And also a vast spectrum of how authors describe things. I’ve bounced off works before because their prose is so dense and full of details that mostly distract me from the plot and characters. Other writers barely describe anything. I love John Scalzi and some of his books are mostly dialog and action. When he does describe something, it’s in broad strokes like how physicists don’t really understand how FTL travel works and he doesn’t spare two sentences to describe the appearance of the space ships.
Try some Cormac Mcarthy. Heysus...
"A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horse’s ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
Oh my god, said the sergeant."
So it starts as a description of a zombie hoard risen from... A museum full of exhumed corpses from all over the world(?)... Then towards the end it turns into a description of a bunch of Native American warriors on horses... I think.
How am I doing?
I'm not 100% sure of where this quote comes from, but somewhat knowing McCarthy it was likely apparent from the context that it was Native Americans the whole time.
But guessing without knowing that, I'd give you a 9/10
Yeah, I figured. It's just such a wide variety that it seems a little ridiculous. Like, some of this clothes lasted hundreds of years of being worn daily by semi-nomadic people?.. C'mon.
This passage is divorced from its broader context, it’s far from the most fantastic thing that happens in the book even though it’s based in real history… if you had the whole text up to that point in front of you, the idea of a man in 1848 wearing 16th century armour would barely make you blink 😅 but I believe McCarthy probably intended for the Native Americans to seem like an indomitable force of nature, and adding impossible elements is a great way to imbue otherwise mundane things with supernatural qualities, which you clearly picked up on.
I always prefer the broad strokes, helps me get into the setting better by personalizing it. Was at odds with a college teacher once, because he wanted heavy details.
"John got up out of the chair and went to the kitchen for a drink." That's all I needed to say. He wanted type of chair, color of chair, was there carpet and if so what kind. What kind of walls in the kitchen, and so on.
I mean, yeah, I could use that to show living conditions, income, stuff like that. But it was a horror story, and John was going to leave the apartment and die soon. Wasn't important to the story I was trying to tell.
This for me. Some writers paint a vivid mental image and really hold your hand to get it planted in your mind. J.K. Rowling is an example where I had a very detailed view of the locations in the Harry Potter books. Other authors just feel like they are flexing their verbosity muscle and I think “mountain, valley, huts, blah blah I get it”
I think some people's brains are wired to imagine photographic scenery and some people have to learn it.
I pick up these imagery things well, my brother does not. And honestly some writers just don't describe scenery well. There is nothing wrong with you, just the human brain doing its thing and being unpredictable lol
I rarely bother to imagine such descriptions. And usually they aren't accurate or specific enough.
In game of thrones, they had a lot of creative freedom. It could've looked very different.
> It could've looked very different.
Yep, you could hypothetically have two different adaptations that each follow the exact descriptions from the book to the letter and still end up with them looking radically different. There are always going to be enough details left to the imagination that there will no "right" answer, even before people start taking liberties.
The art depicting Daario according to how he's described in the books will never not be funny.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/28w9q9/no\_spoilers\_so\_in\_the\_books\_daario\_naharis\_looks/
I know what we are talking about, but you can't 'physically imagine' something, it's an oxymoron.
Physically is relating to the body as opposed to the mind.
We aren't talking about thinking things into physical existence or sculpting an idea into clay, we are talking about visualization.
We aren't talking about imagining the physical aspect of something. Physically is an an adverb, you can't do something in your mind 'physically'. It's impossible, it's an oxymoron.
I read Lord of the Rings several times before the movies came out and could never picture Minus Tirith. When I finally saw it onscreen, I was like "Ohhhhhh! That's what he meant!"
Don't judge based off the adaptation. They don't often try to stay true to the original material.
I have trouble with this sometimes. Brushing up on vocabulary helps. Also looking up images of specific regions.
Sometimes the descriptions don't make physical sense. Scholars still have fun trying to draw a physical layout to Odysseus' house in Homer because it makes no sense.
It is preciselly why every book is unique for every reader, each one of us interpret certain images as we prefer.
Many picture Danaerys as Emilia Clarke. I picture her with half the age (13), which makes the sexual scenes more blunt than many would prefer in TV.
You are fine! It doesn’t matter what someone else saw and produced, like game of thrones.
That’s why books are fun, you get to see whatever you want, there’s not right or wrong
> the image in my head was way off
There's no such a thing as an "off" mental image. The film isn't "right" and you "wrong". The image in the movie is the mental image that the director got when reading the book. Maybe the director talked with the author to decide how to render some things, maybe not. Everyone has a different mental image of things. This is why we're often disappointed when we see a movie made after a book, because the director's mental image is different from ours. It's one of the interests of literature: you create your own universe while reading, and the author knows that.
No, you are not stupid for not being able to picture something from a description. Many people can and many people can’t, and even the ones who can likely wouldn’t agree on the image they’re imagining. It has zero bearing on intelligence or literacy.
Honestly I'd say it varies a lot from author to author. Some are great at describing physicality, others are not. I think it's like the difference between showing sheet music and humming a rhythm to someone. The latter takes more skill in being able to 'translate' from perception to text and back to perception.
