Aphantasia, Can You Imagine?

[Frylock]

@Aspidistra

Speaking for myself, I love all kinds of fiction, but when I first found out about the visualiser/non-visualiser split, it was a real epiphany regarding the types of fiction I like. Aha! So that’s why Tolkein wrote all those pages and pages and PAGES about mountains and rivers and trees - he’s not being obtuse, he’s writing for his constituency. There are all these people out there who actually see rich vivid images as a result of reading this sort of stuff, while I’m crawling through it like a woman in a desert whispering “Dialogue! …must … have … dialogue …”

Yup, I’m a weak visualizer–I visualize, but only in brief flashes and it takes something of an act of will–and I skip every paragraph which looks like it’s just going to be visual descriptions. This means I miss some important things sometimes…