Does Yea Forums visualize characters in prose?
...and how do you do it?
>he had a high forehead
>his jaw was...
>etc.
If I try to do this, I'll end up with a random face from Oblivion. So I tend to use stock characters (actors, paintings, friends) or not visualize at all.
i have the good-at-visualization gene
>I'll end up with a random face from Oblivion
kek, me too. It's interesting, but some of the most vivid and clear imagery I've ever had of what a character looks like comes from writing where you get a sense of their character without detailed descriptions. Like Dickens, where you get a sense of who they are from their name alone: Magwitch, Steerforth, Estella etc
I always do. If no description is ever given, I usually make up the character myself.
Just to blog, but after I finish reading a novel that I really love, I reimagine the entire book in my head as a theatrical play.
>I reimagine the entire book in my head as a theatrical play.
This happens to me in my dreams sometimes
Visualizing is what brainlets do, might as well watch moobies or play bideogames. Literature is meant to enjoyed on the plane of abstract.
Visualization is an automatic unconcious process for me
I either get a randomly generated shape or it becomes some person from my life
For example the image of Jason from the Sound and the Fury is my old math teacher
No, I don't do it. I just have this vague idea of the character
You're the type of guy that reads to show off aka pseud
What's even the point in visualizing characters? Physical appearance is the least accurate portrayal of character, unless they're women.
t. optics-obsessed woman
>never depicts a single fucking face
>narrator always call every character in their improvised surname
>wins manbooker anyway
>plebs so mad at this, rate 1 star because they can't read if the guy is not confirmed to be handsome
by the way is OP pic good? or just a random computer science textbook?
>writer gives a description of a character
>50 pages later
>"Oh btw, this character also has a thick handlebar mustache, burn marks on his face and walks with a limp :^)"
The assumption of every pre-1970s writer that all men are constantly wearing hats jolts me out of reading almost every time. I'll have a good idea of a character and then they'll take their hat off or adjust it or it'll fall off and I'll be like fuck, not again.
Hmm, not perfectly, i have a very dark shadow in my mind about the characters, i can't explain because i keep them extremely abstract. For me it's more about the feelings, gestures, thoughts, etc about the character. I also don't usually retain in my memory the name of the character unless their name isn't arbitrary. (Paul is a poor boy, Mrs. Oak is strong, real exemple: names on Notre Dame Des Fleurs)
I think every way of imagining is fine, more abstract or more concrete.
not while i'm reading, but sometimes afterwards
Oh! Just remembered, sometimes i imagine the author as EVERY single character (it depends on the story), like a single-person theatre.
No. The way I see it, physical characteristics are just meant to communicate traits and contextualize the way that characters interact with one another.
I only have a vague composite idea in my head when I think about what a character would look like.
Pretty much. Deus ex machina in plot is one thing, but late-exposition armor is far worse.
Watched shitloads of movies before starting to read, sometimes I 'cast' real actors that would fit the characters personality. I can't really control it.
I'm so purple it hurts.
People don't understand my grammar when I actually start conversing earnestly.
I used the term 'salad days' with gf last month and she thought I was referring to a vegetarian phase.
Sometimes I just pluck faces, or certain attributes, from people I know or even actors.
Example: I couldn't stop imagining Slothrop in GR as Tony Curtis, because he fit with that camp post-war comedy