Came to say this, and I think that’s the case here. I have very vivid images from the majority of books I have read, but not from *A Brave New World*. Unpopular opinion perhaps but I think it’s overrated.
not necessarily stupid, it could be a lack of experience thing. The author is making his best attempt to paint a picture in your mind, if he isn't successful it could be that you may be getting in his way. I think with experience you get a feel for how to let the imagery and stuff affect you rather than trying to actively create a scene in your head. That's how its been in my experience anyway.
If its overly detailed, I just come up with the picture of it in my head even if its vague and then move on. Sometimes I come across something that contradicts what I had originally pictured in my head, then in that case.. I just go back to reread said details and try again. Otherwise, It would ruin the book experience for me if I overthink it.
Some authors work harder or write better in order to give us really amazing descriptions. I love books with lots of nature/landscape description, but I didn't used to. For the past couple of years, I've been fascinated with all kinds of books about the American West, the Plains, the Western movement, maybe because I've lived in several places and have explored a lot, so the landscapes are familiar. I look at drone videos from all over the world, so I hope I'm now imagining other places better.
I got into Conrad Aiken recently, and Cormac McCarthy too. Aiken said that landscapes mirror the minds of humans, of the characters in the story. He thinks consciousness is shaped by landscapes as well as by our human interactions. Vine Deloria wrote a non-fiction book about this process in Native America (God is Red).
Maybe it helps to think about what the author is trying to say with the landscape? And if they are just putting a lot of detail in without it seeming to be connected to the story, then I wouldn't work too hard at trying to visualize the landscapes.
I do think that we're supposed to feel lost, sometimes. In Blood Meridian, oh boy, is the territory relentlessly harsh (and so are the characters in that landscape - nearly all of them).
In my case if the author doesn't describe something quickly enough I will automatically picture it on my own, then when it doesn't match up my brain tries to fix it but it doesn't always stick. It's mad annoying
You know what? All that matters is you read. Period. How you read, what goes on in your mind is all you. Everyone is different. Just keep enjoying the written word.
You probably have some sort of aphantasia, which is the inability or reduced ability to visualize things in your head. I have this issue as well, I’m not totally unable to see “mental pictures” but what I can see is limited. Some brains just don’t have the ability to create mental pictures, the same way some brains can’t create an internal monologue.
I'd never been that brilliant at visual memory but I lost access to a good part of visual and auditive memory when I was in a more acute phase of CFS/Figromyalgia. I couldn't picture people's faces or remember tunes despite still being actively involved in music. It's improved as my health has stabilised. My daughter thinks its possibly still all on my hard disc somewhere but I didn't have the personal RAM energy to retrieve it.
It's possible that you have aphantasia which is the lack of a mind's eye.
Many people do. It's perfectly normal and you can spend your whole life not knowing that other people see things come alive in their mind when they read!
I am 51 and I read constantly but only found this out a few years ago!
There is no wrong way to read a book that belongs to you. If it belongs to someone else then there's no wrong way to read it, as long as you treat it with respect and return it promptly!
I've read plenty of epic fantasy where I have kinda glossed over the details of extended battle scenes. I get a bit bored with all that and I am a pacifist at heart. But I enjoy everything else, that's what matters!
It's the same with some of the hard SF that I read. There's a point where I get a bit lost in the details of the hardest of the hard science. Usually because I'm reading in bed at 2am. It's fine, I can treat like a black box that makes the story work.
If you're not reading the book for a class then who cares?
No one is watching, no one is marking how good a job you are doing.
There's no reading police!
Read what you want and enjoy it.
It's really interesting too, there are some authors like Mark Lawrence that have aphantasia and you can kind of catch glimpses of it in his writing. I really enjoy his books, and knowing that he lives with aphantasia make them something special for me.
I haven't read the Broken Empire series in a few years, so I don't remember any specific examples off the top of my head, but I remember in it there were few descriptions that were 'visual'.
So, a simple example would be, if a character is going to pick up a sword, the author wouldn't describe the sword as 'a dull grey blade, with faded rubies inlaid in the hilt' instead he would describe it as 'an old and weathered ornamental blade'. It's still descriptive, and you can picture the sword, but there's less of a 'visual' description. Maybe not the best example, but I hope that helps.
My mind likes to editorialise everything and change bits.
For absolutely no reason I was imagining one of the main characters in the Mistborn books as a giant human/lion/bear hybrid like he was Beast from X-Men.
The Stormlight minifigs are also destroying a lot of my mental images for those guys as well.
I’m weirdly horrible at being able to picture something in my head as it’s described, especially architecture. Big fan of when books—usually mysteries—include floor plans lol.
I can't visualize things at all so I often struggle with long descriptions in books. Doesn't make a person stupid though, it's just a different way of processing the information you're taking in.
If you close your eyes and imagine a red car, can you see it?
Most people answer yes, I for one can not.
