Visualizing Characters

[lupinesque]

Ann wrote:

> I don't actually visualize characters and settings as
> I read.  I focus almost solely upon the words I am
> currently reading--I don't picture Harry as a boy with
> messy black hair, green eyes and a scar unless JKR
> specifically mentions any of those characteristics in
> the passage that I'm reading.  I've always assumed
> that Hogwarts was multi-racial/ethnic, but I've never
> really drawn up a mental image of any of those
> characters.  The characters, to me, are names,
> personalities and actions--their physical selves don't
> really impact upon me.
> 
> In short, I'm curious as to how other people read.  Do
> you having a 'movie' running parallel to the words
> you're reading?  Or does anyone out there understand
> what I said in the above paragraph and find that it
> applies to them as well?

Hi, Ann!  Welcome to the list!

For me it's an "it depends."  Some characters have a vivid visual 
presence in my mind, while others are "names, personalities, and 
actions," with only very occasional visual flashes.  There doesn't 
seem to be any correlation with how well or often they are described; 
e.g. I haven't much of a visual Harry walking around in my head as I 
read, whereas I do tend to visualize Ron and Hermione quite a lot.  
But it all varies.

Now that you've asked this question, it occurs to me that the trouble 
with movies (and to a lesser extent, illustrations) is not so much 
that they replace my mental images with those of the director, but 
that they put images into my head at all, when what is in my head as I 
read is largely something non-visual.

That's the case with characters, anyway.  My mental image of *places* 
is much stronger, and more indelible (less delible?).  As I read now, 
post-movie, I fight to keep the movie people-images out of my head, 
but the movie *place-images* can't hold a candle to the ones I've been 
imagining.  I know what the room with the Mirror of Erised looks like, 
and that thing in the movie is just a pretender.

To ramble away from the topic, this reminds me of the most difficult 
homesickness I've ever suffered, which was when I was on a foreign 
study program 10,000 miles away from home.  I missed parents and 
boyfriend, but the most powerful waves of homesickness took the form 
of flashes of place-memory; e.g., opening the padlock on my room door 
brought on a memory of the garage door at home that could bring me 
close to tears.

Amy Z
wondering if this means she loves places more than people