I think that there is a marked difference in imaginative vision when writing or reading. In reading I feel that I am looking at a photograph or watching action by others. In writing I feel that I am in the scene—a part of it—helping in the action.
I use these "tools of my trade" daily. Often I start with a man or boy as my central character. Before long he gets into a scrape. At once I become that character and have to live the situation in order to learn what he would or could do to get out of a fix.
Nevil G. Henshaw: This is rather hard to answer, but in reading a book or story that I'm genuinely interested in I react far beyond the written page in all the senses you enumerate. I imagine I feel most the emotions of the characters, fear, hate, desire, pain, etc. Also taste hits me hard. Smell not so much. Sound still less. Touch last of all. A scene well done I see perfectly and I delight in the little touches that make real and set off the whole, trifles like a puddle in a road, a rock on a hillside, an odd piece of furniture or ornament in a room.
In writing unless I can see what I'm writing about I can't get it on paper. The picture is perfectly clear to the last detail no matter how fanciful. This applies to any picture I try to conjure up. I see the colors also.
Being a dub at all mathematics, I never studied geometry.
If an author gives me a good hint I can generally go beyond it.
I've no stock pictures, especially in my own work. A place will give me an idea even quicker than a person. But then I've always thought that there was a great deal in that ancient expression "Ain't nature grand."
There is, of course, a big difference though it's hard to explain. Perhaps I can get at it best by saying that writing is work, reading play.
These matters are most certainly tools of the trade, and I use them all I can.
Joseph Hergesheimer: My reaction to a story is partly to the fineness of its writing and partly to the depth of its humanity—its pity and understanding. I see no mental pictures—again all this is simply the emotion of recognition. Solid geometry? I have never studied anything. Stock pictures or individual vision? If it isn't the latter it's nothing! Resent too many images? This is not clear. "Behavior of the imagination" escapes me. Tools of trade? This, too, is complicated. I think I am centered on the main thing, and the rest follow subconsciously.