As I try to get into literature, this has become a prevalent issue for me. I had decided to ease my way into it with short stories and such. But I had this issue in particular when I came to a few specific short stories – “The Electric Ant” by Philip K. Dick, “A Rose for Emily” by Faulkner, and “A Drowning Incident” by Cormac McCarthy. There were others that twisted my brain somewhat, like Ted Chiang’s Exhalation, which was clearly HEAVILY inspired by the Electric Ant. But with those stories I had this weird sensation of reading words which I knew what they meant, but somehow having more and more trouble creating a picture in my head. I never had that issue when I was younger, but it was like I was trying to keep a constant imsge in my head and when I was reading those stories for whatever reason it was hard to maintain. They weren’t particularly difficult reads and are not considered as such, but I wasn’t able to 100% picture everything. I maybe captured like 70-80% I think, but it was a bit like watching a movie where the audio or image keeps cutting out as it plays or randomly becomes blurry/foggy, maybe the image shifts significantly in pixel count or something idk. Has anyone had this issue, does it go away, how do I get used to visualizing stuff, which is the most basic component of reading?
by Traditional_Land3933
6 Comments
>how do I get used to visualizing stuff, which is the most basic component of reading?
I would kindly suggest that perhaps you are approaching literature in a limiting way. Not all literary writing is necessarily concerned with conveying a visual scene. Nor is it all necessarily even concerned with conveying sensory experience. Certainly this can be a major part of many works. But a lot of writing is also trying to convey ideas, emotional experience, lyrical/poetic resonance, and much more.
When you listen to music, even songs with a narrative aspect, you probably don’t get concerned that you can’t “visualize” what the song is about. In the same way, I wouldn’t get concerned about not having a sensory experience for everything you’re reading either. Literature can hit you on many different levels, not only in sensory ways.
Graphic novels.
Count yourself lucky that you can picture it at all. I don’t get much in the way of pictures in my head, at best it’s like a foggy, dreamy image with very little detail. Some people can’t picture anything at all. I’d pay good money to vividly picture 70+% of what I read.
I’ve alway found that my imagination interprets what I’m reading the way it wants to I don’t force and who cares if it’s not exactly how the author describes it you are reading for your pleasure not theirs it might help reading something you’ve watched as a film or to series obviously you want something faithful to the book while there will be differences to the book generally your mind should still picture it the same try something like cormac mcarthys the road or even lord of the rings as these stay very close to the source material although as any reader will tell you there’s is always more enjoyment gained from the book hope this helps
First, I often don’t keep an image in my head when I’m reading. It doesn’t mean I don’t understand what’s going on and don’t enjoy it, or that I couldn’t try to break down a scene visually if I needed to, but that the visual is only one way to understand a story. You can also understand it as text itself or as a narrative.
Think of overhearing a story from a friend or a colleague – do you really visualize everything? Or is it more on the level of knowing what happened and looking for the significance of the events? Some very bad storytellers focus on on details and don’t get to significance.
One thing I do for novels is focus not on the visuals but on the voices. Not literally – not hearing voices – but more paying attention to what each character is saying, how they speak, and sometimes what they aren’t saying. Many novels are driven by voices, either in dialogue with each other or the voice of the narrator, who may be more or less reliable. If you can follow that, you’re mastering a basic component of reading that is verbal, not visual.
I was having trouble with Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy, and I listened to the audio book and it worked out really well. I had the actual book nearby as well and did shifts with that too. Maybe it was because that particular book is very cinematic, but the visualization you’re talking about came more easily that way.