When you imagine characters in a story you read

In the Autism Quotient questionnaire, there is this statement:

"When I'm reading a story, I can easily imagine what the characters might look like"

What if I always use faces that I know, for example actors from shows I've seen a lot? Sometimes I pick an actor to be a character after the first description of the character, then later they might say something about their looks that doesn't fit with the actor, and I'll kinda ignore it because I already decided who is playing that character.

To agree with the statement, should one be able to "build a face" in ones mind based on the information given?

Sometimes these things are so hard to answer when you don't know how other people work.

Parents
  • "When I'm reading a story, I can easily imagine what the characters might look like"

    Another example of an ambiguous question that I find annoying/difficult to answer.  It should be specific for example:

    "When reading a story I can easily imagine characters with or without a character description."

    I imagine characters and places depending on the type of story and context of what is being written.  To be fair, I am more into non fiction on certain subjects as I love learning....

  • If the book is adapted to a film, then I just imagine the characters as there are in the film, otherwise to be honest I can hardly imagine every character very detailed, maybe only the main ones. By the way, how many books do you read? Do you have enough time for that? I have a lot of writing assignments but I still manage to read a book per week, especially since I am writing my best essays on editing quickly without being distracted in order to have more time to read.

Reply
  • If the book is adapted to a film, then I just imagine the characters as there are in the film, otherwise to be honest I can hardly imagine every character very detailed, maybe only the main ones. By the way, how many books do you read? Do you have enough time for that? I have a lot of writing assignments but I still manage to read a book per week, especially since I am writing my best essays on editing quickly without being distracted in order to have more time to read.

Children
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