So this week, I learnt something about myself that I didn’t know (or didn’t realise I knew?) but explains so much.
When I read I don’t see words I see images, we all knew that. I can see the words if I want to but that means I read each one and they don’t create the images and video that are part of my reading process. So why would I? It pulls me out of the story and there’s not point to reading if I’m not fully immersed.

The thing that I learnt is … I can’t tell immediately if I’ve watched a movie or read a book. How did I find that out?
I read (pretty sure I read it) a really good book set during WWII about American Intelligence and what was happening, it was fiction. Spies within the intelligence services and traps to catch them. It was that kind of book. The main character was a woman. I cannot remember the name of the book but it will be on my Kindle somewhere. It was ages ago that I read it.
The thing is, I was trying to remember who wrote it and the name of the book, but I could only see scenes and they were vivid.
So, I thought maybe it was a movie that I’d watched or TV series.
The only way to tell is for me to try and see faces. If I can get an actor attached to the movie/TV show then I can find it. Turns out I can’t, there is no actor. There are characters and they are quite awesome but they are not real.
It did not play externally. It played in my brain as I read the book.

Okay, I thought, that’s cool. I’d never realised how much I see rather than “read”. I know that’s how I write, I see a scene play out and write what I see.

The last few nights I’ve been reading a story called “Forever Tuesday Morning”. I wrote it a very long time ago. There’s a scene where a wolf causes absolute chaos and it was so real, so very real, I could smell the wolf and felt the urge to duck as lamps went flying. It surprised me how vivid it was when it was such an old story. (I wrote it while I was cutting my writer teeth.)

My brain may be a pain in the arse a lot of the time with migraines and whatnot but man it’s cool the way it puts me into a story. 🙂

Now, remember that awful series where the author was climbing on chairs and laying cups and mugs on tables? The reason it annoyed me so much is because I see images when I read. Every “climb” in my brain meant someone climbed on a chair and therefore was standing on a chair. That was the image. If someone writes about cups laid down … my brain shows me tea spilt everywhere.
Words matter. They create images. Images tell stories.

Fancy a wee Christmas read?
[Xray Mike Alpha Sierra]