Aphantasia – versus, visualising your story with your ‘minds eye’.

[Bramblethorn]

Quite. My query isn't about the experience of recall or recognition - the processing of given information. It's about creative visualisation. I don't recall dreams, but I know I dream, I know dreams are visual and I know that the settings of the dreams, the characters in the dreams, and the behaviour of those characters are out of the control of the dreamer. Sometimes people appear to me to describe their experience of story creation being like that. That's not my experience. Do some writers have a dream-like experience, with accompanying visual imagery, when creating fictitious stories.

FWIW, my dreams aren't visual. They're more like reading a bare-bones story. The dream might occasionally provide some piece of visualisable description but it's nothing like watching a movie.

I have some capacity for lucid dreaming: at some level I'm usually aware that I'm dreaming, and if I don't like the way the dream is going I can rewrite it or end it.

 

[SimonDoom]

FWIW, my dreams aren't visual. They're more like reading a bare-bones story. The dream might occasionally provide some piece of visualisable description but it's nothing like watching a movie.

I have some capacity for lucid dreaming: at some level I'm usually aware that I'm dreaming, and if I don't like the way the dream is going I can rewrite it or end it.

Very interesting. My dreams tend to be the opposite. They're visual, but the visuals are surrealistic and incomplete. There is no steady narrative. One minute one thing is going on, and the next the story has completely shifted. I can picture someone in my dream, sort of, but half a scene later they might be a different person, or an amalgam of different people I know. The result is that when I wake up I can remember images from my dream, but no clear narrative. I have a sense of what happened, but that's it.

I've had lucid dreams where, briefly, I am aware that I'm dreaming, and I think to myself: what an amazing opportunity to direct my dream and control what happens. My goals in those cases often are erotic in nature. But the goals slip away as I drift more deeply into sleep and have less control, or, instead, and more likely, I just wake up.

 

[XerXesXu]

You're simplifying, I think, or at least generalizing based on your own experiences. Lucid dreamers regularly control their own dreams, and sleep researchers claim anyone can learn to do lucid dreaming. They'd know more about it than I do, and it's all very well-documented.

My experience when writing is not dreamlike, but when it's going well? It's most definitely subconscious. Meaning, I start with a vague feeling about what I want to describe, then my brain generates the words without too much conscious thought. Every now and then I realize I wanted to use a different word or phrase, so I go back a few lines, change it, and then move on. And all the while, I'm seeing the setting in what poets would call "my mind's eye," and I'm seeing it very very clearly.

In fact, I think part of what enables me to write this way is the clarity of that visualization. It's not as if I'm writing my own story. It's as if I'm chronicling something I see happening.

OK. That sounds a lot like not visualising, but describing your experience with poetic licence. That's why I raised the question, do some writers experience what they describe as their experience, or are they using poetic licence to describe eg: my experience. It's not a question about imagination, you need no visual sense to imagine a smell, the question is about about visual experience.

 

[Voboy]

OK. That sounds a lot like not visualising, but describing your experience with poetic licence. That's why I raised the question, do some writers experience what they describe as their experience, or are they using poetic licence to describe eg: my experience. It's not a question about imagination, you need no visual sense to imagine a smell, the question is about about visual experience.

It's odd to me that you'd presume you know better about my process than I do.

If you're going to insist on labeling these things, I'll just say that I see them as a set of distinctions without a difference. We are now, officially, debating how many angels dance on the head of a pin.

I simply write. I'll keep doing that. You do you.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Do some writers have a dream-like experience, with accompanying visual imagery, when creating fictitious stories.

In my case, the answer to your question is yes. When I work on a story, one of the first things I do, is to concentrate on the story in mind as I fall to sleep. At times, when I do this, I dream of my story during the night. But regardless of whether I dream about the story or not, often, in the morning I have a clear vision of the story. And yes, I see it in my minds eye.

 

[ElectricBlue]

OK. That sounds a lot like not visualising, but describing your experience with poetic licence. That's why I raised the question, do some writers experience what they describe as their experience, or are they using poetic licence to describe eg: my experience. It's not a question about imagination, you need no visual sense to imagine a smell, the question is about about visual experience.

XXX, you're continuing to frame your enquiries in a way that still doubts us visual thinkers. First it was hyberbole, then it was grand exaggeration, and now it's poetic licence. Your language is a construct that says, in effect, we're making shit up.

