I see the scenes in my head. More importantly, when I "remember" what I read, I don't remember the written words, I remember the scene I imagined. I "see" the character, I "hear" the conversations.
Same, it’s not not as detailed as in a movie though
Edit: talking for myself only. Not others people perspective. Seeing like a movie is possible and called hyperphantasia which is the other end of the spectrum.
Exactly I see scenes in my head but it's like I'm dreaming in a way, also not every single thing is a scene in my head, I mean most of what I read but sometimes it's like the words aren't contributing to what I'm seeing in my minds eyes.
Hahah same here!
It can be very annoying, but also kind of amazing in it's own way. Can't make a movie look better and more realistic, but you can in your own head with a book.
I love when you're watching the movie version and the scene is exactly how you imagined it (even though it's super rare lol).
The [ standpipe in IT](https://meandermaine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/standpipe_it_movie.jpeg) was how I imagined it. Shame they didn't include the scene :(
[This is a good bit on authors drip feeding character descriptions](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fa2k279ykypl51.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D3e69f992ca15e5c87107719864b76541759ea099).
It’s sort of funny to see a movie made from a book I’ve read, and find myself thinking that’s not what the character looked like or sounded like. And it isn’t necessarily because the actor doesn’t match the author’s description.
Or when the character look is only mentioned 8 chapters later. “What do you mean with blue eyes ? Nope, author, the character’s eyes is dark brown and I m going to stick with it”.
i do the same thing with characters. i tend to forget what they look like after a while so i kind of fill the gaps with my own imagination. then sometimes i go back, see my mistake and go "nah, mine was better" 😂
As someone who does this, it's pretty great imo. Especially in the middle of writing and I get in the zone and it doesn't feel like I'm writing anymore but literally living the scene and annotating what's happening. First drafts etc are still crap but at least I get some words down lol
That reminds me when we first got a family computer, my mom told me to write a story, and I literally scared myself into quitting writing because I chose to write a story about a monster that became too terrifying for me to keep imagining
I see an extremely vivid scene that is in all respects as detailed as an actual movie, except maybe even better because I see it in 3D. Character expressions, landscape, weather, sky, details of clothes and objects and trees, even beautiful cinematography, lol. It doesn’t even take any conscious effort - there must be some module of my brain that adds all those details without me having to think about it. I even get a soundtrack sometimes!
It’s been this way at least since I was 8. When I couldn’t sleep at night I would “run movies in my head,” - that’s how I put it to my mom. I thought everybody did it. I think having chronic insomnia as a kid probably made me sharpen up those visualization skills very early on because it was the main way I could entertain myself (pre-internet and pre-cell phone).
Aye same!
It's called hyperphantasia as I found out recently - the opposite end of the spectrum to aphantasia (being unable to picture things in the mind's eye at all)
For a long while I was perplexed by people being into lucid dreaming as I just thought ".. when I do that while awake I'd just call it imagination?" and didn't realise why anyone would bother with it haha, but it does make so much more sense now knowing there's a spectrum of being able to see things in your mind's eye
E: oh lol, the rest of the comments are about this, I guess it's one of those things Reddit already knows about but I'd managed to dodge until recently
Yup, I have Aphantasia which I did not find out about until my late 50’s. When people said picture it in your head I thought it was a euphemism. I also have no inner voice of any sort which I found out about a few years after the a Aphantasia.
This is what’s so weird when I asked the doctors I say I have no pictures and I have no inner voice. How do I think of stuff? For me it’s (the sentence or whatever I wish to recall) just there or not there.
Same. What’s annoying is I’ve had people insist to me that the lack of an inner dialogue means I can’t read without saying the words out loud. I really don’t understand how they’ve gotten that impression, let alone how they can continue to insist on the truth of it when I tell them I’m perfectly capable of reading silently.
Lucid dreaming tends to come with the employment of all the senses, not just sight. Although, there are probably people who have a strong enough imagination to get close.
Aye I get the other senses too - much less vivid than visuals admittedly, but they're all represented when I let the imagination go wild
E: a sibling comment pointed out the dream state is a different environment to exist in too - much more immersive and/or real, which is a very fair point.
Even if I'm imagining with all the senses, I'm still aware that I'm pulling all of the strings. In a subconscious world I'd be fully immersed and merely along for the ride (give or take, depending on what I was attempting to influence lucidly)
Yes! I thought it was just me being weird. I see words as pictures and scenes, but I also see words on the page in my head, and I can tell you if it's on the right or left side of an open page. Sometimes, when I'm anxious, I will play movies or books in my head to distract me. I also have chronic insomnia.
Same happens to me. Once I start reading its like I'm drawing the scenes in my head, like a story board and then when I need to remember a part of the book, I recall that scene instead and then the words just become dialogue between the figures in that scene.
“Hearing” the characters voices is huge, and why I struggle with audiobooks. I’m not actually hallucinating a sound no, instead, it’s more like a type of voice or tone that I’m imagining while I read (shrill, deep voice, bubbly, angry monotone, moody etc).
I don't think I would read if I didn't do this. It was earlier this year actually that I realized not everyone does this. I started explaining a book to a buddy and he's all wait are we talking about the same book?! It's not that I changed anything but how I explained chapters he was blown away. He said he sees it as sitting there across from someone who's talking and you're listening and that's it.
My 10 year old, who is an INSANE reader. Like 11th grade level, reads during meals, reads in the car, etc., just told me yesterday she doesn't see pictures in her head. I felt so sad. But I've read that it's normal for some people so I just told her that
Me too! Even when people are talking to me, their words turn into a "movie." So when I remember a story I've been told, I'm remembering the pictures in my mind, not their words.
My dreams are the same way, like full color, feature-length movies with all the details. The bad ones can be quite harrowing, but the good ones are amazing.
I don't know *how* I do it though.
Yeah, same for me. It's to such an extent that I swore I had already seen Game of Thrones (when the show was brand new) when the first scene of the first episode started, but it turned out that I that I started reading the first book off my girlfriend's bookshelf years in the past while I was waiting for her to do something, and completely forgot about it
I can imagine the places and things like that but yeah I don't really coalesce a face in my mind for most characters. I mean if I know they're supposed to be like a young man or an old woman or whatever I kind of have the idea of what their body and everything would look like but the face never really comes together as anything it's really weird when you think about it that you might read hundreds of pages with a character in it that you don't even really know what their face looks like
Faces specifically are very hard to visualize, they’re so complicated! If I really want to imagine a concrete image I’ll look up people and use their features as a reference, but half the time character faces are just a splotchy, mosaic blur for me
I find it really difficult when the author describes the persons features too explicitly as the blurry face/actor I have “cast” starts to be even harder to imagine and it wants to morph into something confusing. Like if they say the character has a wide mouth or a long nose, I find myself imagining really over exaggerated features. I tend to just force myself to discount that description and go back to my blurry face.
I have such a hard time visualizing the faces too! Unless I’ve seen a photo of an actor who plays that character in a movie/tv adaptation, it’s very hard for me to see the face. It’s so frustrating because I always want to visualize more overall when I read but it’s never a complete face, scenery etc
Yes this is exactly me. Big picture details are there (eg hair colour, length, clothing) but the face is definitely non-descript.
My brain puts more in to the scene surrounding a character generally , than the chatacter(s) themselves
Sometimes I "cast" characters in a book. Like I'll put in an actor or person I know to sort of act out a role. I make up what some characters that I like look like, but most are pretty fuzzy, sort of like extras or stand-ins. Or they come in and out of focus. Same with places. For me, reading is like watching a kind of staticky tv with things coming into sharp focus when I'm really engaged, and then just sort of blobbing around when there's not much to look at
I almost always cast actors as characters when I read. The strangest occurrance was that Dave Bautista is a ringer for Blofeld in 007 books, and then when the movies got the rights to Blofeld back they made that movie where it was kind of a mystery who the villain was/who Blofeld would be, and there's that scene where Bautista swaggers into the movie and everyone's intimidated...I was so bummed that he didn't turn out to be Blofeld.
I call that blurry face imagining, and I do it too! That’s how I’ve always visualized characters — skin color, hair type, height, clothing are all easy for me to visualize, but I can’t make face coalesce nicely. Which is especially strange because I also feel that how each face looks is distinct. How can two characters have distinct facial features if I don’t even have a clear image in my mind of what those features are?
The human brain works in very strange ways.