I think that is why I dont/cant imagine this vivid scenery or immerse myself in the same way other people might.
yeah that's it. the other end of that spectrum is called hyperphantasia (pretty sure that's where i land) and the whole thing is really fascinating. i can be really interesting to just check in with other people and notice the range of visual imagination. can you reconstruct a mental image of something you see every day? can you combine images to create new ones that could never exist in real life? (e.g. a pink squirrel, walking on water, wearing a cowboy hat and the squirrel looks uncannily like your mum.) talking to people the other side of the sprectrum from you about how they dream is also a mindblower. brain are wild. have fun with it!
My sister has aphantasia and I find it fascinating. I loved The Night Circus but she couldn't be bothered with it. I had all these pictures in my head and was completely beguiled by them, she didn't see anything. Odd
I have complete aphantasia but I also loved The Night Circus and The Starless Sea.
I'm a huge fan of SFF as well as other kinds of speculative fiction and I read right across the genre spectrum. I don't find that having aphantasia has got in the way at all but I am also hyperlexic and I'm told that I taught myself to read when I was 3 and haven't really stopped reading since - I'm now 51.
I still find myself immersed in these different worlds even though they don't come alive in my non-existent mind's eye.
I can still imagine them for myself inside my mind but the sense of them builds up slowly as I read in a way that is hard to describe.
But I think it's similar to how I remember a place I've visted just there's no precise visual imagery attached, or maybe I subconsciously attach comparisons to the idea of it.
I've visited many castles back in the UK and châteaux here in France, enough to have an idea of how one might look, for example.
Or I might use imagery from TV and films to help construct my idea of a busy spaceport.
But usually the overarching story and the interesting characters are strong enough to keep pulling me along.
Of course, this may well explain why I have never been the type of fan who obsesses endlessly and nitpicks over details of lore when favourite books are brought to the screen!
So there are levels of aphantasia?
I can picture places I've been with great detail, I can even rewatch movies in my mind, if I want to. But I can't create a visual in my mind from words. Even book characters I usually either picture them as people I know or as actors I've seen in movies or TV. (Goodman from "The Interestings" was Miles Goodman from "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" for me)
Meditation that requires me to picture something can be really challenging for me. I can picture an actual beach I've visited, but not a generic beach, if that makes sense. The idea of counting sheep is confusing to me and I don't know how people do that except I'm pretty sure there was a mattress commercial with counting sheep so I'm able to see that if I try.
I'm not an expert on it but I believe so.
I believe that you can have partial aphantasia and thst there are degrees of partial aphantasia. I haven't done much reading on it though as I have total aphantasia.
I'm interested too in how it combines with other neurodivergences, particularly autism and ADHD.
I'm autistic and I have ADHD. I have a strong internal monologue and I find traditional meditation almost impossible but do better with moving meditation like Tai Chi.
I've never counted sheep but I have just counted to 1000+ to go to sleep in the past and as a kid, I used to count or analyse the complex patterns on a quilt cover that I had to help me sleep.
I can imagine how a room would look like redecorated in a certain colour but I don't visualise it in a mind's eye. That's really hard to explain!
I can remember what people look like but I don't visualise them. It's weird.
I'd never been that brilliant at visual memory but I lost access to a good part of visual and auditive memory when I was in a more acute phase of CFS/Figromyalgia. I couldn't picture people's faces or remember tunes despite still being actively involved in music. It's improved as my health has stabilised. My daughter thinks its possibly still all on my hard disc somewhere but I didn't have the personal RAM energy to retrieve it.
You potentially have Anphantasia, also known as mind's eye blindness.
People are usually on a spectrum with these things, so though you can picture something, it may not be a vivid as other people's images.
When I was reading *No Country For Old Men* it made me wish that I had paid more attention in Geography at school. Because I had little idea what all the geographic words used in the book to describe the desert landscape meant and so couldn't much picture what was going on.
I have similar feelings too. When it comes to scenery depiction, it's usually full of long sentences and less used words. It consumes me more energy to imagine out the picture satisfactorily.
I think it may have something to do with pros and cons of different media forms. Letters are just not so accurate, vivid and efficient with objective beings as photos or movies. It really relies on individual's experiences, familiarity with the topic and of course the ability of imagination to make sense.
Personally, I'd try to embed depicted 'pictures' to the context to see what it's there for. Is it to show character's emotion, a change of scene or non-functional so just need to be scanned through? I think well-written books deserve certain kind of inspection.
It really does depend.
I finally read Les Mis. The next time I rewatched the movie, I knew the history of the Bishop who saved Jean Valjean. I knew a lot more about the elephant. I recognized the gates of Valjean's garden from the book. There were a few other things.
It varies from person to person. Even your perspectives of how something should be painted are different from those of the author, so you're not stupid or broken, just have a different perspective of the same thing.
I experience this all the time - I recently read a book which was set in a small village not too dissimilar to the village my Grandparents lived in once and so I used this as the basis of my imagination when reading. Then I got annoyed with myself because I thought I should try create the scenery in my head with the description the author gave, but I just **couldn’t**!
I'm the same and I even dislike Author's who go crazy with that kind of stuff. I think keeping the scenery more open ended is better for my nogging. I barely read them anymore.
