4 ms·
Am I the only one that doesn't even attempt to to put a face to characters? When I read a book, it is a visually stimulating experience but it's all very ethere
by mcjiggerlog 12y ago
Am I the only one that doesn't even attempt to to put a face to characters? When I read a book, it is a visually stimulating experience but it's all very ethereal - I conjure up vague landscapes, actions, objects, poses, expressions etc, but never an entire portrait of a character.
To be honest I think I read entire books without even considering what colour a person's hair is, how tall they are, what shape their nose is.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- wmil 12y agoMany people don't, check out Generalizing From One Example http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ key passage: "The debate was resolved by Francis Galton, a fascinating man who among other achievements invented eugenics, the "wisdom of crowds", and standard deviation. Galton gave people some very detailed surveys, and found that some people did have mental imagery and others didn't. The ones who did had simply assumed everyone did, and the ones who didn't had simply assumed everyone didn't, to the point of coming up with absurd justifications for why they were lying or misunderstanding the question. There was a wide spectrum of imaging ability, from about five percent of people with perfect eidetic imagery to three percent of people completely unable to form mental images." I don't have strong mental imagery, and it's actually a problem for me when reading some fiction... Some authors love putting in long, detailed, descriptions of characters. That's incredibly boring to me, and I just skip those pages. I've found that people with very strong visual imagery love anagrams, because they can actually visualize and rotate the letters. And to me, that's basically a super power.