Aphantasia – versus, visualising your story with your ‘minds eye’.

[XerXesXu]

I was fascinated by this article (H/T the passivevoice.com):

Aphantasia: Writing Fiction With No ‘Mind’s Eye’ – Writer Unboxed

I’ve often been fascinated by the way posters here, describe their experiences of reading and writing, and wondered whether there was an element of hyperbole involved. I ‘know’, but I don’t ‘see with my mind’s eye’. Nor do I remember dreams. I’m just wondering how intensely others experience visualisation when reading or writing creatively and how important it is to them.

 

[lovecraft68]

I have to have it in my mind's eye to write it. If I don't see the characters as they speak, interact or have sex, then its not there, and I wait. Writing when its literally just words isn't enough for me.

 

[MrPixel]

Same here. Intensely, and very important.

Just yesterday I was talking with my wife about this aspect of my writing, that I know in my mind what my characters look like, their voices, and even what they feel like. I would recognize them on the street should they magically exist. Settings are drawn from real life though highly revised, and are as real in my mind as if I stepped out of the room this morning.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Same here. Intensely, and very important.

Just yesterday I was talking with my wife about this aspect of my writing, that I know in my mind what my characters look like, their voices, and even what they feel like. I would recognize them on the street should they magically exist. Settings are drawn from real life though highly revised, and are as real in my mind as if I stepped out of the room this morning.

My wife said she doesn't like reading my stories, because she's searching in her own mind for an event in our past where I pulled the scene. She has problems relating the characters and scenes I write to people and places we know.

My wife thinks everything I write should be something I already know, and she has problems extrapolating or mix & match the events, characters and locations as I do. But I do see them all in my mind's eye.

 

[NotWise]

I was fascinated by this article (H/T the passivevoice.com):

Aphantasia: Writing Fiction With No ‘Mind’s Eye’ – Writer Unboxed

I’ve often been fascinated by the way posters here, describe their experiences of reading and writing, and wondered whether there was an element of hyperbole involved. I ‘know’, but I don’t ‘see with my mind’s eye’. Nor do I remember dreams. I’m just wondering how intensely others experience visualisation when reading or writing creatively and how important it is to them.

Do you substitute other senses, like the author in the blog?

 

[TheRedChamber]

I don't have aphantasia - I can visual things, but I'm probably far more on the non-visualizing spectrum than MrPixel or Lovecraft. It occured to me that I can't really visualize the characters in the current story I'm writing - there are facts I can say about them, because they are story relevant or cliche for that type of person but I can't visual a whole face of a person I've never seen or even Frankenstein them together from a collection of facial features from other people. It isn't really important for the way i write.

I'm even worse with clothes, I wouldn't be able to remember what my wife was wearing if I only saw her this morning and it doesn't really play any part in my imagination when writing. If it became story-relevant to write a paragraph (or even a longish sentence) about someones clothing, I'd probably have to Google an image and work off it. Thinking about it, since my story is set in the sixties, it's probably a good idea for me to go back and add what everyone is wearing in every scene for period detail.

Ultimately though, even if I can visualize them, after you've ready my story, you're going to visualize them completely differently, so I'm not going to lose too much sleep over it.

And then you get into how to write about characters as they see themselves, and that's a whole other layer.

 

[Thefireflies]

Interesting concept and article. To me writing is day-dreaming but writing it down as I do it. However, I’ve met people who say they don’t dream at all when they sleep, so it’s no surprise some people may not be able to day-dream so easily. I wonder how someone with aphantasia visualises imagery in a story they read, or do they chose dialog heavy stories? And perhaps if they decide to write, do they create dialog heavy stories? But people talking don’t do it without actions, and they’re rarely doing it in an empty room. The article’s author suggested they may hear and smell better than other’s (an interesting conclusion that can’t really be proven), so do they add more sounds and smells to their stories rather than describe a setting? Personally, most of the time I imagine the scene I'm writing with all the senses to varying degrees when writing and try to describe it where I think appropriate. Probably over describe it, really.

 

[SimonDoom]

Thanks for the link to the article. It's fascinating to me, because I cannot imagine it. I picture everything I write; in fact, sometimes I like in bed scripting my story as a movie that I'm watching, and then I commit it to words later when I get out of bed. Visualization is extremely important for me.