If you are not a visualiser, then that is how your brain works. But for people who do visualise, that is how their brains work, as evidenced by the multiplicity of responses given in this thread. Perhaps you should try to better understand that, because what this feels like, frankly, is that you're trying to intellectualise us out of existence because we don't think the way you do.

And here's another one for you - some people associate a colour with certain smells, and vice versa. Some people associate numbers or certain words with colours. Some people see colours when they listen to music. A woman I know orgasms in different colours. I don't do any of these things, but I don't not believe them. Go read Oliver Sacks - he wrote some fascinating books on exactly this subject.

 

[XerXesXu]

XXX, you're continuing to frame your enquiries in a way that still doubts us visual thinkers. First it was hyberbole, then it was grand exaggeration, and now it's poetic licence. Your language is a construct that says, in effect, we're making shit up.

If you are not a visualiser, then that is how your brain works. But for people who do visualise, that is how their brains work, as evidenced by the multiplicity of responses given in this thread. Perhaps you should try to better understand that, because what this feels like, frankly, is that you're trying to intellectualise us out of existence because we don't think the way you do.

And here's another one for you - some people associate a colour with certain smells, and vice versa. Some people associate numbers or certain words with colours. Some people see colours when they listen to music. A woman I know orgasms in different colours. I don't do any of these things, but I don't not believe them. Go read Oliver Sacks - he wrote some fascinating books on exactly this subject.

This is not a question about imagination, (who put the image in imagination), it’s about Phantasia/Aphantasia. There’s a reason a new word was recently coined:

Aphantasia - Wikipedia.

Lifestyle66 at #42 says:

“When I look at a topographic map, I "see" in my mind's eye how the terrain around me is shaped. It sort of jumps up from the paper in my mind so I can manipulate and turn it around to pick my way across the ground. I can walk for miles through a jungle and come out EXACTLY where I need to be, by visualizing the terrain and reading the map.”
NB “see” is in inverted commas.

And at #45, of navigating in dense tropical jungle, he says:

“Starting from a known point, that 20 yards visibility was all I needed to following the brown lines and anticipate what was ahead to avoid the worst terrain.”

Now, I’ve never seen a topographical map that resolves up and down undulations over a distance of 20m or so. In dense tropical rain forest it’s dark, every direction you look in, there's jungle, the trees rise, sometimes hundreds of feet, to the canopy which depletes the available light. When the sun breaks through, the sunlight is reflected off the wet leaves, so you may not be able to tell the position of the sun in the sky.

To me, maybe not to you, Lifestyle66 seems to possess a supernatural ability, way beyond either imagination or visualisation.

I believe, he’s being hyperbolic, indulging in grand exaggeration. I’d take a lot of convincing that he’s not.

I can’t see your mental processes, nor you mine, so how can we know whether they’re the same or different – only by what people report. but how do you know whether the different -reports are different ways of describing the same underlying phenomenon? How can you demonstrate that imagination is different to visual imagery?



Reading the interesting responses, I’ve swung both ways, so far as I’m concerned, the matter remains unresolved.



Some people may be overinvested in their imagined, cognitive gifts, and that may give rise to exaggeration.

 

[Voboy]

I believe, he’s being hyperbolic, indulging in grand exaggeration. I’d take a lot of convincing that he’s not.

Can you imagine a world where he's not trying to convince you? Because he's not interested in trying?

What he said about topos made perfect sense to me. If it doesn't to you, well, then that's the difference between you and him. That's as far as it goes. There doesn't have to be a reason behind it, and you don't need to understand everything he (or I, or my pet Airedale) thinks or feels.

In your world, if you don't comprehend it, then that must mean others are being hyperbolic. I've learned enough about you to know that you don't care how self-centered that is. Fine by me.

But some of us just don't really care to try to make you understand. Some of us are continuing our discussion in spite of you, not because of you.

 

[Lifestyle66]

This is not a question about imagination, (who put the image in imagination), it’s about Phantasia/Aphantasia. There’s a reason a new word was recently coined:

Aphantasia - Wikipedia.

Lifestyle66 at #42 says:

“When I look at a topographic map, I "see" in my mind's eye how the terrain around me is shaped. It sort of jumps up from the paper in my mind so I can manipulate and turn it around to pick my way across the ground. I can walk for miles through a jungle and come out EXACTLY where I need to be, by visualizing the terrain and reading the map.”
NB “see” is in inverted commas.