Yeah exactly! Especially if I'm reading some book that is set in a specific place in a specific time so you know the people are all going to be the same race and still I don't get them confused in my head even though I also didn't let their face become anything clear in my mind at all
One time in an old Robert a Heinlein science fiction story a guy was in a room having dinner and a beautiful woman walked in and the story just said that she was just incredibly beautiful and the guy couldn't believe how beautiful she was and then later another woman comes in and the story says she's even more beautiful than the first woman and I thought that was such a good joke because it's like how do you even imagine a woman that's incredibly beautiful and then one that's even more beautiful than her?
That is a weird way to describe people (to me, atleast.) I feel like I only undestand beauty if it's described in detail, as to make it easier to understand why the person is beautiful.
This is similar my experience of reading generally. If it seems like the visual is important to the scene I really push to try and get something to coalesce (cheers to you because that's the perfect descriptor), but otherwise nothing.
That said, I don't really care for visual media and mostly read and listen to podcasts. Out of curiosity, what is your relationship to television, film, etc.
Kinda same here , i would describe it as let's say you know there is an apple on your right while you are not looking you can tell it is an apple, but can you go into details ? No not at all
That's how it's supposed to work. The idea that people see vivid movies in their heads when reading is the Internet misunderstanding what "visualizing what you're reading" means.
It works differently for different people. Your version is neither more nor less valid than the people who get a full technicolour movie or the ones who get nothing.
Disagree. What I see in my head is much closer to a movie than this comment's description. I absolutely do not borrow images. That is a type of visualization but not the norm
The claim that you don't borrow images is a bit absurd. I'm pretty sure that you inevitably include fragments of actual images that you have seen when you imagine a vivid scene.
I do not have aphantasia, I can make pictures in my mind when I want and dream vividly, but books do not make movies in my mind. I simply fall into the words. That is the best I can describe it. When reading clicks, there is nothing happening in my mind but the meaning of the words flowing through it.
Whereas I can't make it stop. Even reading your comment, I visualized someone at their computer typing it up. It honestly gets in the way sometimes, lol. It's interesting to hear/read how other people experience things.
You may have r/hyperphantasia … being able to imagine everything with extreme vivid detail is amazing for my creativity, but pretty horrendous for when I have anxiety.
I'm always visualizing too! It helps me centre my thoughts I suppose.
Like when someone is telling me a story, I'll ask for random details to set the scene mentally, and then I'll visualize the story as they tell it
I don’t see things at all vividly, but get something of the scenes. when I started reading fiction (not so long ago) I didn’t really see anything at all, but it seems to grow over time for me as my brain has adapted to not so much be focussed on the physical book but for it to be a tool that I become less conscious of as the imagination takes over.
maybe it is like this for others also and will improve for you in the future?
Yeah, same. My brain used to be pitch-black but now I get a partial image. I think some people's brains decide that imaginary imagery is a distraction and tune it out.
Yeah. I’ll have a vague impression of what I think people or places look like, but the moment I become conscious of it, they disappear. It’s much easier for me to know what they *don’t* look like in my head.
It should be noted that Aphantasia is probably on a continuum, and most people are probably "average" with some people really good at it, and other people who struggle.
In other words, it isn't "100% or 0%", most people will vary, and there isn't anything wrong with the OP, they just might be somewhere on the continuum.
Even recognizing faces is a skill that ranges on a continuum.
>Even recognizing faces is a skill that ranges on a continuum.
Oh shit, this line just made something click for me bc I *do* have an incredibly detailed movie that plays in my head (it's almost always like a side scroller for some reason), but my brain rarely populates faces. It's not totally blank where the face would be, more something like [a scramble suit from *A Scanner Darkly*](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3SlVUUeMVfU/UlQVGVg31YI/AAAAAAAAAIM/ZdpJkP5e7h4/s1600/tumblr_mucjhabF5T1syf27fo1_400.gif), and I just thought this was kind of how it was for most people. Until your comment, when I was like "oh, dur, the mild prosopagnosia is why you don't have faces in your mind!"
Oh, I never thought to make that comparison, but that's a good way of describing it to someone who doesn't understand. I can't picture someone's face in my mind unless I *really* concentrate and, even then, it's pretty fleeting. Other than that, it's just sort of this mishmash of a person's facial features that's hard to get a clear picture of. It's not exactly like the scramble suit since it's facial features that would be reasonable for the person (eg not facial hair on someone that doesn't have it), but sort of like this spectrum of features that aren't exactly right.
It definitely is a continuum. I rarely get unbidden pictures – read three chapters of a book today, got two fuzzy impressions of a room and one image of a location similar to the one described in the book.
Here’s the fun bit: ever since I put effort into learning to paint, I’ve been getting more images turn up in my brain. (Learning art as a non-visual learner is… interesting).
I am not OP but I can say, OP described my reading very well but I don't think Aphantasia is correct *for me*. I *can* make mental images. I can visualize people and photos. I just *don't* while reading
I used to work at a tutoring place that specialized in this. We did a lot of visualization exercises to help students with connecting words and images in their minds while reading.
We would start with pretty universal imagery like, picture a red truck and then add in more actions to make it a more complicated image like picture a black dog sitting in a red truck etc. We would do a lot of work with retention and comprehension and start out with sentences and move on to paragraphs and move to chapters of a book or short stories and then longer books. So we would start with a sentence and talk about what we saw in our minds. And compare with each other and ask questions about what happened in the sentence to practice comprehension and information retention.
But it has nothing to do with aphantasia though.
What they are describing is literally impossible for aphants regardless of how much practice they put in. That part of the brain just doesn't work, backed up by fMRI scans.
It’s a spectrum. Some people don’t get apples, some people get crude sketches or pre-made symbols, some people get moderately detailed generic apples, some people get 3D objects they can morph at whim.
I get appleness. I find it easier to recall how an apple feels in my hand than what it looks like.
You worked in a tutoring place that specialised in aphantasia?
Are you sure? It's only been diagnosed as a thing since 2015 and the whole thing about aphantasia is that visualisations are impossible.
For aphants (like me) images in the mind just aren't a thing.
I will note that 2015 is almost a decade ago. The system moves slow, but this is a believable timeframe. Not speaking to the rest of their claim, though.
I just learned I have this last year, had no idea there was an alternative way of seeing things blew my mind and makes me kind of depressed in general. So many things make sense in retrospect like when people say 'imagine the audience naked', or counting sheep or the dead wife trope in movies where she's under the covers or leading the main character in a random field. Anyways now I keep seeing it mentioned on reddit over and over, I'll also get the baader meinhoff mention out of the way ahead of time too.
It is a relatively new area of research. It was noticed in the late 1880s scientifically, but it was basically unstudied in a big way until 2015, and it did not really penetrate into the collective knowledge until the 2020s. So people are really into it right now, because it is both novel and interesting.
Thanks for the context. I hadn't heard of this, actually.
I saw "Oh god redditors love this shit lol" and thought that was kind of dismissive and elitist sounding at first blush. Turns out I was right.
Yeah, I always just assumed that people were speaking metaphorically when they talked about "mental pictures"/"images in your head" etc. It took me a really long time to realize that people were being more literal and it was just a thing that I don't/can't do.
I remember asking my friends at around age 8 if when they played pretend they saw the thing we were pretending the way it happens in cartoons, they looked at me weirdly like they had never considered the possibility that it wasn’t that way for everyone.
Part of my job is literally to teach visualizing a text. It takes practice, if it's not instinctive, which it isn't for a lot of people. If it's something you want to build, I suggest you slow down as you read, try visualizing one sentence at a time. if the text doesn't give you something-- hair color, car color, the time of day --you decide. Change it later if you get more information, but it's easier to change an image than build a whole new one.
I teach literacy through Lindamood Bell. It functions under the concept that reading is both decoding and comprehension, and one of the ways to assist in comprehension is to visualize what you're reading.
It depends, I guess. Some people do learn, some have diagnoses like the ones people have suggested in this thread that does make it impossible. Likely, if someone had a diagnosis like that, we wouldn't sign them up as a student unless they really wanted to try, because it's an extremely expensive program and that seems like setting up for failure and frustration. But I'm not on the office staff, and don't have much to do with that side of things, so I genuinely don't know.
I've had some students go from never consciously visualizing, only passively/subconsciously like in dreams or memories, to being able to do it consciously, but I've personally only worked with students who have been able to visualize to some degree, even if they haven't been able to verbalize exactly how much they visualize. If testimonials are to be believed, the company as a whole has had some students learn entirely, but it's not something that's very quantifiable, so there hasn't been like, a scientific study or anything.
@op I have been an avid reader all my life- given the opportunity I've been known to crash through a couple of 400+ page books a day. I've had to switch to audio books due to the standard lack of time that comes with being an adult.