I try to incorporate all the senses when I write, and I try to imagine what scenes sound, smell, and feel like, as well as look like.

I recall reading Vladimir Nabokov, who had an intensely developed sense for words and images, say that music meant almost nothing to him. He could not appreciate a concert because the music was just sounds to him and he would focus instead on what the musicians were doing visually on stage. We're all wired differently. I would think it would be a huge challenge to write without the ability to visualize.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm not aphantasic as defined in that article, inability to visualise. When I make a conscious effort, I can visualise things; for instance, in craft projects I can visualise the 3-D shape I'm aiming to make, and then work out how to cut flat shapes that will come together into that form.

But visualisation tends to be a conscious process for me, and not my default way of imagining things or people. Most of my stories are very light on visual description, because it's not something that happens automatically when I imagine events. If I do take the trouble to get into visual description, it's probably because it's important to some other aspect of the story (e.g. mentioning a character's dyed hair, to establish that they're the kind of person who would dye their hair) or because I'm aiming for a specific stylistic effect (e.g. one of my stories is 1001 Nights Pastiche, and heavy visuals seemed appropriate for that).

When I go to a movie after having read the book, it's very rare for me to have that experience of "this is not how I visualised that character", because usually I never did visualise them.

 

[Lifestyle66]

When I come up with a story idea, I create an initial 'ghost' scene in my mind's eye with minimal detail. The details of the image in my mind build as I write more words, the image details usually come first to provide the words I need to describe it. But sometimes, I go back and change the image to better match the words I need.

I posted an image on a forum thread here two months ago, which I created with DAZ3D to potentially use as a book cover. When someone pointed out the image had too much nudity to pass Amazon's restriction, I reimaged it in my mind to clothe the figures and I re-wrote the scene in one of my stories (pending for NEW probably tomorrow.) Maggie now has black panties, Ted is wearing jeans which Maggie has opened, and Jan is lying on the bed with them wearing a short red dress.

The images I create in my mind provide consistency in my stories, since I can write in a new story and revisit those images of the past. I don't need to read an old story to ensure the details are the same. I would find it difficult to write a long story or chapters in a book if I couldn't see the scenes in my mind.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

I might have some form of this? i'm usually less interested in certain visual aspects (colours and forms of things and people), but usually need to know where is what (situational) and who's doing what. So I have in my head a scene of someone caressing someone else's face, and in vivid detail how their thumb passes along the cheekbone, wiping away a tear, but no idea what exact colour of hair or skin the people involved have.

 

[Lifestyle66]

...
Most of my stories are very light on visual description, because it's not something that happens automatically when I imagine events.

Interesting, because I have issues with describing smells, tastes, and other aspects of scenes in my descriptions which I don't automatically find important. The overall visual description of a scene is the most important aspect of anything which jumps out in my mind's eye.

I find map reading intuitive, because I look at the 2-D brown topology lines and they jump out into a 3-D image of the terrain in front of me. I can "see" the contours of the land by looking at the paper map.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I’ve often been fascinated by the way posters here, describe their experiences of reading and writing, and wondered whether there was an element of hyperbole involved. I ‘know’, but I don’t ‘see with my mind’s eye’. Nor do I remember dreams. I’m just wondering how intensely others experience visualisation when reading or writing creatively and how important it is to them.

Brains are wired differently - why would it ever be hyperbole if people describe what their sensory perception is?

I have an intensely visual mind, I dream in vivid colour. On occasion I have lucid dreams where I can, to some small extent, guide them. I regularly have what I call "story dreams", which are long, unravelling dream sequences, not always connected, which can go on for what seems to be a very long time (but probably, in fact, only seconds). I fairly often have flying dreams where I am high above the ground, with rapid changes of viewpoint, moving through the space.

I surround myself with visual content - art books with drawings, paintings; I'm forever borrowing library books on design, small buildings, graphic arts, that kind of thing. The Japanese Zen aesthetic is very high in my awareness, which I suspect is the meditative aspect of the visual sensibility.

