In the first writing class I took, my teacher generally praised my writing, but remarked with increasing concern that my stories seemed to take place in a “white room.” He said that my work was suffering from some White Room Syndrome adjacent problem. In particular, he thought it was strange that my stories would include all the other senses, except visual. I would tell readers about smells, sounds, textures, but I wasn’t describing what things looked like. Over the course of that first class, I learned to insert visual details. Colors, shapes, shading. “Don’t just tell what the couch felt like. Tell what it looked like,” he said to me.
For a very long time, I assumed this was part of the learning curve. I knew that writers described what things looked like in books, but when I was writing, it wasn’t a natural part of my process. I had to learn to do it. Frequently, when I’m writing a first draft, that’s the last thing I do. I go back and I put in visual descriptors. I have to do it mechanically, because otherwise I forget. So it goes on a to-do list along with things like Delete 90% of the times you wrote just or even.
It’s strange the things you get used to, because I haven’t thought about it much in the intervening years. Then, last month, I saw a graphic that pinged something deep inside my brain. Sadly, I can’t find the actual graphic that made me think about it, so you’ll have to make do with this one.
You’ll understand how little thought I’ve given this in my life, when I say that my reaction was: “Wait! Some people see actual pictures?” I know that everyone has a different brain that works its own way, but it really had never occurred to me that some people might be imagining full color renders of objects in their minds, because mine is completely without a visual component. Now that I understand what a wide range of situations exist in terms of imagination, I’ve been asking everybody I know about what they see when they imagine things. I’ve racked up a dozen people who feel they’re in the 3 zone, but also a solid half dozen who say they are 1s, including a friend who sees entirely realistic movies in their head. (I’m a little jealous of that, and also a bit tormented by the fact that even the word imagination seems to suggest that the source of creativity is a visual process.)
All of those people who have mental imagery have asked me the same question: How do you write books without being able to visualize things? Turns out, my brain is a lot different than I thought it was, because I’m working entirely without any pictures in my head. It’s totally black in there*. So when I’m imagining a scene–say Kellen crashing his motorcycle and being found by Wavy–I’m experiencing that scene. I’m mentally creating what the air feels like. Temperature, humidity, smells. I’m experiencing sounds, including dialogue. I’m crafting a sense of the characters. How much space they take up, how they move, how it feels to be inside their skin. Later, I have to put in visual elements, because those don’t come along with all the other stuff. I have to manufacture visuals very purposefully out of things I’ve seen. I can imagine things I haven’t seen, but I’m still starting primarily from a spatial understanding of things, rather than a visual one.
If I’m writing a scene that needs to be carefully staged, where I have to know exactly where everything and everyone is, I map it out on paper. That’s not even the weird part. The weird part is that what’s inside my head isn’t always what I map out, because so much of what I create is based on a sense of spatial awareness that doesn’t always translate into visuals. So I’ll create a map to write the scene, but it’s not what I imagine in my head, even after the scene is written. This isn’t a big deal, except sometimes it takes many drafts for me to be able to write a correctly mapped scene, because the overlay in my head doesn’t line up.
In short, I’m not writing in a white room, I’m writing in a dark room. I don’t see the things I write. I only sense them. The same is true of my memories. They don’t come with pictures, just a sense of the place where they happened. I guess that means I’m living in a dark room, too.
*I have one visual element that occurs when I’ve had my eyes closed for a long time. In that ten or fifteen minutes before I fall asleep, I see what I have always called The Quasar. It’s a black circular object against a black field. It’s only visible because it has a ring of light around it, brighter on one side than the other, that rotates. While I’m “looking” at it, I can control the speed of the rotation, but when I’m passively experiencing it, the rotation is slow and steady. It feels a little like a lighthouse beacon, the beam slowly rotating to warn ships away from the rocks. I’ve always assumed it’s some kind of weird optical nerve thing.
Well no wonder your character development is second to none. We experience the character him/her/itself…through the setting and senses. This makes so much sense to me now. Cheers to you for having written two of the only books that still stick with me years later. Brava.
Somebody once suggested that I’m doing “method writing.” Idk if that’s true, but I do end up inhabiting characters.
Your writing is so brilliant and evocative, I guess this method is working for you!
That’s how I comfort myself with all my chaotic writing habits: well, it’s working for me! Hope that continues.
This falls solidly under Things I’ve never really thought about that make sense. I love your writing. Learning a bit more about how you build these worlds is fascinating. I’m also trying to figure out what happens when I think about an apple.
I hadn’t given it much thought until a saw that graphic that finally helped me understand what other people do inside their brains. I spend about 10 mins a day (while wearing my special warm compress for eye problems) trying to make myself visualize things. So far … nothing.
I’m reading a fantasy-type novel that I can barely get through, because I’m a 1. I get so very lost in her descriptions that run simultaneously in my head that I can only get through a few pages or maybe a short chapter at a time. It’s like watching a full on movie while reading. I realized later in life that “quick” reading of novels was never going to happen, but I could get through tons of academic writing, because it doesn’t elicit the same visuals. But when I wrote my dissertation, my interviewees’ words might put me at a 4 (thankfully!). Couldn’t have finished writing it otherwise, I don’t think. P.S. Happy to see you so successful and out of the literal “dark room” that was Wescoe.
I still hope for Wescoe to collapse while everyone is gone overnight. Just on principle.
Or something a bit more dramatic like the near-final scene of “Poltergeist” – all crunching and writhing into oblivion.
Satan coming to reclaim his summer palace.
When I finally learned the word Aphantasia to describe my lack of mental pictures several years ago, so much more made sense!! (I am a 5 on the scale you shared.) I am a voracious reader and used to also write. One professor in college once remarked that I was great at dialogue. I still prefer books with a lot of dialogue. When it gets too descriptive for me I tend to start skimming because I am not SEEING those things—I don’t need you to drone on about the shape of a leaf. I don’t read in voices. I don’t see the characters in my head. But I FEEL them, and I absolutely get a lot out of reading. It’s just more of a VIBE for me. So hard to describe! Thank you for sharing.