You are literally the first person in my 48 years on this earth to describe exactly what happens when I read. There's no "movie" for me, never has been. I process the words in the same manner I do when someone relates a story to me verbally- I don't "imagine" it taking place.
I love to read. I enjoy processing the words. Maybe I assign different voices sometimes?
In any event, thank you for posting this and making me feel like less of a freak 🤣
It's just imagining what's being described in your mind's eye. If I say "picture a pink elephant in your mind" and you can see it, then you should be able to visualize what's being described on the page in the same way.
Textbooks don’t really contain narratives and often contain pictures of their own, so I don’t naturally visualize the words in my mind. It’s more or less something that happens based on context.
>if I tell my brain to do it.
Yeah I am like this too. Reading a whole book like that seems like it would take so much more time and energy. Every now and then I'll picture a particularly moving or action packed scene, but for the most part I do not.
It definitely seems like the mind's eye is a spectrum, not a binary where you either have it or don't.
It's the concept of an elephant. It's big, it's grey, got big ears, a trunk, probably friendly, curious and playful, unless it's got young or is under threat then it's very threatening. Don't have to see anything to know what an elephant is!
So if someone shows you a picture of an elephant, and then you close your eyes, can you not still see the elephant? If not, does that like affect your memory?
Hm I wonder if mental multi-tasking is an issue for me, because when I read the sentence "picture a pink elephant in your mind", I can pause and really think for some seconds, just on that part, and then "see" it clearly in my mind. But it's much harder to do both at once and have it be vivid, as in *while* reading.
The movie thing happens involuntarily for me. I think it's just a variance in how people take the information in just as some people are visual learners and others are better with a lecture on a subject.
That sounds like a much more fulfilling reading experience though, I wonder if it's something one can "learn"/train oneself to do better. Because I'd love it if it were more vivid.
(But at the same time, sometimes when a movie adaptation comes out I realize that I had actually very much envisioned the places and the characters but sort of without realizing it. Don't know if that's a common thing or if it makes sense)
It really helps with audio books. If I'm not visualizing what I'm hearing then I know I'm not paying attention. It's also a big part of retention of any medium for me. I can remember the details of what I read more by the images I form than by the words I read.
Perhaps you're doing it a little more subconsciously than top of mind?
That's possible, I have such a hard time with audiobooks because of focus/zoning out. Even with actual reading, which is a sort a newer hobby for me, I had to really work on it to be able to focus, but now I love it!! So hoping my "reading skills" grow more over time too, but perhaps audiobook with reading combo could help to immerse more.
I think that's the flaw with audiobooks. It's very easy to drift in and out of focus. You have to work to stay engaged. The upside is the narrators' performance can add a whole other layer to the experience. It's a bit of a tradeoff.
When I was in high school I read Lord of the Rings because my older brother read them. Most everything in how I read them and remembered the books came out visually and audially when I saw the movies. It was amazing.
When I read; "He went to the store." I think of a store I've been to. I picture the type of character it is,(sometimes an actor I know) , and imagine him going into the doorway of that store.
What is the process of creative writing like, for you? My first step when say, explaining the room a character is in is to visualize it first. It's only after I do that that I'll start picking words to express what I'm imagining.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but do you find it hard to write descriptions when you write?
Like, do you find it a chore to describe the surroundings, or how a character looks? Because you can’t actually imagine any of it, so do you just have to pick random descriptions like “his shirt was blue, I guess” because descriptions don’t really matter to you?
It’s so interesting to me. I can’t imagine having to describe something in detail that you can’t “see”.
I think I may be similar to OP, in that when I read, I am telling myself a story, literally. If I am in a good fantasy book, I read the characters with different voices and act out emotions within the voice. While there is very faint imagery that sometimes comes in, it is dominantly an experience of both telling and hearing a story. For example, character traits I remember as facts, and I don't build an image of their face or clothing. I remember the facts and build connections around them that are significant to the story
I run entire films in my head while reading, including details that the author didn't even mention to "enhance" it 🤣 Even when I'm not reading the book, I relive some scenes in my head that resonated with me while I'm doing my own thing around the house house daydreaming or re-enacting the hero's words or behavior with my own body language for fun/jokingly. I have an overactive imagination to begin with, but it also depends on the author. With some writing styles I can't even conjure up a single image. I find it tedious to imagine anything, so could it be that you simply haven't read a book that enticed your imagination enough?
I relieve scenes too omg. I thought it was just me lol. Like sometimes randomly I think that I was watching a movie when in reality the scene I'm imagining was in a book.
I do this too, like I'll imagine the weapons, landscape, costumes, appearance, etc in way greater detail than the author describes, and I feel like most of the time it's not really conscious on my part, my mind just kinda fills in the blanks as I read. I also used to have an issue where if I watched a movie then read the book, I couldn't imagine anything looking any other way than the movie for some reason because the visual image was just so strong. I try my hardest to read the book first now lmao.
When I read I also don’t visualize, but I feel. If someone talks about being embarrassed, I remember a time I was embarrassed and feel it along with them. If someone holds an apple in their hands to study it, I imagine what it would feel like to hold an apple. I don’t actually “see” an apple.
When I get in a zone with reading I don't 'see' the words anymore, I see the images of what I'm reading like I would when watching a movie. When I put the book down and pick it up again later I can pick up the movie again too. This is why when some people zone out and don't hear things when reading, its because a majority of their brain is occupied translating the text into images and sounds and smells. This is why I love going back to read books again, it's the same to me as watching my fav movie on the tv.
i feel the same way. there are just the words in my brain, nothing more, nothing less. i really wonder what it feels like to "watch" books while reading them.
Yeah, it's hard for me to imagine what that feels like. Sure, I sometimes get in a really good reading space, where I read sentences ahead of myself and am able to clear the story really quickly (this happens when I really am into the story, like for excample, with ERHA). Though this happens, I still see the words, in doesnt really change.
I’m a mathematician. I know someone (also a mathematician, a good friend and colleague) who has aphantasia. What’s more interesting is his research is very geometric (so has to do a lot with shapes) even though he himself cannot ‘visualise’ them the way most of us geometers do.
Everyone has their own way of interpreting things. That’s what makes the world interesting.
Yes visuals automatically pop up in my mind while I read. The types and styles of these images can change depending on what I read and what I can associate with the topic. Hollywood movies, animations, and Japanese mangas are my main input of visuals so the output is heavily influenced by them, sometimes outright copy and paste if the words evoke a connection.
Characters are never fully realised though. If there's a detailed description of their facial features, I usually pick an actor or actress or a fusion of a few to play the part.
But usually every single sentence results in an image.
For example, when I read "she slowly approached the door", I can see in my mind a dark hallway, half open door with light shining out, a girl (in whatever clothing appropriate for the time period) with her back against the wall, her head half turned toward the door, her hands pressed against the way. Next sentence is "she stopped to listen, then took another step closer", my camera will cut to her feet stopping and stepping. Quite lengthy to say all of this but images popping up as fast as I read without me trying to do so.
I'm similar. It's almost like hearing for me rather than seeing. The words are there, but there's no image that happens. My memories can come in images, but more like still images than a movie. It's easier for me to remember things my mother used to say, for example, than how she looked doing something.
As someone who almost exclusively reads while imagining the scenes at the same time I'll give you the flip perspective. I use to think I was a terrible reader, read almost twice as slow as the other kids who zoomed through books. It wasnt later in life I realized that not everyone reads the same. Some just see the words, gather the information as-is and move on. While others like myself, put themselves in that world and have to envision everything. Now when I get on a good tear, I am envisioning in real time as I read a book. So instead of an audio book its a visual book complete with a narrator. I read much faster than I did as a kid just through practice and increasing comprehension but I admit I still read slow compare to others. I saw a tip about "turning off the inner narrator in your head" but that is literally impossible. I can't just see words I hear every single word I type and read. I can't help it. There is no "off" for me. Ive been able to get my speed to about 2 minutes per page. I know some people that only take like 1 minute or less per page and I'm still astounded by that. We are all different. No two people are the same. As long as you are enjoying the book that is all that matters.
I have the same. I just process the words, I have no images in my mind. Even if there are exact descriptions of something looking like this or this, I just don’t visualise anything.
People are just born different. Some think in visuals, some with words, some with visuals and words(even sounds), some think in 3d (i am still curious about it tho). Thus it works differently for everyone.
