Writing comics isn't exactly an earth-shatteringly important thing to do for a living, but getting paid to make stuff up is a lot of fun and it pays the bills. Still, it's got me wondering whether fiction is actually important to us in any real way.

I mean, do stories really matter at all, in the great scheme of things?

As far as we know, we've been making stuff up and telling it to each other since we were sitting around the fire in caves. Stories seem to be vital to us in some indefinable way - although even I'd be reluctant to suggest they rank up there with the big important stuff like food, love, sex, shelter, or morality. So what is it about stories that we can't do without? What are they actually good for, beyond mere entertainment and diversion?

I've developed a little theory. It might just be a load of pretentious old bollocks - in which case you're welcome to split, and thanks for coming - or maybe there's something buried in here that's worthy of further consideration. But if I start bandying around words like "meme" or "trope", you have my permission to whack me over the back of the head with a frying pan. Anyway, my theory stems from a simple observation:

'A truth learned from personal experience is somehow absorbed more effectively.' You can't just tell people things.

I should probably elaborate.

It seems to me that the human brain - especially mine - has a fairly limited capacity for absorbing and retaining raw data, dry facts which are simply told to us. I forgot the vast majority of what I was taught in school within a few years of leaving, and nowadays I'm hard-pressed to remember my bloody mobile phone number.

To make matters worse, we have an amazing capacity to ignore or deny those facts that threaten to impinge upon our personal comfort zone. We may know intellectually that smoking, booze and junk food are bad for us, but we indulge in them anyway, because we convince ourselves that somehow we're immune. The power of denial is like a Teflon shield - uncomfortable truths just bounce off it. People do what they feel, not what they think.

But a truth that is learned from personal experience is somehow absorbed more effectively, and at a much deeper level - making it more likely to be retained and acted upon. The fact that smoking may be bad for you is easily ignored, but the experience of having your rib cage split open and a lung removed probably has a way of driving it home.

Experience gets past the Teflon shield that guards the intellectual, "rational" mind, and becomes assimilated in the intuitive, emotional part of us. Maybe it's a left-brain/right-brain thing, I dunno. But as Morpheus says, "There's a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path." We cannot simply be told the truth - we must experience it for ourselves.

'Stories seem to be vital to us in some indefinable way.' This is where the power of story comes into the equation. We all know what it's like to "lose ourselves" in a good book, comic or movie - we see what the protagonist sees, feel what he feels, learn what he learns. When a story really works, it's as if we experience these events for ourselves. Because story mimics experience; the truth it contains becomes assimilated into us at an emotional, intuitive level. We learn differently, and more effectively.

Think about it - which is more resonant, simply being told that courage and determination can conquer your darkest fears... or watching JAWS?

I think this is what stories are actually for, beyond mere entertainment. From ancient myth to the folk tale to the modern novel, story has been used as a virus-like carrier, bypassing our intellectual and "rational" defence mechanisms to deposit its payload of wisdom and insight directly into the subconscious - which is, after all, the only place it can really do any good. Our "rational" minds are often too closed to admit the specific, but stories appeal to the universal.

Maybe this explains why just about every religious and spiritual belief system, in every culture throughout history, seems to have passed on its knowledge and wisdom in the form of stories.

Why didn't these religious forefathers just tell people what to do, what to think, how to behave? Because you can't just tell people things. Tell us straight, and we forget it or ignore it. "Thou shalt not kill" is a pretty unequivocal commandment, but Christians have been happily rationalising their way around that one for some time now. Wrap it up in a good story, and maybe the message will sink in. Maybe...

'Story is used as a virus-like carrier to deposit its wisdom into the subconscious.' The Old Testament didn't have a lone protagonist, and the Ten Commandments didn't work out for everybody because you can't just tell people things. So they came up with a whole new story. The New Testament had everything - an empathetic protagonist, born of humble origins but with a godlike destiny to fulfil; the land beset by an evil empire; temptation, betrayal, miracles. No wonder Christianity took off - it was a cracking yarn.

We each experience the world subjectively, and it takes an effort of will to see things from somebody else's point of view. That's why it's so important for storytellers to create protagonists we can easily identify with. If you can't empathise with the hero, you can't "lose" yourself in his (or her) point of view. It'd be like you're just being told something, rather than experiencing it for yourself.

This does rather require the story to actually have something to say in the first place. But while it's easy to sneer at lowbrow stories with trite "morals", let's remember that the most important things in life are often simple and obvious. All story is metaphor, and even the sappiest Disney movie can say something honest and true. Throw in some kung-fu and exploding helicopters, and you're onto a winner...

Of course, it all falls apart when some didactic writer feels the need to bang you over the head with his "message", telling you what to think instead of causing you to feel it. Nobody likes being preached to, and the moment your subtext starts drawing attention to itself, the spell is broken.

As John Wagner so succinctly put it, "Remember, we're supposed to be entertainers..."

Andy Diggle is a former editor of 2000AD and the writer of Vertigo's HELLBLAZER SPECIAL: LADY CONSTANTINE.

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