And at #45, of navigating in dense tropical jungle, he says:

“Starting from a known point, that 20 yards visibility was all I needed to following the brown lines and anticipate what was ahead to avoid the worst terrain.”

Now, I’ve never seen a topographical map that resolves up and down undulations over a distance of 20m or so. In dense tropical rain forest it’s dark, every direction you look in, there's jungle, the trees rise, sometimes hundreds of feet, to the canopy which depletes the available light. When the sun breaks through, the sunlight is reflected off the wet leaves, so you may not be able to tell the position of the sun in the sky.

To me, maybe not to you, Lifestyle66 seems to possess a supernatural ability, way beyond either imagination or visualisation.

I believe, he’s being hyperbolic, indulging in grand exaggeration. I’d take a lot of convincing that he’s not.

I can’t see your mental processes, nor you mine, so how can we know whether they’re the same or different – only by what people report. but how do you know whether the different -reports are different ways of describing the same underlying phenomenon? How can you demonstrate that imagination is different to visual imagery?



Reading the interesting responses, I’ve swung both ways, so far as I’m concerned, the matter remains unresolved.



Some people may be overinvested in their imagined, cognitive gifts, and that may give rise to exaggeration.

Believe what you will. Some will NEVER see the forest from the trees.

But as I also said, when I exit the jungle ten miles later to meet you on the road, YOU can only believe in fraud or magic. You make your own choice to learn something ...or not.

 

[XerXesXu]

Believe what you will. Some will NEVER see the forest from the trees.

But as I also said, when I exit the jungle ten miles later to meet you on the road, YOU can only believe in fraud or magic. You make your own choice to learn something ...or not.

Where did you get your magic topographical map that resolved to 20m, or so? I'll buy one.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Where did you get your magic topographical map that resolved to 20m, or so? I'll buy one.

Don't waste your money, because you can't see it.

 

[XerXesXu]

Don't waste your money, because you can't see it.

Oh, but I insist. I wouldn't consider it a waste of money. I'd consider buying any other topographical map a waste of money.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Where did you get your magic topographical map that resolved to 20m, or so? I'll buy one.

I typed into my browser, "typical vertical.scale on a topographical map", and this is what I got, the very first entry:

Most maps will have either a 40 or 80-foot contour interval, which means that each contour line is 40 to 80 vertical feet away from the next closest line. You can find the contour interval for your topographic map in the legend. Once in a while, a circle will indicate a depression rather than a peak.

There you go: twenty metres is bang in the middle of that range. You need to buy more maps.

 

[XerXesXu]

I typed into my browser, "typical vertical.scale on a topographical map", and this is what I got, the very first entry:

There you go: twenty metres is bang in the middle of that range. You need to buy more maps.

The reason you typed that into google is because you didn't know what it means. Try again.

 

[GrushaVashnadze]

I’ve often been fascinated by the way posters here, describe their experiences of reading and writing, and wondered whether there was an element of hyperbole involved. I ‘know’, but I don’t ‘see with my mind’s eye’. Nor do I remember dreams. I’m just wondering how intensely others experience visualisation when reading or writing creatively and how important it is to them.

Fascinating that so far this conversation has concentrated on "seeing with the mind's eye". I wonder whether there are others here who "hear with the mind's ear" when writing stories. I do, a lot - which is perhaps why my stories include a lot of auditory scene-setting and soundscapes, such as

music, e.g. from Metamorphoses ch. 01:

Ich komme, ich komme, grünende Brüder...
"I am coming, I am coming," I sing, as my soft arms extend heavenwards -- curling, flexing, fashioning out of my imagination leaves, vines, boughs of ash and laurel -- as I embrace the gift of mother-goddess to water-nymph. Below me, strings churn and gambol, myriad-divided, like the viridescent light which shines dappled through my branches. Sinewy lines of unseen woodwind twist and twine upwards. "I am coming, my verdant brothers. Sweetly rises in me the sap of the earth." Süß durchströmt mich der Erde Saft...
Violins shimmer, clarionet triplets caress my supple bark, a single hautboy ascends plaintively from earth to orb, eliciting my delicate echo, which soars where my soul has always been destined to fly. Violoncello flageolets bear me skywards, hovering between F-sharp major and a dissonant dominant seventh. "Gather my branches... accept me as a sign of eternal love..." Nehmt mich als Zeichen einziger Liebe... I sing, as my pentatonic ostinato fades into eternity. I am she who has been transformed.