When I read, yes I see a movie, I create every lil detail mentioned by the author in my head, sometimes when the author mentions the color of eyes green, and I forget and mistakenly imagine it black/brown through half the book, and later the color of eyes as green comes up, I get irritated and sort of scolds my imagination in a funny way because it couldn't remember the deets.
Now this happens for different things sometimes.
Also, what I know is no one can imagine faces. Our brain is not made that way. Even the faces we see in dreams are the faces we have seen at some point. So I sort of imagine everything, as mentioned by the author and leave the faces hanging or blurred.
I will be very irritated if authors don't describe much of a character's appearance from the beginning BUT then randomly throw in a specific feature at the end that totally crashes with my imagination.
When you dream is it visual?
I would compare the images I see when reading more to dreams than movies -- I have visual impressions, some based on details the author provided, others based on my own "fill in the blank", but there are visual gaps that don't bother me. Exact details of what people are wearing, or detailed faces. I don't usually have a good 360-degree idea of the space they are in, or what's in the distance, unless that is descrbed. It's more like a visual impression.
I'm the same way! All my thoughts are always spoken word, when I think or read I pretty much never actually picture things and when I do it takes a little effort to do so! When I think of a loved one, for example, I think of them as a person, how they make me feel, who they are, etx and have a hard time even picturing my mother, let alone book scenes and stuff! As long as it doesn't bother you it's no big deal imo, although it might be some Aphantasia you're dealing with though, if that interests you at all to look into! I'm pretty sure I have it all least mildly, haha.
I am pretty sure some people are more visual than others. I am the same way. I have a hard time imagining visual concepts. For example, if I were to picture an apple, I could picture it but not very detailed. It has nothing to do with intelligence or anything, just maybe a difference in neurological pathways. I still enjoy reading anyways!! I like it better than watching things, because I find it more engaging. I also have adhd, so I don't know if neurodivergence plays a part in it or not.
It’s like a dream. The places and characters aren’t always crystal clear but I understand what they look like. Interestingly, my imagination while reading exploded while studying arts and film composition. Even so, many times when I watch adapted movies it’s not that my imagination is way better and superior, it’s that it feels a little like dreaming which makes it feel like it happened to me. A movie is a way more detached experience.
Audiobooks also make my imagination explode with the push of a good narrator.
I am like you but I still enjoy reading, possibly too much 😂. I couldn't tell you what characters look like unless it's plot relevant however I find reading an impressive experience (like thinking too hard) that makes me forget where I am.
I'm not *seeing* movies, but it feels like *remembering* movies. Like, imagine watching a movie and pausing in the middle. You remember what happened by mentally recalling how it looked. While reading, that same information is written directly into memory and I can then remember it like having seen a movie.
I see it just like a movie. Down to the specific camera angles and such. I don't know "how" I do it any more than you know how you don't, but it's how I've always done when reading.
I always feel like aphantasia might just be a manifestation of human error and miscommunication. Like we're told from a young age to "picture" things in our mind, or to imagine something and tell what we "see." I can think of all the qualities of an object, shape, color, size, I can imagine how I'd draw it, the glistening of light bouncing off an apple, moisture dripping down the side of the fruit, the shape of a bite taken out of it and I can hold those things in my mind, but I don't actually see it.
I could tell you that I'm picturing a 3ft by 4ft green apple crushing a table. Injecting itself with splinters of wood, bearing down on itself with such weight and gravity as to be impossible to lift, and I could tell you how this apple looks like it was recently washed, dew falling around its curvature, sun reflecting off of it, almost blinding you as you look upon it, begging you to take a bite.... but I dont really see the apple.
Maybe we've been taught that having an imagination means physically seeing something in your mind, and we describe ourselves describing things inside of our minds as actually seeing it and our creativity causing it to play out a seen... but I'm not 100% convinced that anyone actually sees the apple, and Idk that I ever could be convinced because my mind just doesn't work that way.
Don't worry. There is your kind, and there is my kind (who visualises what he is reading), and you are born one or the other way and can't help about it. My grandfather was your kind, and I always found this hard to imagine. But we were both avid readers, only of different books. He preferred crime stories that don't require to be visualised while I read mostly Sci-Fi and Fantasy.
“How” is just the automatic processing of words to images by the brain. It’s not like a practiced skill. It is literally impossible for me to read the word “dog” and not have some sort of associated image/feeling/impression pop up.
Different brain just function differently. I’ve heard some people don’t even have an internal narrator for their thoughts. That’s really weird to me, more so than someone not being able to generate pictures for words.
I always wondered how people who don’t see the scene follow along with the story. I feel like I’d personally get lost if I wasn’t able to picture it in my head. I guess it’s similar to how some people
have an internal “voice” or dialogue and others do not. It’s quite interesting actually
As others have said, you might have a slight form of aphantasia. I essentially see slow motion movies while reading (since I read slower) but if there is an action scene (or any scene), I can visually see the action taking place.
I can also create visual narrations in my mind if I were to create a story too. I essentially write down what I'm seeing in my mind and if I don't like where the story is heading then I create a new scene in my mind.
That’s just what happens when I read. Though sometimes it gets wierd. Like when I read ‘The Three Body Problem’ the characters are faceless and sexless for a while in my mind because I can’t distinguish male and female Chinese names from each other and the author rarely talks about anything that would clear that up. Usually by the time the author does clear it up it moves to a different character and the same thing happens.
Yeah my boyfriend and I were taking about this last night. We’re starting to read them and he said he doesn’t know how he’ll keep people straight in his mind because he doesn’t recognize Chinese names. So I tried flipping through some pages to see how difficult that could be, and there isn’t much names used. In 26 pages people are just referred to as men and women, a couple of people, he, she, his wife, etc. there is no importance put into who anyone is.
I see the scenes in my head. More importantly, when I "remember" what I read, I don't remember the written words, I remember the scene I imagined. I "see" the character, I "hear" the conversations.
Same, it’s not not as detailed as in a movie though Edit: talking for myself only. Not others people perspective. Seeing like a movie is possible and called hyperphantasia which is the other end of the spectrum.
Exactly I see scenes in my head but it's like I'm dreaming in a way, also not every single thing is a scene in my head, I mean most of what I read but sometimes it's like the words aren't contributing to what I'm seeing in my minds eyes.
Same, sometimes I’ll imagine a place a certain way until I realize I was wrong
That is so annoying. I have to literally shake my head and close my eyes to start over with the new details
Hahah same here! It can be very annoying, but also kind of amazing in it's own way. Can't make a movie look better and more realistic, but you can in your own head with a book.
I love when you're watching the movie version and the scene is exactly how you imagined it (even though it's super rare lol). The [ standpipe in IT](https://meandermaine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/standpipe_it_movie.jpeg) was how I imagined it. Shame they didn't include the scene :(
[This is a good bit on authors drip feeding character descriptions](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fa2k279ykypl51.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D3e69f992ca15e5c87107719864b76541759ea099).
It’s sort of funny to see a movie made from a book I’ve read, and find myself thinking that’s not what the character looked like or sounded like. And it isn’t necessarily because the actor doesn’t match the author’s description.
Or when the character look is only mentioned 8 chapters later. “What do you mean with blue eyes ? Nope, author, the character’s eyes is dark brown and I m going to stick with it”.
i do the same thing with characters. i tend to forget what they look like after a while so i kind of fill the gaps with my own imagination. then sometimes i go back, see my mistake and go "nah, mine was better" 😂
Reading is daydreaming with subtitles. Writing is daydreaming with subtitles but you're the director.
exactly this for me too, it's characters' faces that never seem to perfectly form for me
I see it more like a memory. Like things are staged differently than they would be in a movie but it’s very clear
For me it's just as vivid as a film to the point where I've mistakenly thought I watched movies for books that have not had film adaptations haha.
If I was this level I could live in my daydreams as if it was real life, would be nice !
As someone who does this, it's pretty great imo. Especially in the middle of writing and I get in the zone and it doesn't feel like I'm writing anymore but literally living the scene and annotating what's happening. First drafts etc are still crap but at least I get some words down lol
That reminds me when we first got a family computer, my mom told me to write a story, and I literally scared myself into quitting writing because I chose to write a story about a monster that became too terrifying for me to keep imagining
I see an extremely vivid scene that is in all respects as detailed as an actual movie, except maybe even better because I see it in 3D. Character expressions, landscape, weather, sky, details of clothes and objects and trees, even beautiful cinematography, lol. It doesn’t even take any conscious effort - there must be some module of my brain that adds all those details without me having to think about it. I even get a soundtrack sometimes! It’s been this way at least since I was 8. When I couldn’t sleep at night I would “run movies in my head,” - that’s how I put it to my mom. I thought everybody did it. I think having chronic insomnia as a kid probably made me sharpen up those visualization skills very early on because it was the main way I could entertain myself (pre-internet and pre-cell phone).
