Struggling to understand fiction.

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I don't read much fiction, but, yes, that tends to happen to me sometimes. Especially when I was younger. Reading fiction for assignments was a real pain.

Most fiction I've read I dislike.

Some of it's just not written well, with adequate plot and character development.

Maybe the book just sucks. Have you tried other fiction books?

Or, some of the classic works? Those are much more enjoyable of a read than some of the recent fiction junk I've read.

I prefer non-fiction, in general.

These days I've been writing (and reading) fiction. I'm mainly interested in short stories and flash fiction as I have no time for the longer stuff. A lot of what I've read can be vague, though. The endings are just not (bang!) exciting enough. They're more like whimpers to a conclusion. Very unsatisfying, and like ooo said, there's been very little plot and character development. I get more completeness and satisfaction from reading Aesop's fables than a lot of these modern go nowhere narratives.

Heh. Up until recently I didn't realize I was supposed to work out a characters intentions in advance. I wait until the character does something or their intentions are explained in the book. That is what I like about books over films. By their very nature, books have to explain more about what is going on than films do.

No, it's not exactly an AS trait as it's not actually mentioned in any of the official criteria.

I have AS and have no trouble understanding fiction.

Me too. But I also make plenty of eye contact.

Not every AS person will have every AS trait, and that item on the AQ does correlate with the overall score (AQ has a decent Cronbach's alpha, as seen in this study). So it's an AS trait, and the fact that you and I have AS and don't have that trait doesn't prove otherwise.

There are many traits that are not mentioned in the official criteria. For that matter, the official criteria keeps changing.

As far as understanding fiction is concerned, how do you know you are getting as much out of it as an average NT would? It could be that you are missing quite a lot and aren't aware of it. I read a lot of fiction and up until recently I didn't realize I was missing anything.

This is one of the big problems with these self-report questionnaires. They rely very heavily on self knowledge.

I don't like fiction unless it happens inside a special interest. Example, I read every Henry James novel & short story in the early 90's, but had no use for any of his contemporaries. I like to read but it's almost always non fiction.

Fiction is only fantastic when the characters start to mean something to you.

It's like making friends, except you don't have to talk to them.

I agree. That is one reason why I prefer novels to short stories. Short stories don't give you time to get to really understand the characters, setting and plot.

What about a historical account? Or a factual description of events involving multiple individuals? These aren't fiction but the content is nearly the same ... the main difference being only that one happens to be real and the other is not.

I have always had trouble keeping track of characters in movies, books, and shows. I often will know few if any of the characters - often just the main character, if there is one. The others, I won't know their names and such, or the list of what all they've done, sometimes even whether they've appeared before. But, I still greatly enjoy fiction. I also did greatly with history - I minored in history and it was a special interest.

But with history I am very picky - I cannot enjoy the history channel or history-based movies, because of how inaccurate they are. So if it's history it has to be things that actually happened, supported by evidence. I really love reading and watching primary evidence - documents that came directly from the people at the time, like for example, films from WWII, or diaries or biographies by people from the time - like autobiographies of important people of the time, or even peasants/slaves etc.