What do you "see" when you read a book

[Andrea]

Yes! So I'm not the only one that doesn't visualize people when I read a book. Like Emily writes in this TOR.com article I also just "see" fuzzy blobs with maybe one or two features like hair or glasses. If someone asks me what actor I would pick to play the character in a movie, I'd have no idea since I never really figured out what that person looked like. In fact the actor often fills in that gap for me.

In fact my own reading experience is nearly perfectly described in that article, wonder what the rest of you "see" when you read?

[Rachel]

I've always wondered this! I'm pretty visual but I tend to visualize places and surroundings better then I do people. With people I tend to kind of see a watered down version of an actor or somebody I know. But I guess it also depends on what the author describes too though. For example if somebody is described as having a scar on their face I tend to just see a walking scar with blonde hair or whatever lol but I can picture the surroundings all day. Interesting article btw!

[Jim]

Rachel wrote: "I've always wondered this! I'm pretty visual but I tend to visualize places and surroundings better then I do people. With people I tend to kind of see a watered down version of an actor or somebod..."

Ditto. With people, I tend to get more impressions & maybe a couple of features. Animals, trees, landscapes, & such I usually fill in pretty well. I turn green wood that's usually from pruning or storms, so I tend to look at various species, where they are, how they grow in different conditions, & such.

[Randy]

On a group read, we had a zombie story that had a main character whose gender was never revealed. I immediately pictured a female, while some of the other readers pictured a male.

Jordan's Brains: A Zombie Evolution

Jordan is a kindhearted zombie expert who voluntarily lives at a psychiatric hospital...

[Rachel]

Yeah! I can place how many people are supposed to be around and background people and such but I have the hardest time with faces.. I have no idea why lol everything else I can come up with except for that. Clothing, idle movement and so on. Oh wow, that's pretty neat hobby! Cool it works out for you while reading as well.

[Rachel]

Randy wrote: "On a group read, we had a zombie story that had a main character whose gender was never revealed. I immediately pictured a female, while some of the other readers pictured a male.

[bookcover:Jord..."

Im adding that to my TBR shelf. Im curious to see what I would see what I would picture.

[Allison]

I tend to pull heavily for characters based on the cover art. If it's not there, I'm with the rest of you--they're mostly whatever feature gets commented upon and I slowly fill in the rest as I learn more. But landscapes, action sequences and all that are much easier to visualize.

[Rachel]

Oh yeah, the characters on the cover have helped me out alot. I always thought it was eerie how Emma Watson looked like Hermione on the covers lol

[Jim]

Cover art can help, but only if I like the artist's rendition. As much as I love Frazetta's art, especially his REH covers such as the Lancer editions of the Conan books, I never saw KEW's Kane the way he painted him. His shoulders were too narrow. The Hildebrandt brothers certainly gave me my Middle Earth characters, though.

[Rachel]

Oh man. I hear you on that! I have an 80s copy of The Two Towers....its so awful it's awesome. But I went with how the characters looked in my imagination instead... even though that cover was hard to top haha!

[Luffy Sempai]

I don't visualize much. I just go with the flow of the story and let the pacing determine what comes across my mind.

[Cat]

I've always found this fascinating (I studied the visual systems of the brain and how they create vision for my honours thesis, specifically faces). There is a technical term for those who are completely unable to visualise whatsoever - aphantasia. But of course it exists on a spectrum.

Personally, I don't really visualise anything when I read at all (or any other time for that matter). I mean I can, but its hard and quite frankly slows down my reading. Visualising people is definitely hardest, and if I do consider what they look like, they tend to be based on personality traits rather than actual descriptions... I suspect I use people I know as a basis for characters, because I find it easier to visualise mental images from memory rather than create new ones. So I always get a surprise when I watch movies. I am then also unable to see the character in any other way ever again. Similar with the landscapes - I can do it, but don't tend to, it's a lot easier though because I know what a desert or a lake or whatever looks like. The only time I tend to do it is when authors decide for characters to do some complex activities or battle in a complex landscape, and that's just because I'm trying to figure out where people are.

I tend to race through books because I need to know what happens next. I have found that I can read particular books faster than I can watch the movie eg Harry Potter books. And quite frankly, not visualising it is just so much quicker.

Lots of people find it very unusual because it's far more common to visualise something, and generally in detail. Well in my experience of people that I've personally asked. My husband has a very vivid visual imagination and apparently reading a book has the same level of visualisation as watching a movie. My aunt was very worried that my lack of visualisation meant that I am unable to connect with characters which I found bizarre. I definitely connect with characters! I get heavily invested in their emotions/stories/plots!

I only discovered that people don't read like me when one of my teacher housemates came home and was talking about this little girl who couldn't do the visualisation task that the class was doing and had been really upset about it. And of course my response was 'Well, why would you do that? That's so slow. I don't visualise'. I ended up writing the little girl a note reassuring her that not being able to visualise while reading was perfectly ok/she isn't alone.

I do have a friend who is unable to visualise at all. Or, interestingly enough, play music back in her head - she is literally unable to hear music in her head and is unable to understand the concept of an earworm or a song that gets stuck in your head.

[Andrea]

Cat wrote: "I tend to race through books because I need to know what happens next. I have found that I can read particular books faster than I can watch the movie eg Harry Potter books. And quite frankly, not visualising it is just so much quicker."