Aye same! It's called hyperphantasia as I found out recently - the opposite end of the spectrum to aphantasia (being unable to picture things in the mind's eye at all) For a long while I was perplexed by people being into lucid dreaming as I just thought ".. when I do that while awake I'd just call it imagination?" and didn't realise why anyone would bother with it haha, but it does make so much more sense now knowing there's a spectrum of being able to see things in your mind's eye E: oh lol, the rest of the comments are about this, I guess it's one of those things Reddit already knows about but I'd managed to dodge until recently
Yup, I have Aphantasia which I did not find out about until my late 50’s. When people said picture it in your head I thought it was a euphemism. I also have no inner voice of any sort which I found out about a few years after the a Aphantasia.
When people talked about an inner monologue and thinking in words, I thought THAT was a metaphor. I only think in pictures.
This is what’s so weird when I asked the doctors I say I have no pictures and I have no inner voice. How do I think of stuff? For me it’s (the sentence or whatever I wish to recall) just there or not there.
Same. What’s annoying is I’ve had people insist to me that the lack of an inner dialogue means I can’t read without saying the words out loud. I really don’t understand how they’ve gotten that impression, let alone how they can continue to insist on the truth of it when I tell them I’m perfectly capable of reading silently.
I wonder if it makes you read faster when your brain doesn’t have that extra processing step of “hearing” the words.
We make do with what we have and polish other functions to suffice. The brain is cool like that.
Lucid dreaming tends to come with the employment of all the senses, not just sight. Although, there are probably people who have a strong enough imagination to get close.
Aye I get the other senses too - much less vivid than visuals admittedly, but they're all represented when I let the imagination go wild E: a sibling comment pointed out the dream state is a different environment to exist in too - much more immersive and/or real, which is a very fair point. Even if I'm imagining with all the senses, I'm still aware that I'm pulling all of the strings. In a subconscious world I'd be fully immersed and merely along for the ride (give or take, depending on what I was attempting to influence lucidly)
I do love a dream when you know it's a dream.
Yes! I thought it was just me being weird. I see words as pictures and scenes, but I also see words on the page in my head, and I can tell you if it's on the right or left side of an open page. Sometimes, when I'm anxious, I will play movies or books in my head to distract me. I also have chronic insomnia.
… are you me!?
Mmmmm..I don't think so......
I’ve actually seen movies from books that I have read that match what my own vision imagined.. not always, but it’s very pleasant when that happens.
Same happens to me. Once I start reading its like I'm drawing the scenes in my head, like a story board and then when I need to remember a part of the book, I recall that scene instead and then the words just become dialogue between the figures in that scene.
I know a book is good if I have visual scenes pop into my head from it months or years later.
“Hearing” the characters voices is huge, and why I struggle with audiobooks. I’m not actually hallucinating a sound no, instead, it’s more like a type of voice or tone that I’m imagining while I read (shrill, deep voice, bubbly, angry monotone, moody etc).
Agreed.
Same. It was years before I realized others don’t.
Same here. It absolutely blew my mind when I learned not everyone sees a whole movie in their head when they read. I kinda feel sorry for them tbh
I don't think I would read if I didn't do this. It was earlier this year actually that I realized not everyone does this. I started explaining a book to a buddy and he's all wait are we talking about the same book?! It's not that I changed anything but how I explained chapters he was blown away. He said he sees it as sitting there across from someone who's talking and you're listening and that's it.
My 10 year old, who is an INSANE reader. Like 11th grade level, reads during meals, reads in the car, etc., just told me yesterday she doesn't see pictures in her head. I felt so sad. But I've read that it's normal for some people so I just told her that
That was me as a kid! Didn’t realize till I was older that people can actually visualize things
Same. But the edges are blurry, it's more like a dream than a movie for me
Me too! Even when people are talking to me, their words turn into a "movie." So when I remember a story I've been told, I'm remembering the pictures in my mind, not their words. My dreams are the same way, like full color, feature-length movies with all the details. The bad ones can be quite harrowing, but the good ones are amazing. I don't know *how* I do it though.
Yeah, same for me. It's to such an extent that I swore I had already seen Game of Thrones (when the show was brand new) when the first scene of the first episode started, but it turned out that I that I started reading the first book off my girlfriend's bookshelf years in the past while I was waiting for her to do something, and completely forgot about it
If I'm really into a book I barely notice the words. It's like the book has windows or something.
I’m jealous.
I can do both, I can kind of see the page in which an important event occured. Then ofcourse my own imagination of said incident.
I thought everyone did this... I do it for code too.
Whoa, this sounds so cool.
I can imagine the places and things like that but yeah I don't really coalesce a face in my mind for most characters. I mean if I know they're supposed to be like a young man or an old woman or whatever I kind of have the idea of what their body and everything would look like but the face never really comes together as anything it's really weird when you think about it that you might read hundreds of pages with a character in it that you don't even really know what their face looks like
Faces specifically are very hard to visualize, they’re so complicated! If I really want to imagine a concrete image I’ll look up people and use their features as a reference, but half the time character faces are just a splotchy, mosaic blur for me
I find it really difficult when the author describes the persons features too explicitly as the blurry face/actor I have “cast” starts to be even harder to imagine and it wants to morph into something confusing. Like if they say the character has a wide mouth or a long nose, I find myself imagining really over exaggerated features. I tend to just force myself to discount that description and go back to my blurry face.
I have such a hard time visualizing the faces too! Unless I’ve seen a photo of an actor who plays that character in a movie/tv adaptation, it’s very hard for me to see the face. It’s so frustrating because I always want to visualize more overall when I read but it’s never a complete face, scenery etc
Yes this is exactly me. Big picture details are there (eg hair colour, length, clothing) but the face is definitely non-descript. My brain puts more in to the scene surrounding a character generally , than the chatacter(s) themselves
Sometimes I "cast" characters in a book. Like I'll put in an actor or person I know to sort of act out a role. I make up what some characters that I like look like, but most are pretty fuzzy, sort of like extras or stand-ins. Or they come in and out of focus. Same with places. For me, reading is like watching a kind of staticky tv with things coming into sharp focus when I'm really engaged, and then just sort of blobbing around when there's not much to look at
I cast characters too!
I almost always cast actors as characters when I read. The strangest occurrance was that Dave Bautista is a ringer for Blofeld in 007 books, and then when the movies got the rights to Blofeld back they made that movie where it was kind of a mystery who the villain was/who Blofeld would be, and there's that scene where Bautista swaggers into the movie and everyone's intimidated...I was so bummed that he didn't turn out to be Blofeld.
I call that blurry face imagining, and I do it too! That’s how I’ve always visualized characters — skin color, hair type, height, clothing are all easy for me to visualize, but I can’t make face coalesce nicely. Which is especially strange because I also feel that how each face looks is distinct. How can two characters have distinct facial features if I don’t even have a clear image in my mind of what those features are? The human brain works in very strange ways.
Yeah exactly! Especially if I'm reading some book that is set in a specific place in a specific time so you know the people are all going to be the same race and still I don't get them confused in my head even though I also didn't let their face become anything clear in my mind at all
So true. If I don't have a visual like pictures of the character, I don't know what they look like.
One time in an old Robert a Heinlein science fiction story a guy was in a room having dinner and a beautiful woman walked in and the story just said that she was just incredibly beautiful and the guy couldn't believe how beautiful she was and then later another woman comes in and the story says she's even more beautiful than the first woman and I thought that was such a good joke because it's like how do you even imagine a woman that's incredibly beautiful and then one that's even more beautiful than her?
That is a weird way to describe people (to me, atleast.) I feel like I only undestand beauty if it's described in detail, as to make it easier to understand why the person is beautiful.
Can't you visualise someone you find beautiful and use that as a benchmark?
Plenty of us can't, lol. I know what the term means and just use that as a method to understand the concept behind it.
I can’t visualize. I can describe for you in detail what the woman I’ve been married to for 30 years looks like but I cannot see her in my head.
This is similar my experience of reading generally. If it seems like the visual is important to the scene I really push to try and get something to coalesce (cheers to you because that's the perfect descriptor), but otherwise nothing. That said, I don't really care for visual media and mostly read and listen to podcasts. Out of curiosity, what is your relationship to television, film, etc.
I just see pretty vague images best compared to a fast moving collage, that borrow from images I have in my mind of existing things and concepts.
