bump if allowed
Sorry, just now noticed this!
Um… It’s a bit hard to explain - it’s just there. 
Ok, so I’ll go through my line-memorization process, maybe that will make it a little clearer?
When I have to memorize actual lines, then I go like this -
I find or create a physical copy of the script that “looks right” to me - lots of white space in the margins, generous spacing between lines, usually separated sections between the different speakers, larger (at least 16-20) font text.
Then I read it. I always read through the entire thing all at once, and then I read it all again within that same day, and then I read it through the third time the next day.
By that third reading, depending on how tired I am, or how odd or unnatural the speech patterns are, or how long the script is, I’m already ‘precognizant’ of some of the lines in the upcoming pages or sections - I know how they are going to run, I’ve memorized some of the passages, and can jump ahead of myself and recite from memory*, and then check myself against the actual text to be sure I’ve got it right.
The first bits are spotty - scattered throughout the text. I’m usually correct with the ones I have, but there are much larger sections that I don’t get at first - those take longer.
If I had to guestimate, I’d say an easy modern-language play where I have a decent sized part - I’d have about 20-25% of it memorized exactly on that second day before I read the text the third time. The remaining 80-75% I wouldn’t know at all. I would know the gist of the play, but the exact lines and phrasing would be totally missing.
I’d say that for that hypothetical “easy play” I would have all of my lines down before the 6th read-through of the script.
Where it bites me is when the director changes the way a set of lines flow part way through rehearsal, or decides to cut a section out, or alter the sequence of the lines. That REALLY throws me off, and I can’t re-write what I’ve learned - I have to change the physical text I read from and start that section over again, and I’m still not as clear on it afterwards. I HATE that.
*So here’s where the “mental picture” of the text comes in.
At first, when I’m just concentrating on learning/remembering the words of the script, whenever I’m “remembering” what I read, it’s like I can see the text as if it were in front of me. Just like a physical page is actually there - It’s easier to focus on if I’m looking at an empty space in reality, or if there isn’t one handy, I unfocus my eyes so everything “real” is blurry and I can see the ‘pages’ in my head more clearly in contrast.
I see where the line breaks are, where the punctuation marks are, if there are any markings or blemishes on the page, where something’s been misspelled - I see it all in my head, and so it’s there while I’m remembering. I can’t say if I’m exactly “reading” it from there, but it is there while I’m reciting, and whichever part I’m working on is more in focus/brighter/clearer than the rest.
If there has been a re-write, then the page looks like it is being edited - its like it’s been typed on twice, with both of the versions showing up on the same page, superimposed on each other. It’s really irritating. If the reciting/rote memorization process goes long enough after the changes are made, then the most used version starts to be darker or more important (not sure how to describe it visually, but it’s more) than the previous version, but the previous version never goes away.
I don’t know how it gets there, but that’s how it works.
Later, when I start acting and learning stage blocking and all that, I start to associate the lines with movement and costume and lighting cues, and that’s what I think of and “see” in my head when I’m rehearsing the actual play. The pages are still there in my mind, but they’re fuzzy and not as important as the memories of moving RIGHT ON THAT WORD, or turning JUST SO so my face catches a light, or something like that.
I think I really GOT that my brains were weird when I first discovered the concept of an open-book, open-notes test. I was totally flabbergasted that anyone would think to test anything that way - what would be the point? Either people remember the material or they remember exactly where the material was in the texts or notes they took - why bother?
I was always the first one to turn in my test.
I was even more astonished when people didn’t do well on those types of tests - how on earth could people not KNOW (and know exactly!) where in the printed material the information was found? 
My brains is weird, yo.
ETA - sorry for monstrous post!
I know you’re experienced in plays but suppose you had to memorize lines equivalent to 50 pages of textbook (if a play can be that long; if not, use normal figures and then convert). You can do it in 3 read-throughs, however long it takes for you to do that?
I don’t know how long your lines are but 1/5th to 1/4th of, say, 3 pages of a speech isn’t hard for me to do after 3 careful read throughs.
However, besides volume, the other difference lies in methodology. When I have to memorize a speech, I verbalize the words, either in my head or aloud.
I have an image of what I had read but I can’t tell you where the punctuation marks are unless I read strictly for those. Even there, I have to already know that there’s a period there. I can’t go scanning for periods in my mind’s image. I can tell you about blemishes and misspellings, because in my head, if I catch a misspelling, I’d go “oh look at that that’s misspelled,” but for punctuation marks I don’t even notice they’re there.
I doubt you read for punctuation, so I guess being able to point out punctuation (like “there’s a period in the middle of line 16 ending that sentence, and the next one is at the left of ‘gooblah’ in line 19” or something like that?)
However you did say that you’re not sure whether you’re reading it off your mental image. I also noticed that you had to read the text 3 times. Can you look at a page without reading it (i.e., without knowing what words occupy that page) and then later read it from your mental image? Just a few quick glances at the page without focusing on the words?
