Can You Be a Writer if You’re Not a Visual Reader?
By Catherine McKenzie | June 7, 2018 |
I was recently giving a book talk in New York when I mentioned that I wasn’t a visual reader. By this I mean: I don’t imagine what characters and places look like when I read; I focus on the story.
A member of the audience was stunned: How could I write stories, he asked, if I didn’t visualize them?
It got me thinking: How do I do that?
The fact that I’m not a visual person isn’t new to me, of course. I also have a terrible time with names; I remember faces, dialogue (sometimes too well) and emotions (also sometimes too well). I’m sure there’s a medical name for this (like that condition where people can’t remember faces, but the opposite), but if so, I’m not aware of it. It’s something that I had to compensate for early on in my writing career when I realized that most initial drafts of any chapter were coming out as 95% dialogue. I knew that this is not what a page from a book was supposed to look like, so I devised what I call the “360-method” to compensate for it.
Here’s how it works: I draft a chapter, as I said, based mostly on dialogue (or if I’m doing backstory, on prose but still remembering conversations and action and emotion). As I’m writing I “hear” the voices of the characters conversing—the inflections, the emotion—and I try to imbue that into the dialogue without a lot of dialogue tags (She exclaimed! She explained. She said). Then, I go back to the beginning when my character first enters the room or space that they are occupying for the scene. If I haven’t described it (or the person they’re speaking to yet), then I literally turn my character around in a circle (in my mind) and have them describe a few elements in the room and a few things about the person they’re talking to.
Here’s an example from my forthcoming novel, I’ll Never Tell (releasing in April 2019). A character named Margaux has just arrived at her family’s summer camp in her car and parked it.
Someone rapped on her windshield. She shrieked and dropped her phone to the floor.
“Sean! Goddammit, you scared the living daylights out of me.”
He cupped his hand around his right ear, then made a motion for her to roll down her window. She pressed the button. Her window descended neatly into its slot.
“Hi, Margaux.”
“You shouldn’t creep up on people like that.”
“No creeping. I walked right through the parking lot. Didn’t you see me?”
“I was checking something on my phone.”
She reached down and picked it up, wiping the muck from the floor off the screen. She needed to get her car cleaned out, as Mark often, and annoyingly, reminded her. But there she was making him sound as if he was her enemy. She didn’t know why she did that. She loved him.
“Those don’t work up here,” Sean said. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his cargo pants. His hair was still as red as ever, like a ripe orange, though he wore it close-cropped now. When he was younger, it was long and curly, and the kids would call him Clowney when they thought he wasn’t listening.
Can you see the 360 here? Here we learn a few things about both Margaux and Sean. Margaux’s car is messy and she has someone in her life named Mark who nags her about it. Sean has red, close-cropped hair, though he used to wear it long, which made him look like a clown. He’s wearing cargo pants. These two have a history. Cell phones don’t work in this location. All of that from a few lines of dialogue and a bit of prose… Can you “see” the scene?
Another thing I learned to do was to base my scenes and novels in places that were real to me—although I often don’t mention where a book is set, I still pick a real place in my mind. That way I’m describing something real when I drop in my 360. Interestingly, I don’t tend to do this with people—I don’t want to describe someone I know—so sometimes I find an image on the Internet to pull from and describe that.
Here’s another short example from The Good Liar. The main character, Cecily, is meeting with Teo Jackson for the first time.
Teo Jackson’s waiting for me in a boardroom lined with corkboards. They’re covered in multi-colored cue cards arranged in columns. Above each one is a white card with one word on it. Street, reads one. Unidentified, reads another.
“Cecily,” Teo says. “Great to see you again.”
“Is it?”
Teo rubs at his close-cut beard. His skin is a dark amber, and he’s wearing his trademark grey-blue T-shirt under a well-cut corduroy jacket. Inky jeans. Converse shoes. He’s worn some variation of this outfit everyday I’ve known him. I imagine his closet divided into four neat sections, his day eased by a lack of decisions.
