Yesterday, on Twitter, I learned the word “aphantasia”. Wikipedia (where would we be without Wikipedia) defines aphantasia as “a mental condition characterized by an inability to voluntarily visualize mental imagery”.
I wouldn’t describe myself as having no ability to visualise mental imagery, but my abilities are certainly very limited. Mental images are difficult to summon, low on detail, and extremely fleeting. Oddly, recalling a photo of someone’s face is easier than recalling their face; having someone else do the work of collapsing a three-dimensional human to a two-dimensional image helps a lot. People whom I saw last week on video calls are easier to visualise than the person who has just left the room.
Visual imagination, however? Creating new images from scratch, from my mind? From nothing? Forget it.
If you say “don’t think of a purple horse”, I won’t.
From Wikipedia, I followed a link to Blake Ross’ article describing his aphantasia (the article is on Facebook, always a minefield if you are not signed in). It seems his visualisation skills are considerably worse than mine, but many things still struck a chord: the poor memory for experiences, despite an otherwise-good memory for detail; the terrible sense of direction; the complete inability to explain to someone how you can easily recognise, but not visualise, a face; a lack of emotional attachment to past events.
The scientist who coined the term aphantasia is keen to point out that this is not a disorder, it’s a normal way of being for around 2% of the world. I’ve never felt my lack of visual imagery to be a problem - more that images are just not something I’m especially interested in.
I can imagine things by concept. A drawing of a dragon, with a red autumn leaf for the flames it breathes, is a nice idea. I know that. I can pick up a suitable leaf. I cannot, however, draw the dragon. I can find a picture of dragon, and copy it. I can’t adjust the arms. I can see that they don’t look right; I can’t imagine how to fix them.
When I read a novel, I have no idea what the characters look like. Or the location. Or the layout of the house in which the action takes place (and thank you to everyone who has ever included a map or building plan when plot points hinged on the details). I don’t skip the descriptions. I might even enjoy them, if the words are nicely arranged, or if they evoke an emotion. But I won’t remember - or notice - what colour the hero’s hair is. I won’t understand the route he took. Descriptions of battles - explaining terrain, whose army is where, how the mass of bodies moves in attack and counter-attack - are particularly difficult. I frequently get lost, re-read, get lost again, give up, and move on.
Any mental model I have, either when reading or writing, is entirely derivative. If I need a building, I will use a house I have lived in, or a school I went to. If your description doesn’t match that house I lived in, I probably won’t notice. Recently, some twenty chapters’ into a friend’s first-draft of a novel, I tripped over a few details. A few moments’ consideration revealed that I had mentally (and unconsciously) mapped the race of beings who peopled her pages onto…. Wombles. Had she described her creatures as furry? No. Long, pointy noses? No. Nifty way with litter? Absolutely no. Yet, for some reason, my brain had cheerfully assigned them Womble and ignored any contradictory evidence.
One of the things most commonly said to me by people kind enough to beta-read my stories is: you haven’t described the physical appearance of the characters. Apparently, readers like to be told these things. (Why? You are the ones with the imaginations! You decide what these people look like!) Sometimes I make up a few details at random, shoehorn them into the prose somewhere, and hope that they will pass muster. It feels pointless. More often, now, I agree that I haven’t described them.
There is room for everyone in the writing world. If people would like vivid, imaginative descriptions in their prose then my stories are probably not for them. But who knows? Perhaps 2% of readers can relax with my stories, safe in the knowledge that they don’t need to worry about those details that are, for some of us, irrelevant.