I have partial facial blindness which makes it hard to picture faces that aren’t super familiar and I can’t create new faces in my head. I end up picturing faces of people I know and celebrities.
It becomes frustrating when I’m reading as the faces morph constantly into my head. I constantly stop to get the faces right. Sydney Sweeney ended up as 2 characters when I read “Bunny” lol. I also get a biased view of the characters this way. It makes it really hard to enjoy reading nowadays. Any suggestions? Different strategies for picturing or reading without picturing?
Oh this is actually a topic I got weirdly fascinated with and I think it’s related to whether or not a person thinks in words or images. It started when I asked my bilingual mother what language she thinks in and she said “What do you mean? Thoughts are pictures.” I think in words and this was absolutely wild to me. I can visualize things if I try, but by default I just hear the words in my head.
Turns out she’s a slower reader than me because she’s visualizing every detail by default. Meanwhile, I just read words and get the general emotions. But apparently most of the world is split into word-thinkers and picture-thinkers.
In short, I don’t picture faces at all. But if you’re usually a visual thinker, I’m guessing your facial blindness is conflicting with that. Not sure there’s a real answer to that conflict other than trying to let it go, but you might find this interesting: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/16/how-should-we-think-about-our-different-styles-of-thinking
I can’t picture faces, can’t picture anything so I don’t.
I don’t have facial blindness but I don’t usually picture faces either. Characters are like background figures in a painting, reduced to only their most striking features which can still be captured at the scale of a small brush stroke. It would be like asking me how to imagine the specific grain on a wooden floor board, that level of detail would just never occur to me.
some authors clearly describe facial features and others don’t - if you want, after reading a description, google a similar type face for use as a reference?
I have a very vivid imagination while reading, to the point where I can almost forget that I am reading, like a movie playing in my head.
And while I do not have facial blindness, I try to not see faces of characters unless I am reading after having seen a tv/movie adaptation in which case it is near impossible not to see the characters from the screen while reading.
I instead try very hard to go by shapes starting from a blank canvas which is like a faceless mannequin or the of one with details filled out by what i read, such as a red lipstick, purple eyes or a smirk but it’s more like clear details on an otherwise blurry/faceless mannequin.