I was in the library reading LOTR (Just finished the Fellowship, my god would I recommend it!), and at the beginning of the session, I was reading the book and the descriptions and prose were so magnificent that I willed myself to try imagining what everything looked like in my mind’s eye. So this raises a question. Do you see the picture while reading? If so, how vividly? And is it automatic?
Just to clear up confusion, I’m not just talking about understanding the text. Or retroactively creating an image. I’m talking about while reading the text, you imagine what’s happening visually. And when something changes in the text, say the grass becoming dimmer, do you imagine that process happening?
by FortyThousandAndOne
5 Comments
My brain just automatically does it. Reading a book is as vivid (if not more) than watching a movie, and rarely gets tripped up (a word I don’t know can cause a visual stumble, but I can usually figure it out in context).
I guess I don’t really understand the question. Isn’t visualizing what you’re reading kind of the default thing to do when reading fiction?
Do you make an effort to visualize when reading?
Absolutely no effort necessary. It happens automatically if I am actually reading text.
If it is an audiobook, it takes a little longer as I have to wait for the narrator’s voice to become “invisible” .
Some readers indeed do this automatically (and can’t comprehend without it). Some readers claim to experience no visual imagery when they read. Some critics (I’m thinking of William Gass) insist that readers *not* create visual imagery, so they can stay firmly within the verbal structure assembled by the author. If you feel like visual imagery helps you comprehend or enjoy a work, or increases your neurological contact with it, great. But know that it’s also perfectly all right to imagine in less vivid or more abstract ways; a lot of readers imagine spaces or settings, but not specific details. Look up “reader response criticism” if you want some empirical studies of how different readers read, cognitively and phenomenologically.
I see nothing while reading, not even if i make an effort. Instead I focus on the story, emotions and writing style.
I think that is one of the reasons why im not super into books which describe things in much detail, they are more likely to bore me because i don’t see them.