Somehow, I also have the ability to translate this visual acuity into words - I've had many people comment how many of my stories have a cinematic, filmic sense to them, the way I capture the run time of visual imagery in my words. Probably also why I do slow burn - I'm describing the world in which my characters move.

What I would love to have is synaesthesia, where sounds translate as colours as well as sounds, but alas, I don't. I love music, and have a very good recall of songs, but that's only ever a listening thing.

If I can't see a scene in my head, I can't write it - but it's natural for me to picture it in my mind's eye. That's how my mind works.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

Talking about colours, I associate numbers with colours, but not vivid colours, they're rather drab colours (like greys and browns - eg 2 is like a tan yellow, 4 is a moss green, 5 is greyish blue, 6 is ochre-like, 0 is more or less white - off-white though).

I'll go back being weird in the corner then.

 

[SamScribble]

... What I would love to have is synaesthesia, where sounds translate as colours as well as sounds, but alas, I don't. I love music, and have a very good recall of songs, but that's only ever a listening thing.

If I can't see a scene in my head, I can't write it - but it's natural for me to picture it in my mind's eye. That's how my mind works.

I seem to have a rather extreme form of synaesthesia - especially when I am a bit tired. If I listen to music with my eyes closed, I 'see' a full-colour, all-singing, all-dancing video to go with it. It's a little weird. But it can also be lots of fun.

And when I am writing fiction, yes, I am usually just writing down what I can 'see' and 'hear'.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

My stories all start with an image in my mind. Then I try to evoke that image and lure some readers into seeing it. They're often derived from real life, maybe a bit of a few real places with some different people in.

I dream very vividly, as well as imagining pictures. I will recognise any location easily - the bloke can wake me up when he's driving, ask where are we, and I will recognise a town I've not been to in 30 years.

I'm not synaesthesic even though I have strong associations between numbers/letters and colours - derived from childhood toys. And I'm very faceblind. Online meetings have been a godsend. My visualisation is more like an impression with random details - the info needed to distinguish people doesn't come through.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I dream and remember those dreams. I visualize my stories before and while writing them. My characters talk to me while writing the stories and tell me when I make them do things they don't want to do. Sometimes I relent and change what I've written. And sometimes I have another character make them do what I want them to. When others make them do things, I'm not the bad girl.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Talking about colours, I associate numbers with colours, but not vivid colours, they're rather drab colours (like greys and browns - eg 2 is like a tan yellow, 4 is a moss green, 5 is greyish blue, 6 is ochre-like, 0 is more or less white - off-white though).

I'll go back being weird in the corner then.

That's not weird - someone else here similarly associates numbers with colours, sees them shimmer over the page or in their mind, when reading them. Different phone numbers, for example, each have their own rainbow of colours, depending on the number sequence.

 

[Smuttyandfun]

I can picture everything I write. I can see the rooms, the art work on the walls, and of course the characters. Half asleep, I'm often bombarded with dialogue playing out in my head, along with their emotions, like the story is almost writing itself and pushing me to keep going, instead of sleeping. Being bleary-eyed and still up at six this morning, trying to finish my latest story, is something I do fairly often.

When I read a book, and the cover doesn't match what I picture the characters to look like, I wonder how that can happen. Since I can see each character, and even hear the way they talk.

Until I'd read this article, I just assumed that everyone could picture things in their mind's eye, especially writers, since I can't imagine writing any other way.

It's a very interesting concept, to learn that our brains are all wired differently.

 

[Duleigh]

I couldn't write fiction with a condition like Aphantasia, for years I wrote technical documents for communications companies and imagining things was a detriment. But writing fiction I NEED to be able to see in my mind what I'm writing about. In a recent story I had to look up the US Naval Observatory because I had to see where my characters were going to stand. I wrote about reusing old silver mines in Ganley Mountain and I had to envision a huge underground complex for my characters to cavort in. Right now I'm editing a story I wrote over a year ago, getting it ready to post in a few weeks. My characters are in an apartment in a small town in Germany and I remember ever door, cabinet, room and window in the apartment I dreamed up for them 13 months ago.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I couldn't write fiction with a condition like Aphantasia, for years I wrote technical documents for communications companies and imagining things was a detriment. But writing fiction I NEED to be able to see in my mind what I'm writing about. In a recent story I had to look up the US Naval Observatory because I had to see where my characters were going to stand. I wrote about reusing old silver mines in Ganley Mountain and I had to envision a huge underground complex for my characters to cavort in. Right now I'm editing a story I wrote over a year ago, getting it ready to post in a few weeks. My characters are in an apartment in a small town in Germany and I remember ever door, cabinet, room and window in the apartment I dreamed up for them 13 months ago.

