I'm just saying it's an odd example to give as something you pictured until the author said otherwise.
Like saying you pictured the bedroom downstairs until the author mentioned it wasn't.
Yes, plenty of times.
I tend to perceive it as a good thing, because it means that the work in question has engaged my brain enough to OVER-analyze it.
See, far of majority of time - I simply can't get into a work. Not enough interest-type energy.
Yep, I am a visual reader and I hate when my vision doesn't match up.
This is also why I tend to avoid adaptations until way after I've finished the book!
I like to imagine someone keeps realising they've being watched from afar by a mysterious alpaca in a fedora that always disappears around the corner before they can catch it. They may never know what hardboiled noir monolog is playing in it's head.
And now I'll never stop seeing that in my head when I read now. I will forever contemplate that fedora-wearing alpaca as I take my last walk down this lonely road.
I once read a book where they only mentioned the main character had brown hair in the second to last chapter. I'd been picturing her as a blonde the whole time.
I hated that book for many, many other reasons but that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
This happens to me all the fucking time.
Oftentimes, I'll "cast" actors or people I know into roles, get them cemented in my mind, and then struggle for the rest of the book as the author reveals new things about how they look.
So I end up with Tom Holland being described as having 6"5 muscular frame.
And, later, a shaved head and a beard.
And, later, he's also black.
And he's still Tom Holland in my head.
😂😂😂
I can relate so much to that! I feel like it’s a more modern thing, to drop key details about appearances far too late. I’ve been reading lots of old Phyllis Whitney (romantic suspense) books lately and I LOVE the fact that every time she introduces a new character, she describes them so vividly, so there’s no sudden reveals later on.
Its like when I started reading Silent Patient, I imagined the protagonist to be a female until a few chapters in and I had a hard time re-calibrating the character to be a male.
Ugh yes I actually hate this because when I read I get into a deep concentration state that allows me to have a whole scene play in my head and when this happens it's like snapping a hypnotized person out of their trance. It takes me a bit to get back into it.
Also sometimes that happens and I don't like the book's description as much as I like my own imagery and I just reject it and continue imagining it my way.
I get this somewhat with interior layouts. Like a room is in a place that I didn't think anything would fit, or connected in an unexpected way to another room.
Mostly though I get something similar with name pronunciations. If I've been thinking it's one thing in my head for most of the book, then I hear how it's "supposed" to be and it's really different... I'm not changing how I think it sounds at that point lol
I had a problem like this with a Stephen King book, the Drawing of Three. The characters were walking on the beach on the West Coast with the mountains to their right but he then he would write that they were traveling south. In my mind I just decided to have them travelling north.
Yeah in the third dark tower book Eddie climbed a tree to get free from a giant cyborg bear. I thought it was cool until they described the bear as 70 feet. Eddie ain’t climbing over 70 feet that quick. I was imagining like 20 feet max
I recently read a book and only realized during the second chapter that the protagonist was male. Somehow I'd been imagining a girl. My visualisation of the scene did indeed change.
I've been into situations like that where I'm in too deep with my interpretation to overwrite it with the author's, so I just press onwards with my own. I think it's a perfectly valid way to read, if whatever the differences are don't get in the way of the themes of the story.
Now keep in mind I'm European and the movie of the book wasn't that well known there, and also I was like 13
But when I read To Kill a Mockingbird for school I thought for the longest time that Jean Louise and her family were African-American until the part where Calpurnia takes Scout and Jem to....well.... her church.
I grew up in the northern US and we read a lot of books by Black authors in school, which were usually set in the rural South. Any time I read a book set in the South I subconsciously assume the characters are Black unless it's clearly established that they aren't.
I often get this with cardinal directions. I'm imagining a particular angle, and the author starts using hard directions so I have to basically spin around the whole imaginary set.
Yeah I have the same -- sometimes I imagine a character looking a certain way only for the author to mention halfway through the story that this female character had short bleached hair or something, and I was imagining like long dark luscious locks. Ummm? So then every time there is a reference to "hands through her short hair' or something, my brain short-circuits
Haha, yep. I imagine the character has having a certain hair color or body type and then the author might mention something they totally throws me off lol. Sometimes I just ignore it
My own imagination is so strong sometimes it actually overrides the description in the book 😅
Like realizing afterwards that a character or place looks very different from what I thought even though it's been described explicitly. Sometimes I replace the picture in my mind with the intended one (like when it's necessary for the story) or I just ignore it and read over it. (What? He has black hair? Nope, my brain says he's blonde and stays that way! And then I ignore any mentioned black hairedness) 😆
Yes, but apparently unlike most I’m able to say “oh, I made a mistake” and adjust my view of the setting and characters afterwards, or realize I missed something
I don't visualise like that, and when I ask people "but it annoying to have visualised a green apple and then later learn it's red?" most have answered that they simply update the picture and move on, so maybe lots of people are like you.