and conversation heard through closed doors, plus a lot of dialect and dirty talk, e.g. from Alison Goes to London ch. 15:

There was another change of tone from behind Dr Dick's door, as Claire and Alison heard Riley shouting, "In me cunt?! Nah, come on, Doctor Dick, cunt is for pussies! Ram that dick in me fuckin' arse -- go on, poke that long fuckin' cock of yours deep inside me shit-hole, see wha' you can find there!"
"Oh, she's very common, isn't she?" grimaced Alison.
Claire laughed. "I don't think Dick-Dick will mind. You know how he loves 'arse'!"
Riley's stream of verbal filth was getting louder and more and more obscene: "You like explorin' me filthy fuckin' arse, Doctor Dick? What can you find in me shitter? Somefink to take 'ome for the wife? Go on, poke that cock even deeper, professor -- maybe there's somefink there for your mum as well! You gonna fuckin' spray-clean it wiv all your fuckin' cum? You wanna see your cum swillin' around in me gapin' arse after you've fucked it?"
Claire and Alison listened, transfixed, mouths agape. "Oh, she's so filthy!" giggled Alison, as they heard Dick-Dick's moans indicate his impending orgasm.
"Coming from you, that's fine praise!" grinned Claire.
Riley was not letting up, and Dick-Dick was clearly not holding back, as Riley bellowed, "Oh yeah, that's it, Doctor Dickhead, squirt your fuckin' cum in me arse! That's so fuckin' good! You wanna watch me eat your fuckin' cum from me brown 'ole? You wanna watch me fuckin' gargle your cream ou' o' me arse? You wanna watch me fuckin' drink it down after it's been swillin' around in me dirty fuckin' shit-hole? Yeah FUUUUUUUUUCK!!!"
A bell rang, indicating the end of lunch break, but temporarily blocking the sound of the latter part of Dr Dick's orgasm. Then, as the bell ceased, Alison and Claire heard a series of slurping sounds from within the office, followed by a long noisy gargle, and then a loud burp. "Oh yeah, Doctor Dickhead," came Riley's voice, "that's fuckin' tasty cum, that is. And it's even better out o' me arsehole!"
"Oh my fucking God!" exclaimed Claire. "She's amazing!"

 

[ElectricBlue]

The reason you typed that into google is because you didn't know what it means. Try again.

My God, you are a twat. I was walking around Britain fifty years ago using Ordnance Survey maps to show me where the hills were and how steep the tracks. What I didn't know was the typical contour line gap - which of course depends on the scale of the map. But, twenty metre contours = typical, whereas you claim they are elusive and rare.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Where did you get your magic topographical map that resolved to 20m, or so? I'll buy one.

You're living in the past, man... The 1:25k series of maps here use 10m contour intervals. Our district has LIDAR contours the State ran over our area that resolve to 2m contours over a few thousand km2. They are publicly available to buy.

First up, I haven't read everything here but the comment about topo maps struck a chord. Years ago in High School, I used to compete in Orienteering at the State level. The topo maps of the area were at 1m intervals. I could look at the map, visualise the best route, and run to the point rarely needing to refresh my memory. Others took time to plot the route with compass bearings.

People view things in different ways. My wife teaches adults with difficulties and her challenge is finding the best way to get through their reluctance. Generalisation is not productive.

Now excuse me, I'm off to debate if my mc is going to be completely dissolved from the inside or just lose about 1/3 of her body weight.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

I think that some of the misunderstanding between XerXesXu and some of you might stem from the fact you're talking topo-mappese, and he might not be fluent in that. And I believe no one actually explained to him what "contour line gap" is. (I had to look it up to make sure I understood well, because my topo-mappese is Flemish).

For the record, on the maps we used in scouting (1:25k) for the area where I lived, when I was young, the contour line gap was one meter. A twenty meter gap would have been pretty useless (with high points around 100m and low points around 30m).

 

[XerXesXu]

My God, you are a twat. I was walking around Britain fifty years ago using Ordnance Survey maps to show me where the hills were and how steep the tracks. What I didn't know was the typical contour line gap - which of course depends on the scale of the map. But, twenty metre contours = typical, whereas you claim they are elusive and rare.

