Details of coloring are usually somewhat indistinct unless the author has achieved them with abruptness that is very skilful.
Do not ask me what I think of mathematics—and that includes both plane and solid geometry, trigonometry, logs, algebra and all their brood.
I have formed the opinion that every reader inevitably strides beyond the scenes laid in the story to develop broader vistas, provided the author has painted his scenes skilfully enough. To me there are innumerable little by-paths that the author merely sketches the openings of—and allows the reader to wander down them at will, formulating his own vague scenes. As an example—a character in a story is following a trail in the forest; the author draws the picture of the distant mountains as the character sees them and perhaps puts in a little touch more. In reading that story I subconsciously explore those mountains, looking down on the whole scene almost like a resident of Olympus, and a deal of the fun and enchantment of the story is in that by-play, I am confident.
As to the stock pictures in my mind I should say that depends entirely on the author. If he is writing "plot and action" stories with nothing else, how could the reader help having anything else but stock pictures mentally—the kind that have been foisted on the public so long?
In regard to the difference in behavior of the imagination in reading and writing I am not competent to judge. I have read very, very little modern American fiction. My imagination holds me an absolute slave when writing—far more so than when reading.
I can honestly say that I do not remember ever having given any of these matters a moment's thought. In fact I am greatly surprised that I am able to tell you as much as I am now doing. I have never thought of the "tools of my trade." I merely write.
Henry Kitchell Webster: My most vivid sensational reactions are to sound, touch, taste and smell. I would hesitate to say that I can see things with my eyes shut. I don't remember ever feeling any actual physical pain, even in the slightest degree, to correspond with the pain presented in a story. I found solid geometry rather easy, and analytical geometry, which for the first time gave a meaning to algebra, was a revelation and a delight. My response to description and suggestion in what I'm reading or seeing on the stage or in the movies is variable. I have phases in which I get nothing but the bare fare that is offered me, and others in which I run out and amplify enormously. I haven't, so far as I know, any stock pictures for village churches or cowboys. I don't resent too many images being formed for me; if there are too many, I simply ignore them. There's an enormous difference in the behavior of my imagination when I am reading stories and when I am writing them. I do indeed consider these matters as important "tools" of my trade.
G. A. Wells: Sad to relate, very few stories carry me along with them into the very thick of things. That comes of being too darned hypercritical. It is hard for me to get away from the author. I believe I am too much interested in the mechanics and not enough in the result, always admiring or condemning the author for what he does. With the exception of a few cases which I will mention the author, like the poor, "is always with me."
James Connelly's earlier stories—those to be found in the book of the title Deep Sea Toll especially—carry me with them. Pendexter and Mundy have this power over me, but not in every case. Also Jack London's stories, particularly those of the North. Tarkington's Alice Adams and Hutchinson's If Winter Comes brought me out of myself to a certain extent. That story of Bill Adams', The Bosun of the Goldenhorn's Yarn, was a gem and affected me very much. No play I have seen for the past twenty years has made me forget that it was merely a play I was seeing. The writer whose work has the greatest power over me is Lord Macaulay. I forget I am alive when I read his essays or history.
I can see and hear characters, scenes and colors, and taste the flavors of a story, but they are never genuine. When a character is struck with a club I do not feel it; I simply stand back and watch his reaction to the blow. Scenery more nearly produces the same results on my senses as do the actual stimuli.