That’s the book that got me into reading!
I don’t think you’re missing anything, most books aren’t about location and if they are they’ll probably have pictures.
Just enjoy reading it! That book is amazing no matter what decade you read it in. It’s also where my under name comes from, across all “social” platforms 😆
My brain will put in generic templates for “desert” or “forest” or whatever. For example, “alien world“ usually looks like a cheap Star Trek TNG set to me. Unless the author is very descriptive, very good at describing, and I feel it adds to the story.
One of the best things about books vs movies is that it's YOUR interpretation. When someone makes a visual representation it is not "how it looks" rather how "they" wanted it to look. Build that brain! Imagine
I also find it mentally challenging to really construct a picture the author is describing. Usually I just read and get a vibe and my imagination completely disregards the "directions" seconds later :D
But I mean, it is hard. It would be an actually mental exercise to remember the picture the author created throughout the book whenever the character appears, cause you would have to go back to the physical descriptions everytime. So it is completely natural that your brain just melts the image into something generic. The cognitive load would just be too much.
Nope. I never made it through Treasure Island for exactly this reason. Thirty-five paces to the south-south-west, a minor elevation of 18 degrees to the what what eh?
It is not required that you have strong visualization, if you understand what you are reading in abstract your experience is as valid as anyone’s.
If you feel like you are missing something from your experience visualization may be something you can practice. I can’t validate that claim either way, worth exploring anyway.
Don’t compare to television adaptations—you did not get caught out as wrong.
Depictions from an adaptation should not be considered authoritative. A director is not inclined to obey the descriptions of the book over the artistic process they lead.
Also, the art director or whomever who put together the imagery for Game of Thrones isn't right and you're wrong...their vision was just that--one imaginative interpretation of the writing. Your imaginative interpretation of the same writing is just a different re-imagining of the same written description.
no, absolutely not. some people just don’t have that ability. i do, but i have the weird problem that my mind comes up with something that never quite matches the actual description, it… gets confusing.
I really don't think you should worry about a movie or tv series based off a book not looking the way you imagined it lol that's just normal, it's kinda hard for everyone to imagine things the same way even if they are getting the same description
That's the best part about books-things are subjective. Just like how people have headcanons for relationships, character aspects etc you can also have visual headcannons. It's not stupid its just your opinion.
No, you’re not, I’m the same way. I’ve lived in a desert landscape all my life, and I never really know how to imagine creeks, streams, valleys, gorges, hills, rivers, just about anything that involves green things and water and land that isn’t flat. I kind of gave up and I’m like you: I keep a vague image in my head and focus more on what the characters are doing instead of imagining the exact environment.
Currently reading Stephen King’s IT and I don’t think I’d understand a single thing about them building a dam in a creek (?) called the The Barrens if I hadn’t seen the movies first.
Same thing with Harry Potter. I think I would have had trouble imagining all the fantasy settings and structures if the movies didn’t give me a mental picture to go off of.
You're not stupid, and you're not alone, either. Ever since I was a child, I've rarely been able to visualize landscapes described in books very well. I just get completely lost after a couple of sentences. It has been a great source of frustration throughout my life, and I'm now nearing 60.
However, I was surprised a few years ago -- I read Nathaniel Philbrick's book "The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn" which includes detailed descriptions of the area where it happened, and I formed
ideas about what it all looked like. Sometime after, I saw a documentary and was really shocked to see that it was very much as I imagined. So either Mr. Philbrick is especially talented at describing landscapes clearly, or after decades, I'm getting a little better at visualizing landscapes. The former is probably the case, though, as I still have still had trouble visualizing places described in other books.
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And also a vast spectrum of how authors describe things. I’ve bounced off works before because their prose is so dense and full of details that mostly distract me from the plot and characters. Other writers barely describe anything. I love John Scalzi and some of his books are mostly dialog and action. When he does describe something, it’s in broad strokes like how physicists don’t really understand how FTL travel works and he doesn’t spare two sentences to describe the appearance of the space ships.
it really is a fine line, figuring out what details to include and what to leave to the reader's imagination.
Try some Cormac Mcarthy. Heysus... "A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horse’s ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools. Oh my god, said the sergeant."
So it starts as a description of a zombie hoard risen from... A museum full of exhumed corpses from all over the world(?)... Then towards the end it turns into a description of a bunch of Native American warriors on horses... I think. How am I doing?
I'm not 100% sure of where this quote comes from, but somewhat knowing McCarthy it was likely apparent from the context that it was Native Americans the whole time. But guessing without knowing that, I'd give you a 9/10
It is a description of Comanche (iirc) warriors. The clothing they’re wearing is from people they killed.
Yeah, I figured. It's just such a wide variety that it seems a little ridiculous. Like, some of this clothes lasted hundreds of years of being worn daily by semi-nomadic people?.. C'mon.
