If art is magic, then stories were our earliest spells—protective charms against chaos.

Fiction as a Flight Simulator for the Soul

Reading fiction is like mental/emotional rehearsal. It lets us experience loss, danger, love, betrayal without the bruises.

The work of Psychologist Keith Oatley, author of Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction, and others have shown this to be true. Their work also found that empathy increases through reading fiction because we practice living through characters’ experiences.

Writers craft these simulations through the manipulation of words—a precise kind of spellcasting.

The Moral & Emotional Workout

As Gotschall notes, fiction, like dreaming, lets us safely test our values and beliefs against imagined challenges.

Oatley describes fiction as a kind of mental simulator, where readers can try on “possible selves” and inhabit other minds.

This is the shamanic role—guiding people into altered states where they can emerge with new insight.

The Magic Trick of Fiction

Our brains react to fictional experiences as though they’re real. Heart rates rise, tears fall, joy emerges—from symbols on a page.

A spell works by altering consciousness. Fiction does the same. Every novel, every short story, is magic at work.

Your Role as Writer-Magician

As a writer, the page is your ritual space, the pen your wand. The science validates it, but the soul has always known.

When you write, you are not just telling a story—you are changing someone’s mind, heart, and perhaps their life.

What magic will you make today?

The Lily of the Valley: Fragile Bells, Powerful Stories

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Tiny white bells bowing on a slender green stem… The Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majalis) appears to be the gentlest of flowers. But don’t be fooled. This delicate bloom carries both beauty and danger, along with a history of symbolism and folklore that spans continents.

Return to Happiness
Today, Lily of the Valley is most often tied to the idea of renewal—a return to happiness. Maybe it’s the timing of its blooms. Early spring. Maybe it’s the way its gently bobbing flowers feel like a welcome to spring.

Medicine and Poison
Historically, Lily of the Valley was used for heart conditions, headaches, swelling (edema), and even eye infections, to name just a few. But like many plants of myth and medicine, its healing reputation comes with risk. All parts of the plant are poisonous, containing cardiac glycosides, dangerous if ingested. This tiny, delicate flower is best admired, not consumed.

Stories of Folklore
Across cultures, Lily of the Valley has taken on many magical roles:

  • In Germanic lore, it was linked to the goddess Ostara, symbolizing purity and humility.
  • In Greek myth, the nymph Smilax transformed into the flower to escape Apollo’s relentless pursuit.
  • In Scandinavian tradition, it served as a good luck charm.
  • And in fairy tales, its tiny bells were believed to be ladders and cups for the fair folk.

A Final Thought
The Lily of the Valley is a reminder that the smallest things often carry the deepest weight. It embodies joy, humility, and renewal—but also danger if mishandled. A paradox wrapped in a flower, bowing low, yet brimming with power.

Learn more about my upcoming novel, Miranda’s Garden, where this lovely little flower appears.

Fiction as Dream and Why Stories Feel So Real

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A few points from Chapter 1 of Keith Oatley’s, Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction

Photo by Pixabay

Have you ever noticed how a good novel can feel more vivid than real life? How we slip into the world of the story and, for a time, live there? In his book, Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction, psychologist Keith Oatley calls this fiction as dream. It’s the foundation of how stories move us, and more specifically, our readers.

Key Takeaways from Oatley’s Chapter 1

  1. Fiction as Simulation – Oatley suggests that fiction works like a mental flight simulator, the same way pilots are trained before heading out for their first several real-world flights. In story, the mental flight simulator allows readers to “try out” life experiences, emotions, and choices without real-world consequences. These simulations allow readers to practice empathy for characters—those both like and unlike them—which leads to building understanding and compassion.
  2. Models & World-Building – Writers don’t just tell stories; they create models of human experience. These models—characters, conflicts, settings—are a kind of world-building, whether you’re writing fantasy or literary fiction. Writers create liminal spaces… Thresholds for readers to step across so they can enter and live within them and suspend their disbelief.
  3. The Dream State – When readers fall into a story and embrace the suspension of disbelief, they’re not passively consuming. They’re actively simulating, imagining, and learning, almost as if they were dreaming while awake. This is why, when we edit and approach our stories from a more objective viewpoint (after the subjectivity of the initial brain dump), we want to be aware and cautious not to break the dream.

Reflection / Writer’s Lens
As writers, this is powerful. We’re not just stringing words together; we’re crafting living simulations that allow our readers to practice empathy, explore danger and emotionally difficult situations safely, and inhabit other lives. That’s why details matter. That’s why world-building isn’t just for fantasy writers—it’s for all storytellers.

The next time you’re writing—or reading—notice when the dream takes hold. When the story stops being words on a page and starts being a place you are. That’s fiction doing its deepest work.

I’d love to know: What’s the last book you read that felt like a dream you didn’t want to wake from?

Why Some Writers Choose Fiction

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Photo by Jess Bailey Designs—Pexels

Fiction has always been my first love when it comes to storytelling. Since I was a kid. I didn’t know why back then, but after living as long as I have, and after becoming a writer myself, I’ve figured some things out. I’ve come to see that the pull toward fiction isn’t an accident. It’s a choice many of us make, often without even realizing it. And the reasons are as varied as the stories we tell.