You must be one of those speed readers like one of my coworkers, who could read through an average sized paperback while waiting for a doctor's appointment. Mind you, we can have really long waits here (a movie length wait in fact), but I'm still impressed.

She also pointed out it had it's advantages, her sister was a slow reader, absorbing everything so noticed that this one character only showered whenever there was a thunderstorm. Obviously unintentional on the author's part but it annoyed the sister, while my coworker never noticed and thus could enjoy the rest :)

Cat wrote: "I definitely connect with characters! I get heavily invested in their emotions/stories/plots!."

Well, I can confirm that visualization doesn't have anything to do with empathy. I mean that implies that all blind people can't connect with anyone since they can't visualize anything! I mean it could be hard for them to visualize some landscapes, but they would still have the sense of space, the kinds of winds that would be blowing, the background noises. A desert would feel very different from a forest.

Cat wrote: "I do have a friend who is unable to visualise at all. Or, interestingly enough, play music back in her head - she is literally unable to hear music in her head and is unable to understand the concept of an earworm or a song that gets stuck in your head."

I'm incapable of hearing lyrics in songs, so I like/dislike them based on what they sound like, not what they say (which when I do find out the lyrics can be awkward). But I can play the music itself back in my head and definitely get earworms. Most of the songs whose lyrics I actually pay attention to are from musicals (since that's part of the story itself) and Disney movies :) Probably because the lyrics in those songs are particularly intended to be clearly heard.

[Allison]

Cat, that's fascinating! And how wonderful you could reassure the little girl.

I have had moments in books where I'd have to stop and re-configure my mental image of someone because I had, for whatever reason, given them a trait in my mind that was explicitly contradicted by the author, which always annoys me, as if the things my brain does are someone else's fault!*


* It's totally their fault.

[NekroRider]

As some have mentioned I tend to more intuitively visualise a setting/surroundings that are being described than people's faces. But I would say that my brain kind of naturally visualizes scenes and setting as I read them, not as smoothly as a movie or whatnot but more kind of popping through my mind as I read. For example, I'm currently reading Fool's Fate and was just reading a scene where Fitz takes his breakfast of bacon, milk and bread out to the Women's Garden. The scene is describing him enjoying the beginning of a spring day and as mundane as it may sound for some, for me it was a highly visual scene that just felt very warm, cozy and in a sense nostalgic. I could see and even feel myself as Fitz enjoying the sunshine of a spring morning, quiet morning air except for birds calling etc and easily put myself there. Very peaceful scene that made me yearn to be camping or at the family farm.

That said I definitely have strong ideas in my head of what certain characters look like, just not particularly detailed facial characteristics. Ex. Am a big Saxon Stories fan and as much as I didn't have Uhtred's detailed facial features in my mind, I had a strong enough idea of what I considered him to look like that I was at first thrown off and a bit annoyed by the actor chosen to play him when The Last Kingdom first aired. Same with Finan. I've grown more accustomed to the actors now, but in my mind, book Uhtred and Finan still look very different and are almost like seperate characters to tv show Uhtred and Finan.

[Michael]

I guess I generally "see" characters as "fuzzy blobs" too, unless something happens to move them into sharper focus such as the author describing a certain expression on their faces.

I've heard some people say they visualize characters as movie actors the think look the way the character should. I guess I have been influenced by some movies. For example when I reread LOTR the characters now always look like the actors from the movies! I notice that does not happen with The Hobbit, though...

[Michael]

I used to visualize characters more when I was younger, now I tend to just see vague images in my head unless I really spend the time filling it in mentally. I'm wondering, though, if it's a function of the writing trends from when I was a kid in the 80's, where there was more description of characters and surroundings in books, vs. today where such details are slimmed down or glossed over (at least for what I've been reading).

[Carrie]

It all depends on the feel of the book for me on how I visualize it. Sometimes it can be very realistic but most times it's plays like an animated feature. From cartoony to Studio Ghibli.

[Gary]

I don't visualize specific people when I read. I just think about the character's name. I thought it was interesting that John Scalzi didn't specify the gender of the protagonist to his novel Lock In. The audiobook was narrated once with a male reader and also another time with a female reader. I don't use audiobooks, but I think to experience each would be worth trying.

[[deleted user]]

Gary wrote: "I thought it was interesting that John Scalzi didn't specify the gender of the protagonist to his novel Lock In. The audiobook was narrated once with a male reader and also another time with a female reader. ..."

Pre-release there was a package deal of both audiobook versions (Wil Wheaton & Amber Benson), but Scalzi didn't say why he had two audiobooks. It only dawns on you later. It's a clever ploy because Chris goes around as a genderless Threep, almost a brain in a jar. I've read the ebook and listened to both audiobooks (Hey, no sense having them if you don't listen to them! :)

[Elizabeth]

I visualise very vividly, and if I stop visualising because I was distracted or reading too quickly I go back and "replay" the movie the book created in my head so my inner eye didn't miss anything.
When characters are first described I'll pause for a bit so I can visualise them. I find having a very strong image of what they look like helps me remember who they are.
Cover/fan art can help but I'm picky. If I don't like the interpretation it goes in the mental trash pile.

The disadvantage of that is that it's really hard to watch screen adaptations - nobody looks like themselves!