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How Do You Read?
by Brady Lewis

Something that I’ve been thinking about lately is reading fiction.  Not that I don’t read fiction, rather I’ve been thinking about how people read fiction. 

I was reading Fine Structure, searching for clues, trying to piece the mystery and the plot together, and reading the comments other people made who were also trying to put it all together.  Everyone had different ideas, some of them absolutely excellent.  Most of them didn’t register with me when reading through the tale thus far, but when said made perfect sense.  It got me thinking about how people think in different ways, with some ideas just jumping out to one person but not another, just as one person can look for a word in a wordfind puzzle for hours, and the second they ask for help the next person just instantly finds it.

People think in different ways.  They create, imagine, and dream in unique ways.  This is the beauty of the written word, in a way, as you create the image to go with the story.  As the saying goes, books are better than television because the picture is better.

That made me quite curious.  How do you read fiction?  What goes on in your mind?  What do you imagine?  What is your picture like?

For starters, do you even have images in your mind when reading?  Or is it just data that you take in and acknowledge, then move on to the next page? 

For characters, do you build their image from the ground up, going purely by what the author describes?  Or perhaps you think of an actor who meets the description in a general way.  Do you base a character’s appearance more on their personality than on physical description, using some sort of archetype?  Do you take an image or drawing from elsewhere, modify it, and make that a character?  Perhaps you place yourself and your friends in the roles of the protagonists.  And their voices, do you have a "gallery of voices" that you reuse book-to-book in your head?  Actors’ voices?  Friends’ voices?  Or maybe it all just comes out as different tones of your own inner voice.

How about the setting and the backdrop.  Again, are you able to build from the ground up based purely on description?  Base it on a location you’ve been to?  Do you envision a place you’ve seen in a movie? 

Is there a soundtrack during the reading session?  During a tense moment or an epic encounter, do you hear an orchestra somewhere in there?  A rock band?  Is the music something you know, or something you’ve almost composed yourself to fit the moment?

Is there always only one point of view, or does the "camera" move? 

I find that I read a description of a character, then search my background for someone, anyone, or any image I’ve seen, that even remotely matches it.  I then make some minor modifications to fit them into the world that the book takes me to so they aren’t out of place, and presto, instant character.  I’ve taken actors, friends, family, cartoon characters, drawings, even action figures, and modified them to fit the story.  After that, physical descriptions go out the window, that image is now the character.  And because I’ve never been good with mixing-and-matching, voices tend to remain those of the person portraying the character.  If Sean Connery fits a description, that is the voice the character has.  If the image I have doesn’t have a voice, such as a person from a drawing or the action figure, well, then it gets somewhat strange.  I almost can’t describe it.  The best way I can put it is that then their voice is my inner voice, but using a different tone or inflection to make it distinct from the others.  It sounds different in my head, but in reality it probably isn’t.

Somehow, though I can’t build a character from the ground up, I can with settings.  It is easier for me to create a landscape in my mind than a face.  I think it is partly because of the landscape here in North Dakota.  We have a little bit of everything, and a lot of nothing.  I can easily picture the empty fields of grass and build off of it.  More than likely it says something about how I think, but that’s the whole point of this exercise.

During the dramatic moments, I hear an orchestra.  Dramatic music from Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Batman the Animated Series, and other movies and shows with epic orchestral scores fills out the atmosphere. 

Despite the fact that the music makes it more cinematic, I find that the "camera work" is minimal.  It really only moves when the scene changes.  Other than that it is more of a wideshot. 

I don’t know.  Maybe these are just dumb questions.  It is just something that has been nagging at my thoughts for a while now.  I had to actually really think about it for a while to understand where a lot of the stuff comes from when I read.  Most of this is stuff you just do.  You don’t think about it when you read, you just do it, and you do it so fast you don’t understand where it comes from at first. 

I encourage you to discuss this on the forums.  I want to know how different or similar you all are to how I read.  I’m curious if there is some sort of pattern.  Also, if you can think of more questions to ask regarding how we read, please post them.  I’d love to hear more ideas on this topic.