There speaks a man who's never been in the Equatorial Rainforest. At a stretch, you might find your way around Dartmoor, or the Brecon Beacons, on a fine day.

This is a beautiful video of the Amazon rainforest on a fine day. The same as they have in Belize. Study it carefully (if you see a road, make a careful note, that's where we meet up with Lifestyle66). Note how off-river, the surface is very irregular.
Amazon Rain Forest.
Notice the lovely trees, see how closely they're packed, how tall they grow - 20, 30 even 40 metres. I'll bet you saw nothing like that driving down the M6.Their canopy conceals the ground. That's why the vertical resolution on a topographical map of rainforest is usually 20 metres.

Topographical maps are only approximate, except those of billiard balls, but nature never deals in billiard balls. In addition to vertical resolution topographical maps have a horizontal resolution, you couldn’t locate yourself otherwise. The horizontal resolution makes the vertical resolution look almost like a precision measurement. A single inch along the contour line is a best fit curve which can vary up and down by 20 metres.

If you draw a line at right angles to a contour line, neither line represents the underlying terrain. The terrain in either direction undulates, considerably.

Now Lifestyle66 says he can see 20metres horizontally and that’ll enable him to navigate his way to the road of which you made a careful note. As you can see, I hope, that’s not possible, because the contour map he’s memorised doesn’t represent the underlying terrain, it’s a very crude approximation. He could navigate his way around a billiard ball from memory of it’s topographical map, but not the rainforest. On an overcast and rainy day, you can’t tell whether you going up the gradient, down the gradient right along the contour, or left along the contour, without a map and compass, because it’s up and down in all directions.

For those reasons, I believe Lifestyle 66 exaggerated his visualisation abilities. People often exaggerate, and that can cause confusion.


I'm having great difficulties with the new 'Opps' feature.

 

[XerXesXu]

You're living in the past, man... The 1:25k series of maps here use 10m contour intervals. Our district has LIDAR contours the State ran over our area that resolve to 2m contours over a few thousand km2. They are publicly available to buy.

First up, I haven't read everything here but the comment about topo maps struck a chord. Years ago in High School, I used to compete in Orienteering at the State level. The topo maps of the area were at 1m intervals. I could look at the map, visualise the best route, and run to the point rarely needing to refresh my memory. Others took time to plot the route with compass bearings.

People view things in different ways. My wife teaches adults with difficulties and her challenge is finding the best way to get through their reluctance. Generalisation is not productive.

Now excuse me, I'm off to debate if my mc is going to be completely dissolved from the inside or just lose about 1/3 of her body weight.

I see you guys don't get out much.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I see you guys don't get out much.

Right...
And this is why I don't visit the GB.
I'll leave you to your windmills.

 

[ElectricBlue]

There speaks a man who's never been in the Equatorial Rainforest. At a stretch, you might find your way around Dartmoor, or the Brecon Beacons, on a fine day.

This is relevant how, exactly?

 

[Voboy]

I think that some of the misunderstanding between XerXesXu and some of you might stem from the fact you're talking topo-mappese, and he might not be fluent in that.

You are not the first to give XXX the benefit of the doubt. It's a laudable impulse, but sadly misguided.

I'm afraid he really is just a jerk. He is fond of lobbing conversational grenades that lead to interesting discussions, which he then returns to shit all over.

 

[Lifestyle66]

XerXesXu first asks a question about describing visualization by naming a condition where someone cannot visualize.

He then claims any descriptions of a mind's eye experience is merely hyperbole or the author using poetic license. His logic is you can't see a smell, or that a map contour interval of 20m cannot be used to visualize the spot he found with square miles of swamp. Could it be there exists a spot so flat that it is 2-D? And he then says that I claim I could navigate around a billiard ball by visualization.

Interesting exaggerations. But then, he is an author ... in his mind's eye.

 

[TadOverdon]

It's a mix for me depending on what I'm writing. Some experiences I describe based on analogy to similar but not identical experiences I've had, some are vivid in my mind and others are entirely visual research - pictures and video.

I wonder idly sometimes whether a hypothetical reader who cared enough to wonder could sort these out in reading. I suspect that one could, at least the "researched" ones.