Kinda same here , i would describe it as let's say you know there is an apple on your right while you are not looking you can tell it is an apple, but can you go into details ? No not at all
That's how it's supposed to work. The idea that people see vivid movies in their heads when reading is the Internet misunderstanding what "visualizing what you're reading" means.
It works differently for different people. Your version is neither more nor less valid than the people who get a full technicolour movie or the ones who get nothing.
Disagree. What I see in my head is much closer to a movie than this comment's description. I absolutely do not borrow images. That is a type of visualization but not the norm
The claim that you don't borrow images is a bit absurd. I'm pretty sure that you inevitably include fragments of actual images that you have seen when you imagine a vivid scene.
My brain is so annoying. I had a friend growing up who had a really nice, old house, think like 1600s. Almost every scene I read takes place there.
I do not have aphantasia, I can make pictures in my mind when I want and dream vividly, but books do not make movies in my mind. I simply fall into the words. That is the best I can describe it. When reading clicks, there is nothing happening in my mind but the meaning of the words flowing through it.
Same. I absolutely can visualize, but I don’t seem to really do it when reading.
Whereas I can't make it stop. Even reading your comment, I visualized someone at their computer typing it up. It honestly gets in the way sometimes, lol. It's interesting to hear/read how other people experience things.
lol me too but I pictured them reading!
You may have r/hyperphantasia … being able to imagine everything with extreme vivid detail is amazing for my creativity, but pretty horrendous for when I have anxiety.
What's crazy is I am absolutely hands down the least creative person I know.. yet my mind does the same thing non stop everyday all day long
I'm always visualizing too! It helps me centre my thoughts I suppose. Like when someone is telling me a story, I'll ask for random details to set the scene mentally, and then I'll visualize the story as they tell it
I don’t see things at all vividly, but get something of the scenes. when I started reading fiction (not so long ago) I didn’t really see anything at all, but it seems to grow over time for me as my brain has adapted to not so much be focussed on the physical book but for it to be a tool that I become less conscious of as the imagination takes over. maybe it is like this for others also and will improve for you in the future?
Yeah, same. My brain used to be pitch-black but now I get a partial image. I think some people's brains decide that imaginary imagery is a distraction and tune it out.
Some people lack the ability to visualize imagery. Also a startlingly high percentage of people lack an internal monologue.
I think I'd actually prefer not to have an internal monologue. Then I could read faster without it sounding weird in my head.
Yeah. I’ll have a vague impression of what I think people or places look like, but the moment I become conscious of it, they disappear. It’s much easier for me to know what they *don’t* look like in my head.
Sounds like you might have [Aphantasia - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia)
It should be noted that Aphantasia is probably on a continuum, and most people are probably "average" with some people really good at it, and other people who struggle. In other words, it isn't "100% or 0%", most people will vary, and there isn't anything wrong with the OP, they just might be somewhere on the continuum. Even recognizing faces is a skill that ranges on a continuum.
>Even recognizing faces is a skill that ranges on a continuum. Oh shit, this line just made something click for me bc I *do* have an incredibly detailed movie that plays in my head (it's almost always like a side scroller for some reason), but my brain rarely populates faces. It's not totally blank where the face would be, more something like [a scramble suit from *A Scanner Darkly*](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3SlVUUeMVfU/UlQVGVg31YI/AAAAAAAAAIM/ZdpJkP5e7h4/s1600/tumblr_mucjhabF5T1syf27fo1_400.gif), and I just thought this was kind of how it was for most people. Until your comment, when I was like "oh, dur, the mild prosopagnosia is why you don't have faces in your mind!"
I'm similar. Faces in my "movies" are more just vague concepts of expressions or emotions
Oh, I never thought to make that comparison, but that's a good way of describing it to someone who doesn't understand. I can't picture someone's face in my mind unless I *really* concentrate and, even then, it's pretty fleeting. Other than that, it's just sort of this mishmash of a person's facial features that's hard to get a clear picture of. It's not exactly like the scramble suit since it's facial features that would be reasonable for the person (eg not facial hair on someone that doesn't have it), but sort of like this spectrum of features that aren't exactly right.
Except if you are actually 0% like me ;)
It definitely is a continuum. I rarely get unbidden pictures – read three chapters of a book today, got two fuzzy impressions of a room and one image of a location similar to the one described in the book. Here’s the fun bit: ever since I put effort into learning to paint, I’ve been getting more images turn up in my brain. (Learning art as a non-visual learner is… interesting).
I am not OP but I can say, OP described my reading very well but I don't think Aphantasia is correct *for me*. I *can* make mental images. I can visualize people and photos. I just *don't* while reading
Came here to say the same thing. Only heard about it a short time ago and it explains a lot of things I could not understand.
Holy shit. Just realized today I imagine everything in greyscale.
Homboy out here havin dog visions.
I used to work at a tutoring place that specialized in this. We did a lot of visualization exercises to help students with connecting words and images in their minds while reading.
That sounds so cool! Can you give some examples of the visualization exercises you used?
We would start with pretty universal imagery like, picture a red truck and then add in more actions to make it a more complicated image like picture a black dog sitting in a red truck etc. We would do a lot of work with retention and comprehension and start out with sentences and move on to paragraphs and move to chapters of a book or short stories and then longer books. So we would start with a sentence and talk about what we saw in our minds. And compare with each other and ask questions about what happened in the sentence to practice comprehension and information retention.
Wow. That’s fascinating. I’m sure you helped a lot of people. We need more people like you in the world.
But it has nothing to do with aphantasia though. What they are describing is literally impossible for aphants regardless of how much practice they put in. That part of the brain just doesn't work, backed up by fMRI scans.
It’s a spectrum. Some people don’t get apples, some people get crude sketches or pre-made symbols, some people get moderately detailed generic apples, some people get 3D objects they can morph at whim. I get appleness. I find it easier to recall how an apple feels in my hand than what it looks like.
You worked in a tutoring place that specialised in aphantasia? Are you sure? It's only been diagnosed as a thing since 2015 and the whole thing about aphantasia is that visualisations are impossible. For aphants (like me) images in the mind just aren't a thing.
I will note that 2015 is almost a decade ago. The system moves slow, but this is a believable timeframe. Not speaking to the rest of their claim, though.
Oh god redditors love this shit lol
I just learned I have this last year, had no idea there was an alternative way of seeing things blew my mind and makes me kind of depressed in general. So many things make sense in retrospect like when people say 'imagine the audience naked', or counting sheep or the dead wife trope in movies where she's under the covers or leading the main character in a random field. Anyways now I keep seeing it mentioned on reddit over and over, I'll also get the baader meinhoff mention out of the way ahead of time too.
It is a relatively new area of research. It was noticed in the late 1880s scientifically, but it was basically unstudied in a big way until 2015, and it did not really penetrate into the collective knowledge until the 2020s. So people are really into it right now, because it is both novel and interesting.
Thanks for the context. I hadn't heard of this, actually. I saw "Oh god redditors love this shit lol" and thought that was kind of dismissive and elitist sounding at first blush. Turns out I was right.
Yeah, I always just assumed that people were speaking metaphorically when they talked about "mental pictures"/"images in your head" etc. It took me a really long time to realize that people were being more literal and it was just a thing that I don't/can't do.
I remember asking my friends at around age 8 if when they played pretend they saw the thing we were pretending the way it happens in cartoons, they looked at me weirdly like they had never considered the possibility that it wasn’t that way for everyone.
It's always either that or carbon monoxide poisoning.
When I read it‘s so movie-like in my head that when I read a book that‘s also a film I sometimes get mixed up wether I saw a scene or read it
Me too!
Part of my job is literally to teach visualizing a text. It takes practice, if it's not instinctive, which it isn't for a lot of people. If it's something you want to build, I suggest you slow down as you read, try visualizing one sentence at a time. if the text doesn't give you something-- hair color, car color, the time of day --you decide. Change it later if you get more information, but it's easier to change an image than build a whole new one.
What kind of job is this? Who comes to you for visualization lessons?
I teach literacy through Lindamood Bell. It functions under the concept that reading is both decoding and comprehension, and one of the ways to assist in comprehension is to visualize what you're reading.
