I have partial facial blindness which makes it hard to picture faces that aren’t super familiar and I can’t create new faces in my head. I end up picturing faces of people I know and celebrities.
It becomes frustrating when I’m reading as the faces morph constantly into my head. I constantly stop to get the faces right. Sydney Sweeney ended up as 2 characters when I read “Bunny” lol. I also get a biased view of the characters this way. It makes it really hard to enjoy reading nowadays. Any suggestions? Different strategies for picturing or reading without picturing?
I also have some facial blindness, I have never pictured faces when I read. I often don’t recognize any celebrities so I can’t pull from their faces. It wasn’t until I was in my late 20’s that I could even picture what the scene looked like in my head (with effort). I imagine I just read similarly to how someone with aphantasia reads. I mostly have a sort of mental checklist for character traits: their names, descriptive words (“curly black hair”, or “tall and lanky”). Even with these I don’t picture the characters, they’re just details. I suppose its less exciting to read when you don’t picture the book like a movie in your head, but it’s not like I can miss something I’ve never experienced.