Accessing Universal Truths

Memoir is rooted in the individual. It’s told from one, limited perspective. Fiction, while sometimes inspired by lived experience, can go further, reach deeper into the collective experience of humanity. Because we’re forced to look outside ourselves to make meaning of the human dramas we all live and to consider multiple perspectives. The personal becomes universal through character and story, resonating beyond one life.

Multiplicity of Self

Some writers feel more whole in fiction, less confined to a single voice. Fiction can hold the many selves we contain—past, present, imagined, and mythic. Recognizing threads of ourselves in characters, experiencing the overcoming of difficult situations, allows writers to imagine and/or access parts of themselves they may not have been unaware of.

Freedom of Imagination

Fiction allows us to bend, reshape, and even defy reality. A writer can explore an emotional truth without being tethered to exact events. There’s room to play with the what ifs. What if things had gone differently? What if the story belonged to someone else? What if the protagonist wins rather than loses? The catharsis is undeniable.

Emotional Distance / Safety

If a writer is using personal experience as the seed for a story, it can feel too raw or exposing. Fiction offers a protective layer through which the writer can process and explore without laying themselves bare. It can make deeply personal material repeatable.

Control Over Narrative

In fiction, the writer is not constrained by “what actually happened,” as she in memoir. She isn’t bound to the ethics of representing real people. For some, that sense of authority and control is empowering and healing.

Room for Possibility

Sometimes we write not to record what happened, but to imagine what could have happened. We can rewrite endings, invent alternate selves, or explore paths never taken. Fiction gives us the gift of possibility by imagining the future, or inhabiting alternate selves. Writers can try on other lives, slip into other skins, or create characters who embody choices they didn’t (or couldn’t) make. And sometimes, those they’ve never imagined.

Play & Mystery

Fiction offers discovery by allowing characters to lead the way, grow, and unfold, as if the writer is getting to know a living, breathing human. There’s joy in following threads of imagination, in not knowing exactly where the story will go. The unfolding of discovery is part of what makes the process of writing fiction enjoyable.

Ethical Considerations

Fiction doesn’t directly implicate family, friends, or communities, when writing stories drawn from lived experience. Some writers prefer to fictionalize to avoid betraying confidences, causing harm, and/or getting sued. Fiction can transmute lived dynamics into story without outing real people, creating a lesser possibility for backlash from some readers.

Healing Through Transformation

Fictionalizing painful experiences can transform trauma into art. The act of turning reality into story allows for distance, reframing, and meaning making is cathartic. When we write into our griefs, our fears, our longings, fiction alchemizes them. And the transformation, healing often happens for both writer and reader.

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Are you a fiction writer? I’d love to know… Why do you write fiction?

How to Use the Solar Plexus Chakra for Deep Character Development

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This is the next in a series about how to utilize my Writing Through the Body Method™ which uses the chakra system as a practical tool for uncovering a character’s desires, wounds, and motivations. By exploring these psychological foundations, writers are able to portray their characters’ behaviors, reactions, and responses on the page with greater depth and emotional truth.

For example, the Solar Plexus (third) Chakra rules Personal Power and Agency. The Sacral Chakra relates to how your protagonist takes action to accomplish intentions, goals, and dreams. The Solar Plexus Chakra says I ACT.

By considering how your characters’ take action will give you clues about how to move your story’s trajectory along, or where self-imposed obstacles might show up.

Below is a brief explanation of the Solar Plexus Chakra, its traits and characteristics, and some ways you might integrate its attributes into your character development.

Third Chakra – Solar Plexus Chakra

Location
Directly below the sternum, above the stomach

This does not directly apply to your character but is used for visualization purposes when doing certain exercises within the Writing Through the Body™ method, offered here as an FYI.

Primary strengths
Courage to take risks, ability to deal with crisis, strong self-esteem and strength of character

This is about how your character responds to situations that require action, whether self-imposed or an expectation from an outside source.

Primary fears
Indecisiveness and helplessness, blind rage and destructive anger, lack of focus or purpose in life

This is where you’re able to start seeing your character move, take action, respond to crisis—or not—as well as how their innate internal drive is expressed when they don’t take action.

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Writing exercise

Take some time to sit quietly, and think about the aspects of the Solar Plexus Chakra as they relate to all your characters. 

Write a sketch of a character that may not be materializing as fully as you would like, and answer the questions below as fully and exhaustively as possible. 

Tip: Every time you arrive at a new place of understanding or identify a particular behavior or response in your character, ask “why?” Continuing to ask “why?” is how we get to the deep psychology of our characters. 

Example: Your protagonist has the desire to move across the country, but something is preventing them from doing this. Is it an exterior obstacle, and if so, how do they respond/react to this obstacle. Or is it a self-imposed obstacle—a fear, a connection to a person or people that’s keeping them in place, or some other kind of internal struggle?

Questions to begin your exercise:

• Establish your character’s intention, goal, or dream. Why do they want it?

• Have they already taken steps to realize this intention, goal, or dream? If so, what are they? What’s left to make it happen?

• How will they overcome the obstacle(s) in their way?

Let me know what you discover in the comments.

As always… Sending you mad writing mojo…

Happy writing!

Johnnie
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