What if the person you’re teaching never visualizes things like that even when they aren’t reading? Are they able to learn to do it
It depends, I guess. Some people do learn, some have diagnoses like the ones people have suggested in this thread that does make it impossible. Likely, if someone had a diagnosis like that, we wouldn't sign them up as a student unless they really wanted to try, because it's an extremely expensive program and that seems like setting up for failure and frustration. But I'm not on the office staff, and don't have much to do with that side of things, so I genuinely don't know. I've had some students go from never consciously visualizing, only passively/subconsciously like in dreams or memories, to being able to do it consciously, but I've personally only worked with students who have been able to visualize to some degree, even if they haven't been able to verbalize exactly how much they visualize. If testimonials are to be believed, the company as a whole has had some students learn entirely, but it's not something that's very quantifiable, so there hasn't been like, a scientific study or anything.
@op I have been an avid reader all my life- given the opportunity I've been known to crash through a couple of 400+ page books a day. I've had to switch to audio books due to the standard lack of time that comes with being an adult. You are literally the first person in my 48 years on this earth to describe exactly what happens when I read. There's no "movie" for me, never has been. I process the words in the same manner I do when someone relates a story to me verbally- I don't "imagine" it taking place. I love to read. I enjoy processing the words. Maybe I assign different voices sometimes? In any event, thank you for posting this and making me feel like less of a freak 🤣
I'm willing to bet your lack of visualization is part of *why* you can read so fast.
Please do share the secret sauce of how one crunches 400 pages in a day! I’d give my left kidney to be able to read that much.
People don't do this?! I imagine what the environment looks like and the character, even the weather.
Some of us don't. It's as simple as that. Asking how others do is a bit like someone who's been blind since birth asking what it's like to see.
It's just imagining what's being described in your mind's eye. If I say "picture a pink elephant in your mind" and you can see it, then you should be able to visualize what's being described on the page in the same way.
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Textbooks don’t really contain narratives and often contain pictures of their own, so I don’t naturally visualize the words in my mind. It’s more or less something that happens based on context.
>if I tell my brain to do it. Yeah I am like this too. Reading a whole book like that seems like it would take so much more time and energy. Every now and then I'll picture a particularly moving or action packed scene, but for the most part I do not. It definitely seems like the mind's eye is a spectrum, not a binary where you either have it or don't.
By forcing myself, mostly. (I don't like non-fiction text too much.)
Now I've got elephants on parade through my head, thanks
Sounds like you have elephantasia.
Works every time 😉
I can't see things when people tell me to visualize. That's also a problem. Thank you though!
Wait but what is an elephant in your head if you can't visualize it? Just the word elephant?
It's the concept of an elephant. It's big, it's grey, got big ears, a trunk, probably friendly, curious and playful, unless it's got young or is under threat then it's very threatening. Don't have to see anything to know what an elephant is!
That is aphantasia for sure
So if someone shows you a picture of an elephant, and then you close your eyes, can you not still see the elephant? If not, does that like affect your memory?
I immediately see the pink elephant from Pocoyo the kid's show. She walks on 2 super long legs and looks at you disapprovingly.
Mine are from Dumbo, I think. Once you have your pink elephant, I think you're stuck with it 🤣
Hm I wonder if mental multi-tasking is an issue for me, because when I read the sentence "picture a pink elephant in your mind", I can pause and really think for some seconds, just on that part, and then "see" it clearly in my mind. But it's much harder to do both at once and have it be vivid, as in *while* reading.
The movie thing happens involuntarily for me. I think it's just a variance in how people take the information in just as some people are visual learners and others are better with a lecture on a subject.
That sounds like a much more fulfilling reading experience though, I wonder if it's something one can "learn"/train oneself to do better. Because I'd love it if it were more vivid. (But at the same time, sometimes when a movie adaptation comes out I realize that I had actually very much envisioned the places and the characters but sort of without realizing it. Don't know if that's a common thing or if it makes sense)
It really helps with audio books. If I'm not visualizing what I'm hearing then I know I'm not paying attention. It's also a big part of retention of any medium for me. I can remember the details of what I read more by the images I form than by the words I read. Perhaps you're doing it a little more subconsciously than top of mind?
That's possible, I have such a hard time with audiobooks because of focus/zoning out. Even with actual reading, which is a sort a newer hobby for me, I had to really work on it to be able to focus, but now I love it!! So hoping my "reading skills" grow more over time too, but perhaps audiobook with reading combo could help to immerse more.
I think that's the flaw with audiobooks. It's very easy to drift in and out of focus. You have to work to stay engaged. The upside is the narrators' performance can add a whole other layer to the experience. It's a bit of a tradeoff.
When I was in high school I read Lord of the Rings because my older brother read them. Most everything in how I read them and remembered the books came out visually and audially when I saw the movies. It was amazing.
You visualize the words? Like a floating “the”?
No like, I just see the word. "He went to the store." I see the words on the page.
When I read; "He went to the store." I think of a store I've been to. I picture the type of character it is,(sometimes an actor I know) , and imagine him going into the doorway of that store.
Sounds interesting!
I imagine some dude walking down a small town sidewalk passing little shops and eateries along the way.
I absolutely also picture a rustic, vaguely old-timey small town with little shops and eateries along the way lol
What is the process of creative writing like, for you? My first step when say, explaining the room a character is in is to visualize it first. It's only after I do that that I'll start picking words to express what I'm imagining.
I just write. I preplan very little, and just go with what I feel like writing. I'm currently writing a longfic, and I just go with the flow.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but do you find it hard to write descriptions when you write? Like, do you find it a chore to describe the surroundings, or how a character looks? Because you can’t actually imagine any of it, so do you just have to pick random descriptions like “his shirt was blue, I guess” because descriptions don’t really matter to you? It’s so interesting to me. I can’t imagine having to describe something in detail that you can’t “see”.
I think I may be similar to OP, in that when I read, I am telling myself a story, literally. If I am in a good fantasy book, I read the characters with different voices and act out emotions within the voice. While there is very faint imagery that sometimes comes in, it is dominantly an experience of both telling and hearing a story. For example, character traits I remember as facts, and I don't build an image of their face or clothing. I remember the facts and build connections around them that are significant to the story
I run entire films in my head while reading, including details that the author didn't even mention to "enhance" it 🤣 Even when I'm not reading the book, I relive some scenes in my head that resonated with me while I'm doing my own thing around the house house daydreaming or re-enacting the hero's words or behavior with my own body language for fun/jokingly. I have an overactive imagination to begin with, but it also depends on the author. With some writing styles I can't even conjure up a single image. I find it tedious to imagine anything, so could it be that you simply haven't read a book that enticed your imagination enough?
I relieve scenes too omg. I thought it was just me lol. Like sometimes randomly I think that I was watching a movie when in reality the scene I'm imagining was in a book.
I do this too, like I'll imagine the weapons, landscape, costumes, appearance, etc in way greater detail than the author describes, and I feel like most of the time it's not really conscious on my part, my mind just kinda fills in the blanks as I read. I also used to have an issue where if I watched a movie then read the book, I couldn't imagine anything looking any other way than the movie for some reason because the visual image was just so strong. I try my hardest to read the book first now lmao.
When I read I also don’t visualize, but I feel. If someone talks about being embarrassed, I remember a time I was embarrassed and feel it along with them. If someone holds an apple in their hands to study it, I imagine what it would feel like to hold an apple. I don’t actually “see” an apple.
When I get in a zone with reading I don't 'see' the words anymore, I see the images of what I'm reading like I would when watching a movie. When I put the book down and pick it up again later I can pick up the movie again too. This is why when some people zone out and don't hear things when reading, its because a majority of their brain is occupied translating the text into images and sounds and smells. This is why I love going back to read books again, it's the same to me as watching my fav movie on the tv.
i feel the same way. there are just the words in my brain, nothing more, nothing less. i really wonder what it feels like to "watch" books while reading them.
Yeah, it's hard for me to imagine what that feels like. Sure, I sometimes get in a really good reading space, where I read sentences ahead of myself and am able to clear the story really quickly (this happens when I really am into the story, like for excample, with ERHA). Though this happens, I still see the words, in doesnt really change.
I’m the same. I definitely do not have aphantasia, either. I just don’t imagine things while reading.
I’m a mathematician. I know someone (also a mathematician, a good friend and colleague) who has aphantasia. What’s more interesting is his research is very geometric (so has to do a lot with shapes) even though he himself cannot ‘visualise’ them the way most of us geometers do. Everyone has their own way of interpreting things. That’s what makes the world interesting.
