I was in the library reading LOTR (Just finished the Fellowship, my god would I recommend it!), and at the beginning of the session, I was reading the book and the descriptions and prose were so magnificent that I willed myself to try imagining what everything looked like in my mind’s eye. So this raises a question. Do you see the picture while reading? If so, how vividly? And is it automatic?
Just to clear up confusion, I’m not just talking about understanding the text. Or retroactively creating an image. I’m talking about while reading the text, you imagine what’s happening visually. And when something changes in the text, say the grass becoming dimmer, do you imagine that process happening?
Whenever I’m reading descriptions of something i havent seen before, i can only see the rough shapes/colors of it, if i actively do that. No details. That applies to fiction, non-fiction, all reading levels and all languages i understand.
For the purple house, i would know that im looking for a purple house and look for it, but without having an image of some purple house in my mind while thinking about it. Also im actually good at remembering visual concepts I’ve seen, like routes on maps or mindmaps or graphs, things that have some logical connection.
As has been mentioned by someone else, I think that I’m close to an aphantastic experience.