Rich Mental Images

Question

Some writing, phrased with brevity, clarity, and precision, but not always lacking complexity of sentence structure, evokes rich imagery in the reader's mind. It is possible then, that the writers did not craft their sentences but through this method -- constructing a rich image in their mind and forming syntax and words which convey that image.

As for me, I am weak in imagination, as I not only struggle to form a long series of mental images, whether still or animated, but I also struggle to form a variety of ideas to mentally picture. I lack understanding if the reason for this is weakness of mind in general, or a lack of skill in certain cognitive areas, which manifest as a weakness of concentration when I attempt to use it.

My preference in writing is not to vomit on the page, and afterward polish for stylistic virtue and beauty, but to form in my mind the whole of my story or message, through visualization, and then to compose my sentences, with these things in mind.

My questions then are these: Has anyone else crafted prose this way? And how can I develop the necessary skill to persevere long in forming rich mental pictures, for crafting sentences conveying them?

Answer 1

I think every writer is welcome to be different.

The problem with forming "rich mental pictures" is that heavily detailed physical description bores [most] readers rather quickly; it overwhelms their memory for the details.

What sticks with [most] readers is emotional states. Surprise, awe, intimidation, hope, despair, depending upon what the scene is supposed to convey.

Read the professionals, the best selling authors, and see how many details they include in describing scenes. They guide the reader's imagination, but do not dictate every detail. They provide a few details to prompt us, but then rely on us to fill in the details from our own experience.

Visualization is important, but I'd encourage you to let go of the notion that readers have to visualize exactly what you visualize, because, as they say, an image is worth a thousand words.

Or to paraphrase, to describe an image accurately requires a thousand words.

And those thousand words will probably bore the reader so much they will stop reading.

Visualize, but then isolate from your rich image the most important few details of the image that determine the emotional state of the character.

Let me invent a scene to illustrate:

Lilith woke squinting in pain,she put a hand to her forehead and recoiled from the touch, her fingers bloodied.

She sat up. The glen was strewn with bodies. Marcus, beside her, his throat laid open. She rose. Harold, clouded eyes staring at nothing. He was gone. All gone. At the edge, she spotted a purple kerchief -- Fen! She sprinted to him, and fell to her knees.

Fen. Fen was dead. She fell on him, cradled him, she cried. She sobbed. Fen was dead.

Too much detail will bore the reader. Your job as a writer is not to reproduce precisely what you see in your imagination, but to help the reader visualize an approximation of it, without boring them with precision.

It is an important balance to strike: Too much precision and the story drags and feels boring. Too little information and the story becomes confusing.

It isn't important, in the Lilith scene above, precisely what the "glen" looks like, or what Marcus, or Harold look like, or the positions of their bodies. And all that matters about Fen is he wears a purple kerchief, for us to let the audience know she recognizes him from afar, and we can tell from her reaction that she loved Fen, his death hits her the hardest.

There is a movie unfolding in the reader's imagination. You can imagine with all the detail you like, and that is good. But you cannot convey all of it without slowing down that movie in the reader's head.

How much detail you can include depends on the pace of movie, in the moment. In a battle scene, you cannot provide a lot of information without slowing this battle to a crawl, which would kill the excitement of the battle.

You can provide greater detail in the naturally slower moments, like recovering and patching up after the battle. Or marching two days to the next battle.

Keep in mind the pace of the story, the movie in the reader's head. Much of the art of writing is figuring out how much to tell, and how much you can leave unsaid without losing the reader. It is how to isolate the handful of important anchoring details in the scene that ensure the reader is seeing approximately the same scene as you see, even if yours contains much more detail.

Answer 2

Most writers don't have a problem forming mental images of what they're writing. But some do, and some never form images ever, not even when they dream at night. This lack of imagery is called aphantasia, and it's a spectrum. There is no known cure, but it doesn't stop you from writing and writing well. For example, on the more severe side is the author of The Fault in Our Stars, John Green (via Twitter):

It's baffling to me that some of y'all see stuff in your mind. You SEE it? The way your eyes see? I always thought "visualize" meant thinking of the words/ideas/feelings associated with a thing, not actual visuals. I am such a total 5 on this scale I didn't know 1-4 existed.

Reading about aphantasiac writers and their techniques may help you even if you're not quite a 5 on the scale above. For example, some advice from Being a Writer When You Literally Cannot Visualize Scenes:

Now, when I approach a scene, I imagine what the character would notice and seek out the emotional resonance in their surroundings. I cannot close my eyes and visualize a character’s surroundings, but I can describe things I have seen or that I wish to see or that I hope I never see. I can imagine what might take someone’s breath away and pay attention to the details that have triggered feelings of awe or fear or loneliness in me. When a character notes the way the wind rustles through a cedar branch, it’s not just because I want the reader to know the story is set in the Pacific Northwest, it’s because this character aches for the woods. That is how I build the worlds in my novels: bit by bit, draft by draft, through my characters’ open eyes rather than by closing my own.

Answer 3

Depiction of imagery has no really steadfast way of representation or procedure.

Quite contrary to how your point of view is right now, that writers often form or imagine pictures in their head as they pour over paper, it is just one of the many ways of representation.

Creative depiction is really vast and the way you seem to do it would also get full marks from me provided you are finding the right impact with your work, or at least, producing work that settles to your satisfaction.

Writing often is just a sketch. It is an art, and for any art there is always an idea, a theme, an event or even the most mundane detail you want to paint out for the reader.

So, in simple sense, do all painters imagine what they shall paint as they are painting?

Do all of them imagine what they shall paint beforehand?

Obviously no.

Each painter works on his art in a different way, imagines in a different style and interprets his own actions in different pace.

There were some great poets who understood little of their work as they wrote it. It is all about the impulses and how the subconscious guides.

Art that lacks impulses and the touch of subconscious would never really reach true potential, and that is why more than imagining what to depict, you must immerse in whatever you are depicting on paper.

Keep writing!