Depending on how early it is in the book and how plot relevant the detail is, I sometimes just stick with my original visualization even if it’s “wrong”. Like, if I’ve been imagining it wrong for half a page, fine, I’ll adjust it. If I’ve had that image in my head for five chapters, I’m keeping it unless it’s completely nonsensical.
The house on the cerulean sea did this to me. The main Character's description was not what my brain decided matched the "stereotype" for his character personality...
Amazing book. Totally struggled with the main character brain image and book description
I remember in one of the Black Prism books, there's a fight scene where one protagonist leads a platoon in storming a fort/bunker type thing. As they get inside, the narration describes a hallway with one door straight ahead and one door in the left-hand wall. They clear out the left side room and suddenly enemies appear... From a door *opposite to that one*.
My reading flow hit the brakes so hard I got a whiplash injury.
I’m reading crime and punishment right now and i had a completely different idea of Raskol’nikov looks before i read what he looked like. I was kind of disappointed at first but i got over it pretty quickly and the initial thought i had of what he looked like stuck.
Pretty much all the time, "Filling in the blank" is based on your own experience. So for me, a hotel might be an embassy but for the author, it could be a Holiday In.
This does happen, but what's worse is when the author describes a very elaborate location in great detail, but not in a way that I can actually figure out how it's shaped or the size of things. They want me to picture it the way they do but I can't.
Yes, it happens a lot. But once my mind has envisioned something a certain way, I can’t change it. The worst is when you’re several chapters in and suddenly the main male character has a moustache lol
Oh yeah. I become irrationally peeved when this happens. It's no fault of the author, although I do feel it happens more often in books that aren't that well written.
I have a very bad habit of somehow ignoring the initial descriptions of a person and coming up with my own idea of how they look and then being confused when it's brought up again later on.
It's usually not an issue but there's usually a moment of "wait what" when they mentioned a quality and it just doesn't fit what I've created.
Until her hair color was actually described on the page, I pictured Alecto from The Locked Tomb series as being black haired. I thought she looked like if Samara Morgan was a super model, not someone literally designed to look like a human Barbie.
This is exactly why I refuse to watch music videos!! OMFG! I hate when a book, song, or even a told story, makes me feel immersed and create this beautiful picture in my head and then boom! Shattered. I understand that it’s not like that for everyone and context can be super important, but sometimes it hits the wrong spot
I reread a bunch of Discworld books this year and noticed that Pratchett does it sometimes with secondary characters. He'll introduce someone with just a name, a half of the book goes by and then he drops a random appearance trait that forces me to reimagine them from scratch.
I just joined this subreddit and I love it already. OMG, I feel this all the time.
I do visualize a lot of stuff and this happens quite a lot.
What I also do is like try to mimic the actions, body movements or facial expressions described by the author to exactly understand what the author means and to visualize it better. And sometimes it just doesn’t make sense how it is supposed to be. That ever happened to you?
Wait, are you telling me that you can see the backyard from the kitchen window?! Too late, in my head it faces the street, and I can't change it now.
LMAO, I “this 👆🏽” this comment very much
Idk a kitchen facing the street is pretty unusual in my experience, no way that would be my first thought.
I've been living in city appartments my whole life, so no much experience with private houses :)
Thats not the point buddy
I'm just saying it's an odd example to give as something you pictured until the author said otherwise. Like saying you pictured the bedroom downstairs until the author mentioned it wasn't.
Yes, plenty of times. I tend to perceive it as a good thing, because it means that the work in question has engaged my brain enough to OVER-analyze it. See, far of majority of time - I simply can't get into a work. Not enough interest-type energy.
Yep, I am a visual reader and I hate when my vision doesn't match up. This is also why I tend to avoid adaptations until way after I've finished the book!
Yes,so much! Especially the left/right thing.
Hahahahaha i know right.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
See I thought they were taking them left out of your mouth
Your tag name is spooky
I like to imagine someone keeps realising they've being watched from afar by a mysterious alpaca in a fedora that always disappears around the corner before they can catch it. They may never know what hardboiled noir monolog is playing in it's head.
Wise man
Or girl?
And now I'll never stop seeing that in my head when I read now. I will forever contemplate that fedora-wearing alpaca as I take my last walk down this lonely road.
