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?
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It just happens automatically. Usually the images are warped versions of places I’ve actually been to or places I’ve seen videos/images of. My mind just reaches for the closest it’s ever seen of what is being described and they are changed to include specific details the author mentions. When it comes to characters, I also either imagine someone I’ve seen who closely matches the character description or I barely imagine them at all and just insert some hazy image of a person with the attributes the author does out of their way to point out. I almost never have a super vivid image of all of a character’s facial features.
No. I have aphantasia (don’t see images in my brain) and anaduralia (don’t have an internal voice).
I want to make it clear I still enjoy reading, but I don’t see/hear anything. I do rely on fan art or movies for images of characters and that’s the best I got.
I hope other people realise this is a type of normal as I didn’t until I was in my 30s. I thought ‘picture x’ was just a saying.
Yeah I don’t think it affects enjoyment of reading in any way, we just experience reading and life a bit differently is all.
Also visualization doesn’t equal imagination, so descriptive scenes can be just as impactful. It’s still just a matter of personal taste if you like descriptive writing.
Having lived without visualization I can’t say I particularly want to be able to visualize, maybe for an hour.
Exactly. Would be nice to experience it, but I don’t feel like I’m missing out.
Hello fellow un-picturererer!
I think my visualizations used to be better as a kid but I still do it automatically. If the language is harder then the visualizations are worse because I’m more focused on understanding what is going on but they’re still there. If it’s easy then it’s basically like a movie.
Only if I need to understand something like a room layout to follow what’s happening. Otherwise, I don’t visualize and don’t feel the need to.
I don’t have to make the effort, it just happens.
I need to focus on visualization to really get a good image. Other wise my automatic response is kind of like watching a movie at 2x speed with the sound off and my voice doing all of the dialogue and sound effects.
It depends. Sometimes I do when it’s a good description
Even if I don’t put an effort it happens on it’s own, but sometimes I don’t like the version my brain made so I need do put in some effort to alter it. Mostly, and this is supper random, with interior design. Might be because I studied architecture for a bit, but I need to come up with a whole new apartment layout every time I read a book that largely takes place in a closed space.
Sometimes I make an effort versus whatever pops in my head! If I notice my visualizations are underwhelming compared to the description then I put in an effort. If I’ve seen a movie adaptation of the book I also put effort into NOT simply imagining the movie lol.
I make a project of doing it on rereads. This’ll sound corny but, for an example, when I reread Harry Potter I put energy into imagining it as an animation of the Mary Grandpre illustrations. It’s so charming.
No, I don’t do this. Sometimes an image pops up, but mostly not. I accept when people say reading a book is just like watching a movie, but I don’t understand it. For me, that is not true at all. Never has been, and I’ve been reading for 50 years.
I used to but if writing isn’t that descriptive then no.
Am mostly an aphant. Lotr was difficult, and might i say (gasp) a bit boring.
Do you make an effort to visualize when reading?
Absolutely no effort necessary. It happens automatically if I am actually reading text.
If it is an audiobook, it takes a little longer as I have to wait for the narrator’s voice to become “invisible” .
I guess I don’t really understand the question. Isn’t visualizing what you’re reading kind of the default thing to do when reading fiction?
Not everyone can.
Well, given some of the answers I’ve received, my guess would be “Depends”. I’ll try illustrating with an example.
When in Moby Dick, they talk about the pungent smell of codfish or saltwater, do you imagine the smell of codfish, or Ishmael and Queequeg clamming up their nostrils? Or do you just understand that the cook was a bad chef? And, more importantly, do you do that automatically? For everything you read?
Like when you read the phrase “Toe the line”, do you imagine runners inching their toes forward to get the most minimal of advantages? Or you do understand it as just a figure of speech, meant to denote anticipation of something?
Like when you read the phrase “Toe the line”, do you imagine runners inching their toes forward to get the most minimal of advantages? Or you do understand it as just a figure of speech, meant to denote anticipation of something?
Depends on the context and how it’s being used. If it’s used as a figure of speech, I would not visualize the literal act of someone toeing a line. If the author used that particular phrase to describe the physical actions of a runner getting ready to go, then I think I would visualize that.
I’m hesitant to expand on the Moby Dick example without seeing the full text of that scene.
Some readers indeed do this automatically (and can’t comprehend without it). Some readers claim to experience no visual imagery when they read. Some critics (I’m thinking of William Gass) insist that readers not create visual imagery, so they can stay firmly within the verbal structure assembled by the author. If you feel like visual imagery helps you comprehend or enjoy a work, or increases your neurological contact with it, great. But know that it’s also perfectly all right to imagine in less vivid or more abstract ways; a lot of readers imagine spaces or settings, but not specific details. Look up “reader response criticism” if you want some empirical studies of how different readers read, cognitively and phenomenologically.
I don’t claim to experience no visual imagery. It’s a fact, and it is some people’s reality.
I wonder if aphantasia exists on a spectrum. The only visualizations I can do are of scenery- landscapes/buildings/streets. And it’s more like I can feel myself in the space and sense the dimensions of things.
If you ask me to picture an apple, I see: either whatever I’m looking at or the weird color of one’s eyelids.
I can picture the grounds of Hailsham from Never Let Me Go, for example. Kinda. If I try to bring it into focus, it goes away entirely.
It feels like I’m lying if I say I have 0 visualizations while reading, but I have no concept of a character’s looks, ever.
Other things I can see a bit: the Battle School corridors from Ender’s Game, the weird blocked-off alley in The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, the grounds and gardens of Misselthwaite Manor in The Secret Garden.