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Comment by stevenhuang | Hacker News Reader

I'm a voracious reader (sci-fi) and I would also put it best as processing what I read as facts.

I've never been able to daydream or create worlds in my minds eye such that I get lost in them (which is something I hear people who daydream are able to do).

I think part of this is why I've always found creative writing to be difficult. For example in grade school I was certain I was among the few that read the most, yet for in class creative writing assignments I am often among the last to finish. I've always had the suspicion I'm not as creative as others for this reason.

That said I do believe that I'm very analytical, and so I found no untoward difficulty in persuasive essays, technical write-ups, etc.

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Out of curiosity, how do you keep track of the spaces the characters move in if you can't visualise anything?

I'm not the original commenter here, but I don't understand your question. What does visualizing have to do with knowing where someone is?

The sense of knowing where a character is in a space in fiction is the same sense that is used to visualize anything else. It is the same phenomenon. If you can "know" where a fictional character is in a fictional space, you can also "know" how a fictional apple looks like, or how a fictional coffee smells.

How or where do you hold the knowing of the location of the fictional character? Look at that psychic phenomenon. Aphantasia seems like not knowing what psychic operations one does all the time, while someone who can visualize can consciously use these psychic operations.

Location and vision are separate senses. I'm completely aphantasic, but of course I can orient myself in remembered spaces. Fictional spaces are more difficult, but not impossible if the description is good.

Proprioception is entirely different from vision. You can know where your hand is with your eyes closed without visualizing anything. My sense of where things are in space feels very similar to proprioception, not vision.

I like how the other commentator explained it.

It feels like proprioception in a way. An abstract sense of knowing--facts internalized, without visual feedback.

As I read each word in a descriptive scene, it feels like my mind pulls in their definitions and tangled web of related concepts (facts), as well as personal memories, then establishes that scene as a "new memory".

When I read "Raindrops glistened in the afternoon light" my first reaction is to think of what that would feel and smell like for example. I can sort of imagine what that would look like, visually, but it's hazy and doesn't come naturally. And definitely not at the same acuity described by others.

Perhaps I'm just bad at visualization. And because I'm bad at it, my visualization skills have further atrophied and my other senses become preferred. Sounds probable that trying to stimulate visualization like in the exercises proposed in the article can redevelop the ability to visualize.

(I'm aphantasic) one weird thing about aphantasia is that spatial awareness is often actually better in aphantasics. I have an extremely good internal mapping system but none of it is visualised - I just seem to know where I am in relation to other things around me.

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