No, when I read a story, my imagination works in the same channels followed as when I write one.
I do not consider these things "tools of the trade"; subconsciously I use them as such, but I try to divorce from creative writing any and all "rules," "tools" and "formula." Good writing is nothing more than good thinking—if we thought by rule and formula, what a world this would be!
Harris Dickson: These things depend, I believe, upon the skill of the writer and perhaps as much upon the reader's present mood. Sometimes and in some stories, all the incidents, settings, characters, smells, sounds and sights are just as clear as if I were actually present. Sometimes I do not get them at all. For instance, many years after I still feel the gruesome atmosphere that Conan Doyle created in his Hound of the Baskervilles, remember passages from The Lord of the Isles, and smell the deep dark medieval woods in The Forest Lovers. Books with me are like people—some I see once and remember always; some I see every day and fail to register them at all.
I shouldn't know solid geometry if I saw it coming down the big road with a bell on it.
I am not conscious of having stock pictures in mind; the end of Loch Katrine (Lady of the Lake) is very different from Lake Geneva (Prisoner of Chillon). And the battle of Waterloo (Vanity Fair) does not resemble the battle of Omdurman (With Kitchener to Khartoum).
I don't know whether too many pictures should be given a reader. The writer should, in this day and time, remember that "The tale's the thing." And pictures of setting, etc., perform precisely the same function as sets in a drama. Sometimes a too-elaborate setting detracts from and holds up a story—as in a very gorgeous recent film of Nazimova, called The Red Lantern, the perfection of the actress herself was largely obscured by distracting scenery. To my mind the art is just as bad if you have too much of this—perhaps worse—as it is if you have too little.
To me there is much difference between reading and writing; in reading I must follow what is told me; in writing, what imagination I have roams on a loose halter.
Sure, some of these matters are tools of the trade, a trade that in many respects is just as mechanical as carpentering—secure foundations, body of edifice, and climax roof.
Captain Dingle: Depends of course on the artistry of the author in that particular story. Some stories read to me like the monotonous dirge of a praying revivalist's convert. But when the story is well written and is a story after mine own heart, I can generally see, taste, smell, feel with the author, though I never recall feeling physical pain. Of the senses, I think sense of smell gets to me most vividly. (No, that isn't any wallop at anybody's stuff. My own stinks sometimes.)
I have to "see" my own work, though not necessarily with eyes shut. When I visualize a story it is like seeing a fleet of ships coming out of a fog. When the fog clears, the bell rings for "Full Ahead."