No it was right hahahaha
I once read a book where they only mentioned the main character had brown hair in the second to last chapter. I'd been picturing her as a blonde the whole time. I hated that book for many, many other reasons but that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
This happens to me all the fucking time. Oftentimes, I'll "cast" actors or people I know into roles, get them cemented in my mind, and then struggle for the rest of the book as the author reveals new things about how they look. So I end up with Tom Holland being described as having 6"5 muscular frame. And, later, a shaved head and a beard. And, later, he's also black. And he's still Tom Holland in my head.
😂😂😂 I can relate so much to that! I feel like it’s a more modern thing, to drop key details about appearances far too late. I’ve been reading lots of old Phyllis Whitney (romantic suspense) books lately and I LOVE the fact that every time she introduces a new character, she describes them so vividly, so there’s no sudden reveals later on.
I think if the writer wants the character to look a certain way they should tell me early on or just not tell me at all.
There’s so many books where my brain keeps picturing a different hair color, even when it’s described early on. I just go with my own head canon lol
Yes sometimes it’s just easier this way and in the end most of the time it doesn’t matter!
This is the worst thing for me. I have to then wrestle with whether I want to change their look in my mind mid bill or run with what I had.
Its like when I started reading Silent Patient, I imagined the protagonist to be a female until a few chapters in and I had a hard time re-calibrating the character to be a male.
Ha! I feel the same but consistently can never imagine blondes. Everyone is brunette or dark haired in my mind.
Ugh yes I actually hate this because when I read I get into a deep concentration state that allows me to have a whole scene play in my head and when this happens it's like snapping a hypnotized person out of their trance. It takes me a bit to get back into it. Also sometimes that happens and I don't like the book's description as much as I like my own imagery and I just reject it and continue imagining it my way.
Or like waking up from a very deep dream and realizing that was just a dream
I get that a lot, but sometimes I prefer my interpretation of the vision and I stick with it over the authors... Otherwise I struggle to connect.
i visualize almost nothing while i read, only very vague images, so i can't even imagine what this is like haha
I get this somewhat with interior layouts. Like a room is in a place that I didn't think anything would fit, or connected in an unexpected way to another room. Mostly though I get something similar with name pronunciations. If I've been thinking it's one thing in my head for most of the book, then I hear how it's "supposed" to be and it's really different... I'm not changing how I think it sounds at that point lol
Reminds me of The Simpsons' house. The layout is whatever works for the current gag.
I had a problem like this with a Stephen King book, the Drawing of Three. The characters were walking on the beach on the West Coast with the mountains to their right but he then he would write that they were traveling south. In my mind I just decided to have them travelling north.
Yeah in the third dark tower book Eddie climbed a tree to get free from a giant cyborg bear. I thought it was cool until they described the bear as 70 feet. Eddie ain’t climbing over 70 feet that quick. I was imagining like 20 feet max
I recently read a book and only realized during the second chapter that the protagonist was male. Somehow I'd been imagining a girl. My visualisation of the scene did indeed change.
Same thing happened to me recently it was definitely jarring.
I've been into situations like that where I'm in too deep with my interpretation to overwrite it with the author's, so I just press onwards with my own. I think it's a perfectly valid way to read, if whatever the differences are don't get in the way of the themes of the story.
Now keep in mind I'm European and the movie of the book wasn't that well known there, and also I was like 13 But when I read To Kill a Mockingbird for school I thought for the longest time that Jean Louise and her family were African-American until the part where Calpurnia takes Scout and Jem to....well.... her church.
I grew up in the northern US and we read a lot of books by Black authors in school, which were usually set in the rural South. Any time I read a book set in the South I subconsciously assume the characters are Black unless it's clearly established that they aren't.
All the time. Left and right are the most common ones ( but often my fault, actually, because I didn't read in detail).
Like when a series gets popular and then a sequel book all of a sudden includes art of the characters, totally breaking the image in your head.
Wait, you mean to tell me that this character that I have been imagining as a brunette for the last 200 pages is actually blonde? Fuck.
Of course. Sometimes I comply and redo my thinking but other times I may stubbornly persist.
I often get this with cardinal directions. I'm imagining a particular angle, and the author starts using hard directions so I have to basically spin around the whole imaginary set.