Here, I’ve gone one step closer and described someone who wears the same thing every day! I’ll never need to say anything about what he wears again other than to say he’s wearing his standard uniform.
So, as I seem to ask myself in everyone of these pieces: Where am I going with this? Here: To answer the person who questioned me closely about my ability to write without visuals, obviously, I do have them. It’s simply not my focus when I write. I have to remember to add them, just like I sometimes have to remember to ask someone how they’re doing in an email after I’ve written straight to the point. Descriptions may be a natural weak point that I have, but being conscious of it, I think I’ve turned it into a strength because, as always with writing, less is often more. As Anne from Anne of Green Gables would say: It leaves more scope for the imagination.
What do you think? Are you a visual reader or writer? What tricks do you have for overcoming your own literary shortcomings?
As always, write on.
[coffee]
A graduate of McGill University in History and Law, Catherine McKenzie practices law in Montreal, where she was born and raised. An avid skier and runner, Catherine is the author of 11 bestselling novels, including HIDDEN, THE GOOD LIAR, I’LL NEVER TELL and YOU CAN’T CATCH ME. Her most recent novel, SIX WEEKS TO LIVE, releases in Canada April 20 and the US May 4, 2021.
Thank you for this post and congrats on your upcoming release next year.
I too suffer from name-blindness, I was at my Sister in-law’s birthday last night and I blanked on the names of one of the couples there. I’d only met them once, so that’s understandable but I also didn’t know our server’s first name even though I’ve known her for years through a community variety show in my town.
What do you think about the saying ‘make the scenery a character’? I.E. giving the story world more than a passive agency so it brings out the values or personality of the characters. (Being judgmental of a neighbor’s yard for example.) I know that technique is taught a lot, but I think it helps with visualizing a character in a setting. (The yard was a melting pot of different grasses and weeds mixing together, another sign that this family would never be welcome in our tidy neighborhood where the good and decent lived.)
Hi, thanks for the question. I think you can definitely do this and some writes are better at it than others. I made a book a character in a book (Fractured) and a street a character in that same book. But again, that doesn’t mean we need to know every nook and cranny; rather the feeling should be projected, the emotion of the place.
Visualizing story has been much on my mind. I like your 360 method precisely because the first thing you do is to *not* visualize the story.
Writing a story as if transcribing the “movie in the mind” leads to linear, external, cold, uninvolving pages. Unfortunately, that’s the way many manuscripts are written. We “see” a scene as if looking through a camera lens. The action proceeds in step by step fashion, with dialogue and interiority interspersed.
The reason that doesn’t work is that we apprehend real life not as a movie, mostly seen, but as an experience. We don’t see life, we feel it.
Our days are not a stream of GoPro recording, punctuated by interludes of chat and random voice overs. Our days cohere as a whole. What we feel about what’s happening is what is foremost in our consciousness.
Immersive POV (the evolutionary step beyond “close” third person) places emphasis on the entirety of a character’s experience. We sink into a POV characters way of thinking about things. That’s shown in your passages above, Catherine.
The risk in immersive POV is that what characters have something to say or feel about every little thing in front of them, the effect can be a dwelling on the trivial. Thoughts aren’t always worth page time. Emotions aren’t always fresh or interesting. Application of immersive POV is best when it’s judicious.
And, of course, what stimulates readers’ imaginations, making a story feel real, is what readers can visualize. Visuals do matter, but the effective approach is not schematic survey of a scene but a peppering of suggestive details.
What those audience members at your talk probably meant was that *they* see your story as they read, and thus they cannot imagine that you don’t. They are confusing reading with writing, which is not a process of recording only one dimension of life, splashing in the shallow end. Writing fiction is diving into the deep end.
Excellent and important post, Catherine.
Thanks, Don!
