People with aphantasia, how does it affect your book reading?

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I prefer books that don't waste too many sentences describing things that have no relevance, but I can still enjoy a good story.

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I really enjoy reading, but I can't picture a scene, or what characters look like. It can be a bit confusing at times, but doesn't usually take away from the enjoyment.

As an example, my favourite sci fi author Randolph Lalonde (great independent author, buy his books ) had a scene in a recent book where some characters had a shootout in a warehouse that held several spaceships. The ships were all at least a few metres long, so the warehouse was huge. In my head, everything was centred on a small area around the characters, and I could sort of picture them being within a few feet of each other.

I couldn't picture any details, it was as if he had written that 'the man stood near the woman, and pointed the gun towards the crates', even though the scene was well written with good descriptions. My brain couldn't translate the description into a layout in my head.

I still really enjoyed the scene, but every now and then it was as if my brain realised that things should be further apart, or one character should be taller than another, for example.

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I don't have aphantasia but I still skip over descriptions. It just doesn't really add anything for me. Much more interested in dialogue and actions

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Details in books and written media as a list, not a series of images. Loved reading as a kid, dropped off when I spent more time doing other things, like cpmouter gaming.

The upside is that witthout a mental picture of characters any close enough visual take on the character will work for me. I also have ADHD so small details are likely forgotten and only the prominent ones that the character is defined by are going to be weird if mkssed.

For example when I heard Idris Elba was going to be cast as Roland in The Dark Tower it was a big positive because he seemed like someone that would be able to oull off the personality of the character and I was only concerned about whether they would do a good job with the missing fingers or drop it entirely as missing fingers was a big part of Roland's character for me. Yeah I know there was something involving race in the books, but that plotline was something that didn't seem to be necessary to carry over into a movie.

Of course the movie ended up being a pile of trash, but is a good example of how I focus more on how the character acts than how they look.

Same with a lot of science, swords, and other objects where I really don't have a mental image so a lot of sets work as long as they have the things or the general feel.

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Kinda echoing other comments in here, to say that lengthy segments where the author is describing the appearance of something can be rather annoying to me. I can't see it. No matter how many flowery words you use, I can't see it. I know what it is that you're describing, I already got a good-enough understanding with the first few sentences. But I can't see it. Please, please just move on to the actual story.

I really wanted to get into Stephen King's Dark Tower series. I made it to the point in the first book where two characters spend an extended amount of time in a pitch black tunnel. Oh. My. Fucking. God. I can only take so many pages of "Boy it sure is dark in here" before I lose my patience. I've started that book at least 5 times, and could never manage to make it past that section because it's just so infuriating to read. It's almost like the book is mocking me, as if to say "Hah hah, get a load of this goober, can't even see the darkness!"

I don't blame authors for this, though. It's not their responsibility to cater their art to my neurodivergence. It's just a minor frustration I've learned to live with. But it's also part of the reason why I don't read much for leisure. I think this is why I'm generally more tolerant of films that aren't as good as the books they're adapted from, because the alternative is that I'll likely otherwise never experience the story at all, so I'll take what I can get.

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Time spend on video medium is like 1000x more than reading.

I rarely read books, by rarely I mean I just skim all school reading materials, and only pick up random books lying around at home (that were given out for free by the public library) to read when my electronics were broken/consfiscated by parents.

I read a lot of news and wikipedia aricles tho, those are somehow just more fun than a book.

There are some adapted works that I've seen the adaptation of, but still haven't read the source materials yet. I kinda just read the wikis to check any differences between the 2 mediums... ‍️

Recently, I came across some interesting works of fiction that didn't have an adaptation in a video medium, so I reluctantly started reading. Recursion was a fun read with the audiobook playing in background at 1.2x speed.

When I read, I usually use the sterotypical portrayal of that character's archetype from other visual mediums to like fill in the character model and use similar scenes from visual media to paint the room and atmosphere.

I have like a "level 3" on the aphantasia scale, so like I could just barely paint the scenary.

If I do my own worldbuilding and my own story, I can sort of see the world slightly mroe clearly, like a "level 2" on the apantasia scale.

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You both seem nuts to me. I can conceptually imagine, but obviously cannot see things in my head because I'm not schizo, my surroundings don't disappear but it doesn't mean I don't appreciate descriptions and conjure concepts from them, just not imagery.

I think all this aphantasia stuff is just trappings of the English language and having "imagine" have the word "image" as a root, which is wrong, because imagination is more about concepts, it's a unique data structure that's not related to jpegs or photons and doesn't involve them. But some people conflate the two because their language doesn't allow them to think otherwise so they assume concepts are literal images in their head, and others with enough self-awareness to know they don't actually "see" anything in their head assume they have an issue/divergence. It's so bizarre to watch.