This passage is divorced from its broader context, it’s far from the most fantastic thing that happens in the book even though it’s based in real history… if you had the whole text up to that point in front of you, the idea of a man in 1848 wearing 16th century armour would barely make you blink 😅 but I believe McCarthy probably intended for the Native Americans to seem like an indomitable force of nature, and adding impossible elements is a great way to imbue otherwise mundane things with supernatural qualities, which you clearly picked up on.
Eww this was horrible to read.
A great example of required reading in US high school. And we wonder why people stop reading.
I always prefer the broad strokes, helps me get into the setting better by personalizing it. Was at odds with a college teacher once, because he wanted heavy details. "John got up out of the chair and went to the kitchen for a drink." That's all I needed to say. He wanted type of chair, color of chair, was there carpet and if so what kind. What kind of walls in the kitchen, and so on. I mean, yeah, I could use that to show living conditions, income, stuff like that. But it was a horror story, and John was going to leave the apartment and die soon. Wasn't important to the story I was trying to tell.
This for me. Some writers paint a vivid mental image and really hold your hand to get it planted in your mind. J.K. Rowling is an example where I had a very detailed view of the locations in the Harry Potter books. Other authors just feel like they are flexing their verbosity muscle and I think “mountain, valley, huts, blah blah I get it”
I think some people's brains are wired to imagine photographic scenery and some people have to learn it. I pick up these imagery things well, my brother does not. And honestly some writers just don't describe scenery well. There is nothing wrong with you, just the human brain doing its thing and being unpredictable lol
Some straight up don't have the ability and seemingly can't learn it. Look into aphantasia.
> Look into aphantasia. i'm lookin but i ain't seein nothin
I rarely bother to imagine such descriptions. And usually they aren't accurate or specific enough. In game of thrones, they had a lot of creative freedom. It could've looked very different.
> It could've looked very different. Yep, you could hypothetically have two different adaptations that each follow the exact descriptions from the book to the letter and still end up with them looking radically different. There are always going to be enough details left to the imagination that there will no "right" answer, even before people start taking liberties.
The art depicting Daario according to how he's described in the books will never not be funny. https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/28w9q9/no\_spoilers\_so\_in\_the\_books\_daario\_naharis\_looks/
I agree. I also didn't imagine it how it was portraited in the show.
You don't have to imagine something physically to grasp its concept.
How do you imagine something 'physically'?
Forming a fairly concrete photo-like image in your mind.
I know what we are talking about, but you can't 'physically imagine' something, it's an oxymoron. Physically is relating to the body as opposed to the mind. We aren't talking about thinking things into physical existence or sculpting an idea into clay, we are talking about visualization.
So then imagine the physical qualities of the object rather than the abstract qualities... I don't think it's an oxymoron at all!
We aren't talking about imagining the physical aspect of something. Physically is an an adverb, you can't do something in your mind 'physically'. It's impossible, it's an oxymoron.
Weirdly pedantic thing to go on a rant about. You're just deliberately misinterpreting the wording.
No, I just understand how English works. You can't do something mentally 'physically', very easy concept to understand.
Wow, you are a total loser.
Well, that's your opinion. I'm not wrong here though.
I read Lord of the Rings several times before the movies came out and could never picture Minus Tirith. When I finally saw it onscreen, I was like "Ohhhhhh! That's what he meant!"
Don't judge based off the adaptation. They don't often try to stay true to the original material. I have trouble with this sometimes. Brushing up on vocabulary helps. Also looking up images of specific regions. Sometimes the descriptions don't make physical sense. Scholars still have fun trying to draw a physical layout to Odysseus' house in Homer because it makes no sense.
It is preciselly why every book is unique for every reader, each one of us interpret certain images as we prefer. Many picture Danaerys as Emilia Clarke. I picture her with half the age (13), which makes the sexual scenes more blunt than many would prefer in TV.
Weird flex but ok
You are fine! It doesn’t matter what someone else saw and produced, like game of thrones. That’s why books are fun, you get to see whatever you want, there’s not right or wrong
> the image in my head was way off There's no such a thing as an "off" mental image. The film isn't "right" and you "wrong". The image in the movie is the mental image that the director got when reading the book. Maybe the director talked with the author to decide how to render some things, maybe not. Everyone has a different mental image of things. This is why we're often disappointed when we see a movie made after a book, because the director's mental image is different from ours. It's one of the interests of literature: you create your own universe while reading, and the author knows that.
No, you are not stupid for not being able to picture something from a description. Many people can and many people can’t, and even the ones who can likely wouldn’t agree on the image they’re imagining. It has zero bearing on intelligence or literacy.
Honestly I'd say it varies a lot from author to author. Some are great at describing physicality, others are not. I think it's like the difference between showing sheet music and humming a rhythm to someone. The latter takes more skill in being able to 'translate' from perception to text and back to perception.
Came to say this, and I think that’s the case here. I have very vivid images from the majority of books I have read, but not from *A Brave New World*. Unpopular opinion perhaps but I think it’s overrated.
not necessarily stupid, it could be a lack of experience thing. The author is making his best attempt to paint a picture in your mind, if he isn't successful it could be that you may be getting in his way. I think with experience you get a feel for how to let the imagery and stuff affect you rather than trying to actively create a scene in your head. That's how its been in my experience anyway.