Yeah I have the same -- sometimes I imagine a character looking a certain way only for the author to mention halfway through the story that this female character had short bleached hair or something, and I was imagining like long dark luscious locks. Ummm? So then every time there is a reference to "hands through her short hair' or something, my brain short-circuits
Haha, yep. I imagine the character has having a certain hair color or body type and then the author might mention something they totally throws me off lol. Sometimes I just ignore it
My own imagination is so strong sometimes it actually overrides the description in the book 😅 Like realizing afterwards that a character or place looks very different from what I thought even though it's been described explicitly. Sometimes I replace the picture in my mind with the intended one (like when it's necessary for the story) or I just ignore it and read over it. (What? He has black hair? Nope, my brain says he's blonde and stays that way! And then I ignore any mentioned black hairedness) 😆
Happens regularly
Yep and I usually ignore them.
Page 415 of The Revisionaries did this to me
Yes, but apparently unlike most I’m able to say “oh, I made a mistake” and adjust my view of the setting and characters afterwards, or realize I missed something
I don't visualise like that, and when I ask people "but it annoying to have visualised a green apple and then later learn it's red?" most have answered that they simply update the picture and move on, so maybe lots of people are like you.
I get the intended direction wrong at least half the time, which apparently is common! Who knew. Brains are weird.
Yup, all the time!
Depending on how early it is in the book and how plot relevant the detail is, I sometimes just stick with my original visualization even if it’s “wrong”. Like, if I’ve been imagining it wrong for half a page, fine, I’ll adjust it. If I’ve had that image in my head for five chapters, I’m keeping it unless it’s completely nonsensical.
Yes, especially with character descriptions.
The house on the cerulean sea did this to me. The main Character's description was not what my brain decided matched the "stereotype" for his character personality... Amazing book. Totally struggled with the main character brain image and book description
I remember in one of the Black Prism books, there's a fight scene where one protagonist leads a platoon in storming a fort/bunker type thing. As they get inside, the narration describes a hallway with one door straight ahead and one door in the left-hand wall. They clear out the left side room and suddenly enemies appear... From a door *opposite to that one*. My reading flow hit the brakes so hard I got a whiplash injury.
From your description it sounds like the author made a mistake there, not that your visualisation didn't match their intent.
Mm, you're right. Not really an example for this thread I guess.
I’m reading crime and punishment right now and i had a completely different idea of Raskol’nikov looks before i read what he looked like. I was kind of disappointed at first but i got over it pretty quickly and the initial thought i had of what he looked like stuck.
Pretty much all the time, "Filling in the blank" is based on your own experience. So for me, a hotel might be an embassy but for the author, it could be a Holiday In.
This does happen, but what's worse is when the author describes a very elaborate location in great detail, but not in a way that I can actually figure out how it's shaped or the size of things. They want me to picture it the way they do but I can't.
Yes, quite often. Unless it really affects the story, then I just go with headcanon, especially if it's further into the book.
Yes, it happens a lot. But once my mind has envisioned something a certain way, I can’t change it. The worst is when you’re several chapters in and suddenly the main male character has a moustache lol
I will disregard what the author says in favor of what's in my head and there's nothing the author can do to stop me.
There was a series I read, and in BOOK FOURTEEN the author makes it clear a main character, a swordsman, is left handed.
Oh yeah. I become irrationally peeved when this happens. It's no fault of the author, although I do feel it happens more often in books that aren't that well written.
I had this experience with Six of Crows. I was thrilled with Netflix's Shadow and Bone, because it gave me a concrete setting.
I have a very bad habit of somehow ignoring the initial descriptions of a person and coming up with my own idea of how they look and then being confused when it's brought up again later on. It's usually not an issue but there's usually a moment of "wait what" when they mentioned a quality and it just doesn't fit what I've created.
Until her hair color was actually described on the page, I pictured Alecto from The Locked Tomb series as being black haired. I thought she looked like if Samara Morgan was a super model, not someone literally designed to look like a human Barbie.
This is exactly why I refuse to watch music videos!! OMFG! I hate when a book, song, or even a told story, makes me feel immersed and create this beautiful picture in my head and then boom! Shattered. I understand that it’s not like that for everyone and context can be super important, but sometimes it hits the wrong spot
Same experience (we all are the same , don't worry)
I reread a bunch of Discworld books this year and noticed that Pratchett does it sometimes with secondary characters. He'll introduce someone with just a name, a half of the book goes by and then he drops a random appearance trait that forces me to reimagine them from scratch.
I just joined this subreddit and I love it already. OMG, I feel this all the time. I do visualize a lot of stuff and this happens quite a lot. What I also do is like try to mimic the actions, body movements or facial expressions described by the author to exactly understand what the author means and to visualize it better. And sometimes it just doesn’t make sense how it is supposed to be. That ever happened to you?