Also, if somebody doesn’t remember something but remembers where it’s located, why wouldn’t an open-book exam be easier?
Besides speed in open book exams, was school really easy for you?
If you had to memorize strictly with an image instead of internal vocalization, how long would it take you to answer a question? Unless you’re a really quick reader of mental images, if you had to go look for the answer in the mental image, it would take you longer to come up with the answer than someone who knows the answer, wouldnt it?
What most people think of as “photographic memory” (for instance, being able to glance once at a page of text and then “read” it later) is impossible. I won’t say that our brains are incapable of it, since our brains are capable of some pretty impressive things, but our eyes just aren’t good enough. There’s only a small spot in our field of vision that captures enough detail to be able to read text, and we read by scanning that small spot over the entire page. I don’t doubt that there are people capable of memorizing pages of a text at a time, but for each page, they’d have to take enough time to scan their eyes over the entire page, which wouldn’t be all that much faster than ordinary reading.
(Sorry, didn’t mean to blow off your questions; I just lost track of the thread. Thanks for bumping.)
It was legible. I memorized it by repeating the verse a few dozen times in my head, over the course of several days, while staring at the card.
It meant that, at least through high school, I had to put very little effort into school or studying. I’d read something once or twice, and retain enough of it that I could easily score well on tests. I got a rude awakening when I went to college, and discovered that I was now expected to learn things in greater detail, and be able to do more than just barf facts back out.
OTOH, despite being a business major in college, I was always interested in science, and had read a lot about various topics (particularly meteorology, astronomy, and physics). I was able to take several “survey-level” classes in the sciences in college, and those were a breeze, because I’d picked up much of that knowledge from casual reading.
For line memorization it’s less an issue of total length and more of the complexity of the phrasing and how familiar or normal it seems to me. It takes me longer to get something down when it is more complex or the speech style is unfamiliar to me. Very phonetically-written accents are especially difficult. When it gets into hugely long parts or plays (a main Shakespearean character, for instance) then I break the play down into acts and do them individually - it’s easier to transfer the info over to rehearsal, and reheasals usually are done by individual acts.
And it’s less that I feel like I’m memorizing **faster **than other people than it is I am memorizing exactly what’s written - I KNOW where all the punctuation is, I KNOW where each line falls on the pages of the script, and I KNOW that I’ve gotten it exactly, word for word for punctuation mark. If I have it, I have it, and if I don’t, there’s nothing there - just a general haze of “this section is about Romeo moping about his thwarted love.” That’s what’s a little weird - I don’t really care about the speed or lack thereof - I just realize that most people don’t learn things that way.
Actually, I do read for punctuation - I read quite a lot, and that’s one of the things that I usually notice especially. Again, I don’t know why.
No, I can’t - I’ve said earlier in the thread that I have to be concentrating, and I have to be trying to remember it for me to get anything - it’s not anything like “photographic” memory where your brain just takes a snapshot of something. Even sometimes when I am trying - it just doesn’t work. For instance, I can’t see numbers and equations the way I see text or images. For some reason, they just don’t stick in my mind. Again, I don’t know why.
If I’m not trying, I’ll get a hazy sense of whatever I was fast enough to read before it was taken away - I read quickly, but I doubt it would make a difference.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. What I was saying was that in my mind, there is no reason to do open-notes or open-book tests, because I thought that everyone remembered exactly where things could be found. If that were the case, it would be pointless to have tests like that. I was obviously wrong, and so it is still a somewhat valid testing method, but it doesn’t work or help someone like me - all it’s testing is my power of precision recall for finding text, and I KNOW I know how to do that!
Yes it was. I’ve always been good with words and with writing, and I am fairly creative and quickwitted. School has been very easy for me. I don’t think I’m particularly smart, just gifted in a way that makes the school environment easy.
I’m not sure what you mean by this question - could you try to rephrase it so I can answer? I don’t want to misunderstand you!
I mean, if you have a passage memorized, then somebody asked you, what does Sally say in line 73, can you respond immediately, or do you say “hold on let me check (with the mental image, not the printed transcript).” Moreover, have you ever done the latter? I can also answer questions immediately; though my answers are usually general, and rarely an exact recitation.
What about the standard Shakespearean play? Macbeth, for instance, isn’t quite conversational by modern standards.
Also, have you always had this ability? Has it become progressively better or worse?
I have the same mental recall mentioned above in that while test taking or the like, I must look off in the distance/toward blank wall and “see” the page where the answer is. I then scan down the page until I find the section where I know the answer is. I can also tell you that the graph or picture you are looking for is approximately 2/3 of the way through the book, on the right hand side, about 1/3 down the page. I can do all this having seen the page only once.
