The things that originate in my own imagination I can see with my eyes shut as plainly as if they were realities, and things in a story to a lesser degree of vividness. I can imagine an old hag beating a child and actually work up tears. The same thing in a story does not have the same effect by a good deal. The things in stories are to me merely animated word photographs. I am not strongly susceptible to illusion as it appears in a story or a play. But the realities of actual, living life affect me powerfully.
I once saw a man—a beast, rather—kick a dog. If he had kicked me I could not have felt it more. In a story I would not have felt the kick the least bit. It would have been a kick on paper. It is my great loss that I am unable in most cases to get the desired fictional effect.
Paintings, however, act otherwise on me. In the Corcoran gallery at Washington there is a large painting depicting a body washed ashore on a beach, and nearby stands a policeman taking the names of a man and woman in a note-book. The first time I glanced at that picture it gripped me and in my imagination at this moment I see it in actual detail and feel the strength of it. I have gone a hundred miles out of my way purposely to look at that picture. One morning I sat before it from about nine until noon without scarcely ever taking my eyes from it. The paintings in the Metropolitan gallery in New York would never tire me. I am devoted to etchings.
The pictures an author presents to me are never blurred. Nor are they black and white. They are always without exception distinct and in natural colors. When Pendexter mentions a British soldier I see a man with a flaming red coat. When Dingle or Dunn shows me a pirate I see a man with swarthy face and black eyes. Trees and grass are always green unless otherwise stated.
Solid geometry was he—ll! It gave me more trouble than all other studies combined.
My response to the author is nearly always abstract.
I have no stock pictures for anything I read. I let the author paint his picture by direct description and accept it as he shows it, or form or paint it for myself from the various hints he scatters through his story. If his story is laid in the West all he need say for me is that the incidents occurred on a ranch. I'll paint my own ranch in. If his story is of the mountains he can say so briefly and depend on me to picture the mountains.
I have two imaginations—one for reading and the other for writing. The former is better than the latter. Imagination is, in my opinion, the chief tool of trade of the writer. It counts for about ninety per cent. Without that all the other tools in his chest are worthless.
William Wells: The nearest that I can come to answering this is to say that both in reading a well-told story and in building one from my imagination the scenes are as real as if I were watching them thrown on the screen. I am oblivious to all else, but detached, take no part myself. But I possess the faculty of making the scenes reproduce themselves as often as I wish—in my own stories—or of changing them and making the characters act as I want them to.
I really "see things" with my eyes shut—or open, for that matter—perfect in every detail, see the flame of fire or the smoke from firearms, but my only sensation is that of the onlooker, although I get quite excited.