I write very much this way. I have aphantasia – I don’t have a functioning mind’s eye – and have to compensate for my lack of attention to visual detail by deliberately writing it in later drafts. My first drafts are scaffolded with dialogue. I really don’t feel the lack of visualization hampers me as either a reader or a writer now, but it definitely did before I understood what most readers needed. :)
I, too have aphantasia. I wrote a blog post entitled “How’s the Vision in Your Mind’s Eye?” I like to use description sparingly, giving the reader the opportunity to fill in. If I tell you a rusted pick-up belching oil arrives at a cinder-block church whose sign reads “Bingo tonite 7:30,” I’m hoping you’ll “see” or “feel” a fuller picture.
Unlike writers who can draw on mental snapshots, I find when I observe something of interest, I’d better put it into words at that moment because I’ll lose it later.
That is so interesting! What a challenge. I bet you are a better writer for it.
I also read quickly over descriptions in novels – they don’t really matter to me. In my own writing I often have to force myself to describe the scenes my characters are acting in. I do “feel” them in my mind when I write them, but I very often don’t spell them out. So I have to fill them in later. Same goes for characters – I have an idea how they look like, but it is sometimes hard for me to remember to describe them properly. – Thanks for that post! It made me feel less weird ;-)
Always good to feel less weird! I like to think of each chapter as a painting; I add layers each time I go through – the emotion layer, the setting layer etc.
I often try to make the scene or even the weather not only a character but a handy way to gently dump some exposition on the reader’s head. My guide in this is Martin Cruz Smith, particularly in the opening scenes of Gorky Park, but also throughout all his work.
It’s been awhile, so I won’t try to defend this point-by-point, but it’s as if a curtain goes up for each scene, and the backdrop has been changed, so the reader has a beat or two to take it all in through the “immersive POV” of Soviet policeman Arcady Renko. Sometimes the “backdrop” includes the sweeping geography or even history that surrounds our little scene—and then the next corrupt official or cynical policeman starts talking and we’re back to the satisfyingly lurid plot. Smith is one of the best.
Every writer has their own method! There is no right or wrong; there are only good stories and those that are lacking.
As I read the post, it seemed to me you do a good enough job of visual descriptions, enough that the character comes through–so you must be fairly visual imaginatively-speaking despite your seeming lack of common visual traits. I was not aware of your published books so when I read of those, it became terribly obvious that of course you know what you are doing–you have practiced your skills well and long and gone on to successfully publish! I also like being subtle, more indirect, offering descriptive clues that surround the characters on every level. Interesting take on your process, though, thanks!
Thanks, Cynthia!
I enjoy reading description when it’s done well but really struggle with it in my own writing. I’ve always felt like it’s a major defect for a writer so it was heartening to read you post. I will definitely try your method.
I have a tape recorder in my head, and if it isn’t playing back what I’ve heard (or arguing), it’s playing dialogue. I often write scenes in dialogue and then go back and fill in the blanks. I do see the scenes as I write, but dialogue is easy. Action, description–those take work.
You have put a name to a problem I’ve had all my life. I can’t even sit here and bring up a “picture” of my Dad, who I see every other day. I can describe, but I cannot visualize. When I read books, the descriptions help to place the action, but I cannot visualize.
I appreciate your method for dealing with this in writing.
Looking forward to reading your books,
– Susanne
I don’t focus on the visuals while I read a story. A character’s face may have been described in detail at some point, but, to me, the author may as well have written that the character has two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
When writing, I only describe a character if it’s pertinent, or if it’s the main character.
I think of myself as a visually-oriented person, but I still found your description of your process (dialogue, then filling in other components in revision) familiar. Sometimes I catch myself in the drafting stage trying to get all those layers in at once–in part because I’m trying to visualize the scene–and I think I’ll play with that approach a bit more. Great post!
To be honest, I never worried much about this. I use reference pictures a lot and work hard to use description sparingly, letting the reader fill in the blanks. I had no idea it was an actual “thing”. This explains why I could never visualize numbers to do math in my head or see my characters! In art class I always had to use a ton of references. Well. You’ve opened my eyes to something I always knew about myself but never really considered a handicap. Very interesting!