There isn’t any “trying”–it just happens. I didn’t cultivate this skill, it’s just one I noticed gradually. In fact, for the longest time, I thought everyone’s memory worked like this. I could never understand open book exams because how could it be a test? All the info was right there–it seemed like cheating because I knew where every answer was.
I am very useful in trivia games for this same reason although my team mates think it’s weird when I sometimes make them be quiet so I can concentrate on “reading” or “hearing” the answer from a stored memory of a book or movie or tv programs. It is also very useful when reading for entertainment–I can pick up a book and turn right to the page I was on and know the exact word I read last so I know where to pick back up without scanning through it.
Interestingly, having read some above responses, I have almost no sense of direction. I couldn’t give you directions to my house and I have lived here for almost 13 years.
Usually I just ‘know’ what the line is, but I can think back also and recall it either way, depending on where we are in the rehearsal process. Earlier on, I’ll go straight to the script in my head, and later on I’ll try to pull it through memories of the rehearsal, so either way works - through muscle/aural memory or through visualization of the play.
I can’t say that one recall (visual vs aural/muscle) works any faster than the other. I wouldn’t think so.
If I don’t ‘know’ the line instantly, it takes me a few seconds to pull it from my head regardless.
Shakespeare isn’t too weird for me because at this point I’ve been reading and acting in his plays for over 12 years. I’ve gotten used to them.
As an example of something I have had real trouble with - we did a short adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales as an in-class assignment, keeping the play itself in Middle English. It was nearly impossible to get a clear read on those damn lines, because my brain kept trying to make them read as the modern English translation - it was really annoying.
I think it did that because I couldn’t “read” the lines in ME, so my brain fell back on what it actually did read and comprehend, rather than the unfamiliar version I kept insisting on. Eventually I did get it, but it took forever, and they faded away almost as soon as we finished the class production.
In a similar vein, I am only recently able to capture Japanese kana in my mind, because I’ve finally learned all the characters. Before I had them down, I could try to catch a page in my mind, and I’d get an image, but the characters would all be fuzzy, like the page was out of focus. Now that I am able to understand the characters, I’m able to capture them.
Another similar thing happened with a children’s theatre production of Uncle Remus tales - we were using a script written in ‘dialect’ (or what some non-southern person ***thought ***was an accurate representation of dialect), and my brain insisted on changing the dialect into Gullah, which it wasn’t. That one I finally gave up on, and just accepted, because it wasn’t worth it to fight over - the director wasn’t interested enough for me to care about the differences, so in my mind, the script was authentically Gullah, regardless of what the script actually was.
I always *remember *myself as thinking and learning this way - don’t know if it developed at the same time as my “other” memory processes, but I don’t feel that it’s improving or anything.
If I don’t use it regularly for intensive memorization, it gets a little rusty, and then I feel like my brains are all fuzzy because I fall back on my general recall instead of the applied one.
In his autobiography, he said he his memory was very good, but not eidetic. He said that got the reputation for an eidetic memory for pulling up odd facts quickly and often being able to reconstruct the wording well enough and quickly enough to make it sound like he was quoting the text from memory. If anything, that is actually more remarkable than an eidetic memory.
He also mentioned that he was startled how often his memories were wrong when he checked them against his journals while writing his autobiography.
Frankly, I think Google is reducing an eidetic memory to not much more than a parlor trick. After all an eidetic memory only works on things you have read or otherwise encountered. Google works for everything.
I could also do this too, but when I look off into the distance, I can imagine a page but I don’t know exactly what words are on the page. But I can tell you where to find the paragraph you’re looking for, and on what section of the page (but not the exact page number). I’ll usually flip to the range and it’ll probably be within 5 (meaning 2 flips to the left or right and I’m probably there).
However I can only do this with books I’ve read recently. For example I last read my economics textbook 8 months ago and I was trying to recall where a topic (I’ve since returned the book) but the best I could do was that it was on a few pages between 700 and 750.
Do you recall exactly only the last 2 or 3 plays you’ve worked on, or can you recite something you memorized a few years ago?
Also, I know you said you had moderate difficulty with the Middle English Canterbury Tales. Can use your visual memory to recite a language you don’t understand, but whose characters look familiar? French, Spanish, etc. Then you can’t (or maybe you can) really understand the text, so you’d be reading it from your mental image for the first time essentially.
Usually only the most recent one (or the last two if they are very different from each other), but there are parts of individual scripts from way back, and even bits and snippets of text from childhood that seem to be pretty much permanent at this point - those are only individual pages, however.
(bolding mine for emphasis)
I don’t know! It’s interesting. I can muddle about in French just enough to get in trouble, and I know I’ve done plays with a few French phrases in them, but I can’t think of anything I’ve done with any of the other romance languages that I don’t know… that’s a very interesting question! The closest I can think would be Latin phrases in a textbook or something, but I don’t ever remember trying to capture any pages like that.
I’ll have to try it and see what happens!