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That's interesting about aphantasia. I knew some people have incredible visualization ability far past the normal amount, but I never knew that some people hav

by fouc 8y ago

That's interesting about aphantasia. I knew some people have incredible visualization ability far past the normal amount, but I never knew that some people have none at all. I think my visualization ability is about average, although I do very well with visual thinking. Not sure what the correlation is there. I've been a prolific reader since about 11 years old. I would say that in general, I don't try to visualize what the author writes. Whenever the author spends a lot of time going into setting up the environment with lots of visual details, I only lightly skim that. I don't bother trying to visualize exactly what the author is trying to convey. So sometimes it does lead to a little bit of confusion later on in the story if something I read doesn't match up with my made up visualization, but generally I might only get a blip of confusion a few times during a book, it doesn't really amount to much or affect my enjoyment. I'm not sure how much time Neal Stephenson spends on visual details in Snow Crash, but I remember the first 200 pages of Anathem being a chore to get through because of the incredible amount of time he spent on setting up the environment. Because I largely skipped the visual details in Anathem, there were parts later on in the story that were confusing due to the fact I didn't have a grasp on the layout of the monastery and such. Assuming he didn't make mistakes at any point.

nsomaru 8y ago
Nice point about the light skimming of largely irrelevant details; I do that too and also suffer some mild but acceptable confusion later in a work... It also depends how engaged a book has me. Sometimes books are about the story and those details don’t matter. Other times they are more like paintings and time spent engrossed in smaller details does reveal a deeper level of enjoyment to the reader.
NamTaf 8y ago
I catch myself skimming over details like that too, because they are essentially meaningless to me. That said, I've never had the situtaion of a mental image being wrong, because I never end up actually drawing one. I just end up getting lost, like I'm constantly encountering new scenes that haven't been described to me. It's disorienting but now I've come to adapt to it, I know that I'll not necessarily follow details I would otherwise expect myself to follow, not because it's badly written (as I used to sometimes wonder) but that it just doesn't gel in my mind. So I've come to adapt to that, in a ways.

by fouc 8y ago

nsomaru 8y ago

Nice point about the light skimming of largely irrelevant details; I do that too and also suffer some mild but acceptable confusion later in a work... It also depends how engaged a book has me. Sometimes books are about the story and those details don’t matter. Other times they are more like paintings and time spent engrossed in smaller details does reveal a deeper level of enjoyment to the reader.

NamTaf 8y ago

I catch myself skimming over details like that too, because they are essentially meaningless to me. That said, I've never had the situtaion of a mental image being wrong, because I never end up actually drawing one. I just end up getting lost, like I'm constantly encountering new scenes that haven't been described to me. It's disorienting but now I've come to adapt to it, I know that I'll not necessarily follow details I would otherwise expect myself to follow, not because it's badly written (as I used to sometimes wonder) but that it just doesn't gel in my mind. So I've come to adapt to that, in a ways.