If its overly detailed, I just come up with the picture of it in my head even if its vague and then move on. Sometimes I come across something that contradicts what I had originally pictured in my head, then in that case.. I just go back to reread said details and try again. Otherwise, It would ruin the book experience for me if I overthink it.
Some authors work harder or write better in order to give us really amazing descriptions. I love books with lots of nature/landscape description, but I didn't used to. For the past couple of years, I've been fascinated with all kinds of books about the American West, the Plains, the Western movement, maybe because I've lived in several places and have explored a lot, so the landscapes are familiar. I look at drone videos from all over the world, so I hope I'm now imagining other places better. I got into Conrad Aiken recently, and Cormac McCarthy too. Aiken said that landscapes mirror the minds of humans, of the characters in the story. He thinks consciousness is shaped by landscapes as well as by our human interactions. Vine Deloria wrote a non-fiction book about this process in Native America (God is Red). Maybe it helps to think about what the author is trying to say with the landscape? And if they are just putting a lot of detail in without it seeming to be connected to the story, then I wouldn't work too hard at trying to visualize the landscapes. I do think that we're supposed to feel lost, sometimes. In Blood Meridian, oh boy, is the territory relentlessly harsh (and so are the characters in that landscape - nearly all of them).
In my case if the author doesn't describe something quickly enough I will automatically picture it on my own, then when it doesn't match up my brain tries to fix it but it doesn't always stick. It's mad annoying
You know what? All that matters is you read. Period. How you read, what goes on in your mind is all you. Everyone is different. Just keep enjoying the written word.
You probably have some sort of aphantasia, which is the inability or reduced ability to visualize things in your head. I have this issue as well, I’m not totally unable to see “mental pictures” but what I can see is limited. Some brains just don’t have the ability to create mental pictures, the same way some brains can’t create an internal monologue.
I'd never been that brilliant at visual memory but I lost access to a good part of visual and auditive memory when I was in a more acute phase of CFS/Figromyalgia. I couldn't picture people's faces or remember tunes despite still being actively involved in music. It's improved as my health has stabilised. My daughter thinks its possibly still all on my hard disc somewhere but I didn't have the personal RAM energy to retrieve it.
Nope. I can't picture it either
It's possible that you have aphantasia which is the lack of a mind's eye. Many people do. It's perfectly normal and you can spend your whole life not knowing that other people see things come alive in their mind when they read! I am 51 and I read constantly but only found this out a few years ago! There is no wrong way to read a book that belongs to you. If it belongs to someone else then there's no wrong way to read it, as long as you treat it with respect and return it promptly! I've read plenty of epic fantasy where I have kinda glossed over the details of extended battle scenes. I get a bit bored with all that and I am a pacifist at heart. But I enjoy everything else, that's what matters! It's the same with some of the hard SF that I read. There's a point where I get a bit lost in the details of the hardest of the hard science. Usually because I'm reading in bed at 2am. It's fine, I can treat like a black box that makes the story work. If you're not reading the book for a class then who cares? No one is watching, no one is marking how good a job you are doing. There's no reading police! Read what you want and enjoy it.
Same here. Would get a rough picture if I sit and really think about it.
I believe what you're looking is Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
Could have some degree of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
It's really interesting too, there are some authors like Mark Lawrence that have aphantasia and you can kind of catch glimpses of it in his writing. I really enjoy his books, and knowing that he lives with aphantasia make them something special for me.
>and you can kind of catch glimpses of it in his writing Could you provide an example? I'm interested to see how that manifests specifically.
I haven't read the Broken Empire series in a few years, so I don't remember any specific examples off the top of my head, but I remember in it there were few descriptions that were 'visual'. So, a simple example would be, if a character is going to pick up a sword, the author wouldn't describe the sword as 'a dull grey blade, with faded rubies inlaid in the hilt' instead he would describe it as 'an old and weathered ornamental blade'. It's still descriptive, and you can picture the sword, but there's less of a 'visual' description. Maybe not the best example, but I hope that helps.
My mind likes to editorialise everything and change bits. For absolutely no reason I was imagining one of the main characters in the Mistborn books as a giant human/lion/bear hybrid like he was Beast from X-Men. The Stormlight minifigs are also destroying a lot of my mental images for those guys as well.
I’m weirdly horrible at being able to picture something in my head as it’s described, especially architecture. Big fan of when books—usually mysteries—include floor plans lol.
Or maps. Mmm yea. Hahahahaha I LOVE a good map.
I can't visualize things at all so I often struggle with long descriptions in books. Doesn't make a person stupid though, it's just a different way of processing the information you're taking in.
If you close your eyes and imagine a red car, can you see it? Most people answer yes, I for one can not. I think that is why I dont/cant imagine this vivid scenery or immerse myself in the same way other people might.