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I don't have aphantasia and I don't particularly fancy any medium over the other, but what I often miss is sound. Music is a whole different language to either visual or conceptual as conveyed by words, whereas imagery to me feels the most direct and laziest, music can convey feelings there are neither words nor imagery for, and so often I like adaptations of written works for injecting some fitting music, and will listen to fitting music as I read books.

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May be the wrong thread for this, but isn't it really common for people to not even know that have aphantasia?

I'm imagining the whole community from The Giver, where people didn't know that they

::: spoiler This book's so old I don't know if it's worth spoiler-warning for
Couldn't see colors
:::

and they didn't even realize.

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For those of us who don’t know what it means: “is the inability to voluntarily visualize mental images”

Basically if someone said “think of a nice round juicy red apple” people with the condition wouldn’t be able to imagine it in their mind.

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I didn't realize I had it until well into adulthood and I've always enjoyed reading. Even the extensive description still has meaning I just don't see it.

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"I can't read books that are realistic fiction. I can't do anything that's got like crazy world building because I can't perceive it and I have a hard time." -my sister

I don't have it personally, but we both have tism and so here's a talk we had while driving.

me: *takes wrong turn*

sister: "when I need to know my left and rights and cant do the hand thing, I remember 'never eat soggy waffles' because I can remember East is Right and Left is West."

me: "wh.. what?? why? why can't you just do the right and left in your head?"

sister: "girl how"

me: "I just imagine it?"

sister: "MUST BE NICE,, HUH?!"

if someone wants I can ask her in more detail later, she's busy with something rn

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Yknow somehow I had a great time reading. Written word is the most reliable way to stabilize visuals in my mind, which is why I've taken to writing as a creative outlet as well.

Its been so long since I've genuinely read anything but I think thats the closest I ever got to actually visualizing something. Described well enough and my mind can really conjure up an image for once.

Its why I tend to like slow and detailed scenes. I can spend a lot of time writing a scene that only lasts eight minutes

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When you say you miss sound, you mean while reading? I wonder if there are books that get deep with sound description. I can think of a couple that might, but they of course do not have actual sound.

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Hate to be the bearer of bad news but if you can't relate to mental images existing in a visual sense you probably have some degree of aphantasia.

Some research indicates that it may be a spectrum from complete lack of imagery to full five-sense detail, which might be why it's hard to relate to either extreme. At any rate most people fall in the category of seeing an image, to the point that hyperphantasia is even more common than aphantasia.

I have it*, but not as severe as others. Imagining an apple starts as a very abstract concept, I can't visualize it without concentrated effort. Other people might be able go on to describe the stem, the leaves, the shade of red, the glossy wax exterior, etc... I can't automatically build to any of that, even if I subconsciously default to a red apple the "image" may just as well be green.

*edit: checked the vviq test and discovered the label is hypophantasic

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I have aphantasia but love reading, even really descriptive passages. I don’t ‘see’ but I “feel” words, I think, if that makes any sense. Like, if I read a description of a steaming mug of coffee, I’ll feel the rising steam on my face, feel how it smells, feel the heaviness of the mug in my hand, etc. It’s a lot more vivid in a way than when I watch tv since that’s all visual and auditory.

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I know what the condition is but the condition is still fascinating to me.

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Dated a girl for a while that had corresponding R & L tattooed on the topside base of her thumbs.

That way when she was driving and people said go left, go right, she wouldn’t have to ask which way that was.

When I was with her I’d have to say things like the turn is on your side, take a my side.

It was different.

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Yes, while reading. I miss music to be specific, so this applies to comic books, manga etc.

A good soundtrack to me is everything in terms of tone and atmosphere and mood.

Less subjectively, it makes sense, since you can't touch or smell the world inside a book or a game or a film or whatever, the remaining types of information are auditory and visual, so 50% of the information about a thing is aural, so games, movies, shows etc. get that as a leg up on books etc.

On the other hand a lack of music does often force my brain to make some up which gets my lazy ass to go nurture that hobby and produce some sounds so I'm not complaining!

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Not total aphantasia, but mostly. I'd describe it as almost cartoonish, but more in the sense of the non-visual concept I associate with the image being described as being heavily exaggerated, more than any visual intensity. I get maybe brief glimpses of visualization before it dissolves into concept.

I know what the scene described looks like, and I know the associated elements well enough to be familiar with their properties and possible relevance to the story. As far as descriptions serve the telling of the story, I don't really think I'm missing out on much.

For visual media I tend to prefer animation and comic books, though I think that's unrelated to aphantasia, I'm probably a tad autistic. I appreciate every frame being intentional, and always get caught in a loop of uncertainty with live action; was that expression intentional or is the actor just hammy?

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People with aphantasia, how does it affect your book reading?