Difference in imagination when reading and when writing? Involving, so far as I can see, heredity, racial memories, acquired physical weaknesses, mental quirks, tricks of egotism, and a multitude of mysteries I have never been able to solve. I give this up with scarcely a struggle.
George L. Catton: Yes; if the characters are distinctly drawn and the setting correctly planned and the action natural under the circumstances, I can see it as fast as I can read it. If it is not, I skip over what I can't see immediately as not worth wasting time over. And I might just mention, by the way, to a student of such things as characters, action and setting, some of the characters and setting and action in fiction are so impossible as to be ludicrous. No, I can't say that I can become so immersed in the atmosphere of a story that I can "hear" and "smell" and "feel" and "taste" with the characters in the story; that is, the characters in a story that I am reading. But with the characters in a story that I am writing—well, that is something else again. If I want to I can weep with my characters and laugh with them and run the whole gamut of the human emotions with them, but that is something I seldom allow myself. I go too far then, with the emotions of my characters.
Yes, I can really see things with my eyes shut, or open, in the dark or in the daylight. And there are no limitations whatever. Green grass is green, a pine tree is a darker green, and a forest lake is yet a darker shade. Colors, and black and white, reproduce themselves in their natural shade when I am picturing in my mind's eye a scene to be put down in words on paper. Also the characteristics of a character. I can see a broken nose just as plainly as a straight one, and a hare-lip as plainly as a cupid's bow. Details stand out as distinctly, or even more so, than the whole. Continuity writing for the movies is, to me, one of the easiest and most fascinating tasks I ever tackled.
Never had an opportunity to study any other geometry or mathematics.
If the author of a story I am reading fails to picture a scene or character or bit of action so that it can be understood and "seen" as fast as I can read his picture, I supply what is lacking myself to make it up and save time. In fact, in lots of cases I find that the pictures the author drew were never needed at all, as far as I was concerned; certain things will happen under certain circumstances, inevitably, and the ground under a knot of pine trees will be bare of grass without any one telling me that.
Never have stock pictures. Each setting is built up to conform to the necessities of the action and the characters and the theme. Stock pictures and characters, etc., savor too much of a manufactured article and kill the personality of a story.
Only in one thing is there any difference in the behavior of my imagination when reading or writing a story. If I am reading a story by another author my imagination pictures for me only what is absolutely necessary to make the story interesting. If I am writing a story my imagination brings me a thousand pictures, incidents, etc., to choose from. Or, to put it another way, in reading a story my imagination is localized to the restrictions of the story; while if I am writing my imagination knows no boundaries.
Yes, I have long considered these matters as tools of my trade; so long in fact that a consideration of them now is unnecessary. In fact, to think of them now when working on a story is to restrict their working.
Robert W. Chambers: It depends on the story. No limitations to "seeing." Colors. Distinct. All mathematics annoy me. Response depends upon the author. No stock pictures. Do not resent many images if they are well done. Difference when reading and writing? Of course. As tools? Have given it no thought.
Roy P. Churchill: I have never thought of this before, but believe that in my own case my responses through the senses are governed by what I have actually done myself. For instance, I know how a six-inch gun sounds, the noise of the shell, the impact of the explosion. I can see the splash at the target, follow the birdlike flight of the shell, smell the powder, taste the smoke. For I have done these things, experienced them, and when they are in a story my senses respond. Yet I have not been a jockey in a horse race. I can't get near as vividly the feel of the saddle, the smell of sweating horses, hear the shouts of the crowd, the taste of churned dust on the track. So in a story the writer's experiences must be real, it seems to me, to give anything like a second-hand impression on the senses of the reader. Yet I do enjoy prize-fight stories, and never did them, love horse-race stories and never rode in a race. It must be that the authors of such stories had a very, very clear picture to give it to me at all.