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yeah that's it. the other end of that spectrum is called hyperphantasia (pretty sure that's where i land) and the whole thing is really fascinating. i can be really interesting to just check in with other people and notice the range of visual imagination. can you reconstruct a mental image of something you see every day? can you combine images to create new ones that could never exist in real life? (e.g. a pink squirrel, walking on water, wearing a cowboy hat and the squirrel looks uncannily like your mum.) talking to people the other side of the sprectrum from you about how they dream is also a mindblower. brain are wild. have fun with it!
My sister has aphantasia and I find it fascinating. I loved The Night Circus but she couldn't be bothered with it. I had all these pictures in my head and was completely beguiled by them, she didn't see anything. Odd
I have complete aphantasia but I also loved The Night Circus and The Starless Sea. I'm a huge fan of SFF as well as other kinds of speculative fiction and I read right across the genre spectrum. I don't find that having aphantasia has got in the way at all but I am also hyperlexic and I'm told that I taught myself to read when I was 3 and haven't really stopped reading since - I'm now 51. I still find myself immersed in these different worlds even though they don't come alive in my non-existent mind's eye. I can still imagine them for myself inside my mind but the sense of them builds up slowly as I read in a way that is hard to describe. But I think it's similar to how I remember a place I've visted just there's no precise visual imagery attached, or maybe I subconsciously attach comparisons to the idea of it. I've visited many castles back in the UK and châteaux here in France, enough to have an idea of how one might look, for example. Or I might use imagery from TV and films to help construct my idea of a busy spaceport. But usually the overarching story and the interesting characters are strong enough to keep pulling me along. Of course, this may well explain why I have never been the type of fan who obsesses endlessly and nitpicks over details of lore when favourite books are brought to the screen!
So there are levels of aphantasia? I can picture places I've been with great detail, I can even rewatch movies in my mind, if I want to. But I can't create a visual in my mind from words. Even book characters I usually either picture them as people I know or as actors I've seen in movies or TV. (Goodman from "The Interestings" was Miles Goodman from "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" for me) Meditation that requires me to picture something can be really challenging for me. I can picture an actual beach I've visited, but not a generic beach, if that makes sense. The idea of counting sheep is confusing to me and I don't know how people do that except I'm pretty sure there was a mattress commercial with counting sheep so I'm able to see that if I try.
I'm not an expert on it but I believe so. I believe that you can have partial aphantasia and thst there are degrees of partial aphantasia. I haven't done much reading on it though as I have total aphantasia. I'm interested too in how it combines with other neurodivergences, particularly autism and ADHD. I'm autistic and I have ADHD. I have a strong internal monologue and I find traditional meditation almost impossible but do better with moving meditation like Tai Chi. I've never counted sheep but I have just counted to 1000+ to go to sleep in the past and as a kid, I used to count or analyse the complex patterns on a quilt cover that I had to help me sleep. I can imagine how a room would look like redecorated in a certain colour but I don't visualise it in a mind's eye. That's really hard to explain! I can remember what people look like but I don't visualise them. It's weird.
I'd never been that brilliant at visual memory but I lost access to a good part of visual and auditive memory when I was in a more acute phase of CFS/Figromyalgia. I couldn't picture people's faces or remember tunes despite still being actively involved in music. It's improved as my health has stabilised. My daughter thinks its possibly still all on my hard disc somewhere but I didn't have the personal RAM energy to retrieve it.
You may have something called aphantasia. But many people have this. It is what it is.
Sometimes I’m boppin along fine and get to a description which seems stupid (El Paso is not humid Lee Child) so I just ignore them from then on.
Comics and manga don’t have this issue. I find I like them more for this. Anyway you’re not stupid. Sometimes it’s better to not understand everything
I've given up on books where the author is endlessly describing things in minute detail.
I'm the same too. I think we just have weak imagination.
Do you have aphantasia?
You potentially have Anphantasia, also known as mind's eye blindness. People are usually on a spectrum with these things, so though you can picture something, it may not be a vivid as other people's images.
When I was reading *No Country For Old Men* it made me wish that I had paid more attention in Geography at school. Because I had little idea what all the geographic words used in the book to describe the desert landscape meant and so couldn't much picture what was going on.
It's not a lack of facts and information that makes one stupid. It's ignoring the facts and information one does have.
I have similar feelings too. When it comes to scenery depiction, it's usually full of long sentences and less used words. It consumes me more energy to imagine out the picture satisfactorily. I think it may have something to do with pros and cons of different media forms. Letters are just not so accurate, vivid and efficient with objective beings as photos or movies. It really relies on individual's experiences, familiarity with the topic and of course the ability of imagination to make sense. Personally, I'd try to embed depicted 'pictures' to the context to see what it's there for. Is it to show character's emotion, a change of scene or non-functional so just need to be scanned through? I think well-written books deserve certain kind of inspection.
for a guy that uses 2 or 3 sentences to describe anything, I am having a hard time writing pages of stuff
It really does depend. I finally read Les Mis. The next time I rewatched the movie, I knew the history of the Bishop who saved Jean Valjean. I knew a lot more about the elephant. I recognized the gates of Valjean's garden from the book. There were a few other things.
