Reading Fiction with Aphantasia

And why I love it

*Imagine a picture of a pile of books right here

I first learned that I have aphantasia from a random social media post that caught my eye in 2016.

It was bizarre. I’d always assumed that when people talked about visualizing things, they meant it metaphorically. But of course no one was actually “seeing” themselves on a beach. When people said that a movie character wasn’t the way they’d pictured them, it was a figure of speech. Turns out I was wrong.

It made a lot of sense, once I’d thought about it. It explained the whole sheep counting thing, which had never made sense to me. Was counting sheep supposed to make you sleepy because it was so boring to just say “one sheep, two sheep, three sheep, etc”?

I don’t have complete aphantasia. I can occasionally get glimpses of things, but I have to concentrate, and it’s like seeing something out of the corner of my eye for a split second without my glasses on. I remember people and places by picking out distinctive details to remember. (This is sometimes problematic if the person or place changes. I once had a student that I remembered because they always wore a hat, and then one day they didn’t and I thought they were absent.)

One of the things I’ve noticed in my research into aphantasia is that many aphantasiacs prefer nonfiction. This makes sense, because fiction seems to rely on the reader’s imagination, their ability to visualize what the author is saying. I enjoy nonfiction, but fiction has always been my favorite.

Today, I realized that part of the reason that I love fiction so much is because of my aphantasia.

When I read, I’m inside someone else’s head. There are no pictures, just words. Even if they describe something, it’s still just words. And that’s how my head is, too. Just words, no pictures, no visuals, just the description of things.

Reading a book, to me, is much more immersive than TV or a movie. If it’s a really good book, I emerge feeling like I’ve literally been living inside someone else’s head. Not seeing through their eyes or anything like that, but just feeling what it’s like when they think. And that’s what makes it so cool.

Yeah, I might be missing out. I can’t imagine what a character or place could look like. But I’d never be able to see it the way the author does, anyway. Even if they were able to draw something exactly the way they’d pictured it, it probably wouldn’t fit what I’d imagined anyway (does it ever?). I only have their words, and since that’s all I have, too, it’s easy to insert myself in their thoughts.

For me, reading fiction is about getting inside someone else’s head. It’s about understanding how their mind works, how they would describe something or someone, how they think, communicate, and write.

I’m still learning about my aphantasia, how it works and affects me. Sometimes it sucks and I feel cheated. But, for me, reading fiction is not one of those things. I can’t imagine (ha) loving it more.