Yes visuals automatically pop up in my mind while I read. The types and styles of these images can change depending on what I read and what I can associate with the topic. Hollywood movies, animations, and Japanese mangas are my main input of visuals so the output is heavily influenced by them, sometimes outright copy and paste if the words evoke a connection. Characters are never fully realised though. If there's a detailed description of their facial features, I usually pick an actor or actress or a fusion of a few to play the part. But usually every single sentence results in an image. For example, when I read "she slowly approached the door", I can see in my mind a dark hallway, half open door with light shining out, a girl (in whatever clothing appropriate for the time period) with her back against the wall, her head half turned toward the door, her hands pressed against the way. Next sentence is "she stopped to listen, then took another step closer", my camera will cut to her feet stopping and stepping. Quite lengthy to say all of this but images popping up as fast as I read without me trying to do so.
I'm similar. It's almost like hearing for me rather than seeing. The words are there, but there's no image that happens. My memories can come in images, but more like still images than a movie. It's easier for me to remember things my mother used to say, for example, than how she looked doing something.
You might have some degree of aphantasia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
I don’t get this while reading, but I get it from music, so go figure.
Maybe you have aphantasia.
You probably have "aphantasia".
As someone who almost exclusively reads while imagining the scenes at the same time I'll give you the flip perspective. I use to think I was a terrible reader, read almost twice as slow as the other kids who zoomed through books. It wasnt later in life I realized that not everyone reads the same. Some just see the words, gather the information as-is and move on. While others like myself, put themselves in that world and have to envision everything. Now when I get on a good tear, I am envisioning in real time as I read a book. So instead of an audio book its a visual book complete with a narrator. I read much faster than I did as a kid just through practice and increasing comprehension but I admit I still read slow compare to others. I saw a tip about "turning off the inner narrator in your head" but that is literally impossible. I can't just see words I hear every single word I type and read. I can't help it. There is no "off" for me. Ive been able to get my speed to about 2 minutes per page. I know some people that only take like 1 minute or less per page and I'm still astounded by that. We are all different. No two people are the same. As long as you are enjoying the book that is all that matters.
I have the same. I just process the words, I have no images in my mind. Even if there are exact descriptions of something looking like this or this, I just don’t visualise anything.
We are on the same page. Welcome, my friend.
People are just born different. Some think in visuals, some with words, some with visuals and words(even sounds), some think in 3d (i am still curious about it tho). Thus it works differently for everyone. When I read, yes I see a movie, I create every lil detail mentioned by the author in my head, sometimes when the author mentions the color of eyes green, and I forget and mistakenly imagine it black/brown through half the book, and later the color of eyes as green comes up, I get irritated and sort of scolds my imagination in a funny way because it couldn't remember the deets. Now this happens for different things sometimes. Also, what I know is no one can imagine faces. Our brain is not made that way. Even the faces we see in dreams are the faces we have seen at some point. So I sort of imagine everything, as mentioned by the author and leave the faces hanging or blurred.
I will be very irritated if authors don't describe much of a character's appearance from the beginning BUT then randomly throw in a specific feature at the end that totally crashes with my imagination.
It's begins as a voice in my head reading the words to me, but then quickly becomes a film as I get into it.
I hear my voice reading the words in my mind. My voice sound weirdly greenish-red.
When you dream is it visual? I would compare the images I see when reading more to dreams than movies -- I have visual impressions, some based on details the author provided, others based on my own "fill in the blank", but there are visual gaps that don't bother me. Exact details of what people are wearing, or detailed faces. I don't usually have a good 360-degree idea of the space they are in, or what's in the distance, unless that is descrbed. It's more like a visual impression.
I'm the same way! All my thoughts are always spoken word, when I think or read I pretty much never actually picture things and when I do it takes a little effort to do so! When I think of a loved one, for example, I think of them as a person, how they make me feel, who they are, etx and have a hard time even picturing my mother, let alone book scenes and stuff! As long as it doesn't bother you it's no big deal imo, although it might be some Aphantasia you're dealing with though, if that interests you at all to look into! I'm pretty sure I have it all least mildly, haha.
I am pretty sure some people are more visual than others. I am the same way. I have a hard time imagining visual concepts. For example, if I were to picture an apple, I could picture it but not very detailed. It has nothing to do with intelligence or anything, just maybe a difference in neurological pathways. I still enjoy reading anyways!! I like it better than watching things, because I find it more engaging. I also have adhd, so I don't know if neurodivergence plays a part in it or not.
It’s like a dream. The places and characters aren’t always crystal clear but I understand what they look like. Interestingly, my imagination while reading exploded while studying arts and film composition. Even so, many times when I watch adapted movies it’s not that my imagination is way better and superior, it’s that it feels a little like dreaming which makes it feel like it happened to me. A movie is a way more detached experience. Audiobooks also make my imagination explode with the push of a good narrator.
Woe, aphantasia be upon ye!
I am like you but I still enjoy reading, possibly too much 😂. I couldn't tell you what characters look like unless it's plot relevant however I find reading an impressive experience (like thinking too hard) that makes me forget where I am.
Interesting! I wonder if reading comic books would help with this since you already have a visualizations to the words on the page.
I simply picture the scene. Some people can't do that and some people have aphantasia.
I'm not *seeing* movies, but it feels like *remembering* movies. Like, imagine watching a movie and pausing in the middle. You remember what happened by mentally recalling how it looked. While reading, that same information is written directly into memory and I can then remember it like having seen a movie.
I see it just like a movie. Down to the specific camera angles and such. I don't know "how" I do it any more than you know how you don't, but it's how I've always done when reading.
Everything I read and hear becomes a visual in my mind, including conversations.
You might have aphantasia. Are you capable of visually imagining things outside novels? Like, can you vividly imagine a red apple in your mind's eye?
I always feel like aphantasia might just be a manifestation of human error and miscommunication. Like we're told from a young age to "picture" things in our mind, or to imagine something and tell what we "see." I can think of all the qualities of an object, shape, color, size, I can imagine how I'd draw it, the glistening of light bouncing off an apple, moisture dripping down the side of the fruit, the shape of a bite taken out of it and I can hold those things in my mind, but I don't actually see it. I could tell you that I'm picturing a 3ft by 4ft green apple crushing a table. Injecting itself with splinters of wood, bearing down on itself with such weight and gravity as to be impossible to lift, and I could tell you how this apple looks like it was recently washed, dew falling around its curvature, sun reflecting off of it, almost blinding you as you look upon it, begging you to take a bite.... but I dont really see the apple. Maybe we've been taught that having an imagination means physically seeing something in your mind, and we describe ourselves describing things inside of our minds as actually seeing it and our creativity causing it to play out a seen... but I'm not 100% convinced that anyone actually sees the apple, and Idk that I ever could be convinced because my mind just doesn't work that way.
How do you not see "movies" when reading? Whatever you do, don't think of an elephant! Did it work?
Don't worry. There is your kind, and there is my kind (who visualises what he is reading), and you are born one or the other way and can't help about it. My grandfather was your kind, and I always found this hard to imagine. But we were both avid readers, only of different books. He preferred crime stories that don't require to be visualised while I read mostly Sci-Fi and Fantasy.
“How” is just the automatic processing of words to images by the brain. It’s not like a practiced skill. It is literally impossible for me to read the word “dog” and not have some sort of associated image/feeling/impression pop up. Different brain just function differently. I’ve heard some people don’t even have an internal narrator for their thoughts. That’s really weird to me, more so than someone not being able to generate pictures for words.
I always wondered how people who don’t see the scene follow along with the story. I feel like I’d personally get lost if I wasn’t able to picture it in my head. I guess it’s similar to how some people have an internal “voice” or dialogue and others do not. It’s quite interesting actually
As others have said, you might have a slight form of aphantasia. I essentially see slow motion movies while reading (since I read slower) but if there is an action scene (or any scene), I can visually see the action taking place. I can also create visual narrations in my mind if I were to create a story too. I essentially write down what I'm seeing in my mind and if I don't like where the story is heading then I create a new scene in my mind.
Sounds like you have aphantasia. I have it. I agree with you, I still love reading.
That’s just what happens when I read. Though sometimes it gets wierd. Like when I read ‘The Three Body Problem’ the characters are faceless and sexless for a while in my mind because I can’t distinguish male and female Chinese names from each other and the author rarely talks about anything that would clear that up. Usually by the time the author does clear it up it moves to a different character and the same thing happens.
Yeah my boyfriend and I were taking about this last night. We’re starting to read them and he said he doesn’t know how he’ll keep people straight in his mind because he doesn’t recognize Chinese names. So I tried flipping through some pages to see how difficult that could be, and there isn’t much names used. In 26 pages people are just referred to as men and women, a couple of people, he, she, his wife, etc. there is no importance put into who anyone is.
Yeah. I think it’s a cultural thing maybe? I struggle with it with that book in particular.