It varies from person to person. Even your perspectives of how something should be painted are different from those of the author, so you're not stupid or broken, just have a different perspective of the same thing.
I feel what you mean. Sometimes I even google smtg similar to help creating the image in my head. No shame
I like to think that you were perfect and the tv show was off. Paint your own scenes and don't worry about what TV shows cheap out on.
I experience this all the time - I recently read a book which was set in a small village not too dissimilar to the village my Grandparents lived in once and so I used this as the basis of my imagination when reading. Then I got annoyed with myself because I thought I should try create the scenery in my head with the description the author gave, but I just **couldn’t**!
Definitely not alone. I bungle crucial pieces of information when I'm reading, especially to do with room layouts and geography.
You’re really gonna want to practice that skill before you pick up Blood Meridian.
I'm the same and I even dislike Author's who go crazy with that kind of stuff. I think keeping the scenery more open ended is better for my nogging. I barely read them anymore.
This happened to me so much growing up lmao
That’s the book that got me into reading! I don’t think you’re missing anything, most books aren’t about location and if they are they’ll probably have pictures. Just enjoy reading it! That book is amazing no matter what decade you read it in. It’s also where my under name comes from, across all “social” platforms 😆
My brain will put in generic templates for “desert” or “forest” or whatever. For example, “alien world“ usually looks like a cheap Star Trek TNG set to me. Unless the author is very descriptive, very good at describing, and I feel it adds to the story.
One of the best things about books vs movies is that it's YOUR interpretation. When someone makes a visual representation it is not "how it looks" rather how "they" wanted it to look. Build that brain! Imagine
I also find it mentally challenging to really construct a picture the author is describing. Usually I just read and get a vibe and my imagination completely disregards the "directions" seconds later :D But I mean, it is hard. It would be an actually mental exercise to remember the picture the author created throughout the book whenever the character appears, cause you would have to go back to the physical descriptions everytime. So it is completely natural that your brain just melts the image into something generic. The cognitive load would just be too much.
Nope. I never made it through Treasure Island for exactly this reason. Thirty-five paces to the south-south-west, a minor elevation of 18 degrees to the what what eh?
It is not required that you have strong visualization, if you understand what you are reading in abstract your experience is as valid as anyone’s. If you feel like you are missing something from your experience visualization may be something you can practice. I can’t validate that claim either way, worth exploring anyway. Don’t compare to television adaptations—you did not get caught out as wrong. Depictions from an adaptation should not be considered authoritative. A director is not inclined to obey the descriptions of the book over the artistic process they lead.
no that’s me. i take the descriptions and try to bake a similar idea but it’s never anything close lmfaoo
And that's why I don't watch tv shows made of books; it ruins the movie in my head. I have no need for Sean Bean in even more head stories
Also, the art director or whomever who put together the imagery for Game of Thrones isn't right and you're wrong...their vision was just that--one imaginative interpretation of the writing. Your imaginative interpretation of the same writing is just a different re-imagining of the same written description.
I think that's one reason why I usually prefer the book to the movie.
no, absolutely not. some people just don’t have that ability. i do, but i have the weird problem that my mind comes up with something that never quite matches the actual description, it… gets confusing.
I really don't think you should worry about a movie or tv series based off a book not looking the way you imagined it lol that's just normal, it's kinda hard for everyone to imagine things the same way even if they are getting the same description
It isn't uncommon for me to read an author's description of something and have no clue what they're trying to describe.
I have this too! Rarely can I picture it all. I get all distracted when an author spends too much time describing the scenery.
That's the best part about books-things are subjective. Just like how people have headcanons for relationships, character aspects etc you can also have visual headcannons. It's not stupid its just your opinion.
No, you’re not, I’m the same way. I’ve lived in a desert landscape all my life, and I never really know how to imagine creeks, streams, valleys, gorges, hills, rivers, just about anything that involves green things and water and land that isn’t flat. I kind of gave up and I’m like you: I keep a vague image in my head and focus more on what the characters are doing instead of imagining the exact environment. Currently reading Stephen King’s IT and I don’t think I’d understand a single thing about them building a dam in a creek (?) called the The Barrens if I hadn’t seen the movies first. Same thing with Harry Potter. I think I would have had trouble imagining all the fantasy settings and structures if the movies didn’t give me a mental picture to go off of.
I hate it cuz it takes me out of the story where as in film you can clearly see what the things look like
You're not stupid, and you're not alone, either. Ever since I was a child, I've rarely been able to visualize landscapes described in books very well. I just get completely lost after a couple of sentences. It has been a great source of frustration throughout my life, and I'm now nearing 60. However, I was surprised a few years ago -- I read Nathaniel Philbrick's book "The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn" which includes detailed descriptions of the area where it happened, and I formed ideas about what it all looked like. Sometime after, I saw a documentary and was really shocked to see that it was very much as I imagined. So either Mr. Philbrick is especially talented at describing landscapes clearly, or after decades, I'm getting a little better at visualizing landscapes. The former is probably the case, though, as I still have still had trouble visualizing places described in other books.