I have a visual for Sarah's apartment in Red Scarf; it's an important recurring location so I wanted to be sure I was consistent in what I wrote about it. But that's very much the exception, and it's more for readers' sakes than my own.

 

[XerXesXu]

Brains are wired differently - why would it ever be hyperbole if people describe what their sensory perception is?

I have an intensely visual mind, I dream in vivid colour. On occasion I have lucid dreams where I can, to some small extent, guide them. I regularly have what I call "story dreams", which are long, unravelling dream sequences, not always connected, which can go on for what seems to be a very long time (but probably, in fact, only seconds). I fairly often have flying dreams where I am high above the ground, with rapid changes of viewpoint, moving through the space.

I surround myself with visual content - art books with drawings, paintings; I'm forever borrowing library books on design, small buildings, graphic arts, that kind of thing. The Japanese Zen aesthetic is very high in my awareness, which I suspect is the meditative aspect of the visual sensibility.

Somehow, I also have the ability to translate this visual acuity into words - I've had many people comment how many of my stories have a cinematic, filmic sense to them, the way I capture the run time of visual imagery in my words. Probably also why I do slow burn - I'm describing the world in which my characters move.

What I would love to have is synaesthesia, where sounds translate as colours as well as sounds, but alas, I don't. I love music, and have a very good recall of songs, but that's only ever a listening thing.

If I can't see a scene in my head, I can't write it - but it's natural for me to picture it in my mind's eye. That's how my mind works.

Think of it in reverse. Suppose you were Aphantasic and you heard people give these vivid descriptions of their mind's eye - and you know people are given to grand exaggeration - might that not be the simplest explanation - apply Occam's Razor.

On reflection, I have no idea what the main characters in my works look like, hair colour, eyes, height, weight, etc beyond a generic description. I know where they come from and what they do, how they speak and how they act, and that's it. That's all that's necessary for a story.

 

[Voboy]

I always see places, very clearly. They're never very far away. Like, right now? By shifting mental gears VERY minimally, I can see the Alaskan village I'm currently writing about. At any given time, I can see the ship (interior and exterior) I use in my SF series, or the castles I described in my Leinyere piece. They really are quite vivid. And I can add to them readily.

People? I don't see them clearly at all, as a rule. A few of them have traits important enough to describe, like glasses or hairstyles, and I see those. I can see clothing, sometimes. But I almost never visualize faces, and seldom bodies.

I wonder whether I could, if I made the effort. I don't feel the need, honestly.

I remember just two or three dreams from my entire life. I often wake up knowing I've just dreamed, and occasionally I recall what it was about, but it never stays. I've never tried to make them stay, either.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Forgot to put the date on my Hooker story I posted yesterday. It is set in 2006. I'm writing the stories and set them on Robinson Ave. the way it was that year. I haven't been on that street in years and years. It isn't super important in the current story, but it's going to turn into small series based in and around the street. I looked on Google Maps a little bit ago, and the area is even more run-down, with mostly crappy used car lots, closed businesses, trie companies, and mechanic shops. The shitty as hell apartments seem to still be standing, but the parks and many of the buildings are now gone. I'll need to be sure and put the dates on the stories from now on. I bet streetwalkers are still roaming the neighborhood, and the johns are cursing about it. Some things never change. I can still see the place in my mind as was when I lived on the streets. I'd just about run away for the last time by 2007 and never go back there now.

 

[XerXesXu]

So far, so interesting.

I've also wondered why the POV a story is written in, matters to readers. Readers talk about being ‘drawn in’. In the thread on second-person POV, posters said that they didn’t like being told what they thought, etc. When I read, whether a story’s written in first, second, or third-person, the I, You, or He/She is always a third person to me. I only get 'drawn in' to the extent I’d be drawn in by interesting reportage in a newspaper of record.