Writing for the non-visual reader

There's this lovely little thing called aphantasia that is getting more attention online. They say it's quite rare, but as three people in my writing group have it, I seem to think about it more often than other people.

From Clevelandclinic.org:

Aphantasia is a characteristic some people have related to how their mind and imagination work. Having it means you don’t have visual imagination, keeping you from picturing things in your mind. People often don’t realize they have it, and it’s not a disability or medical condition.
...

The available research indicates that aphantasia is uncommon overall. Experts estimate between 2% and 4% of people have it. However, research on this condition — including how many people have it — is limited.

It’s also difficult to determine who has it because many people with aphantasia don’t realize they think in a way that’s different from most people. People with aphantasia may not realize that most people can “see” images they generate in their minds. Some with aphantasia say they thought using the word “see” in that context was a metaphor. Because of this, aphantasia may be more common than research currently shows.

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/25222-aphantasia

My personal theory is that the inability to picture things in your mind comes from a profound deficiency in omega oils, which your brain requires to run properly. However, I don't have any studies to back this up, only observations that my aphantasia friends improved when they took some.

Anyway, modern authors are told by modern writing books and bloggers to get more and more visual in their descriptions. Make it like a movie or a videogame, we are told. Readers are used to visual media, so make books as much like movies as possible.

However, this leaves people without visual minds in the cold. When you describe your heroine as having brown hair, brown eyes, of medium height, and 35 years old, that basically conveys nothing. It's a string of facts. The nonvisual reader will make a note "average" and go on with the story, hoping you can clue them in.

When consulting with my aphantastic friends, they pointed out a few very interesting things, and I wanted to share them with my fellow authors.

What they can picture are characters and emotions. Give them a feeling or a personality to connect with, not a look. For instance, this was judged to be an excellent nonvisual description:

That unsureness, though he did not know it, was one of the things that years of being a disappointment to his father had done to him. He had always been miserably aware of being a disappointment to his father. His mother, whom he could scarcely remember, had been beautiful; but Justin, always unfortunate, had continued to be both very like her and very ugly, with a head too large for his thin shoulders, and ears that stuck out defiantly on either side of it. He had spent a good deal of his childhood being ill, and as a result, when the time came for him to go into the Legions, as the men of his family had always done, he had failed to come up to the needful standard of fitness for the Centuriate. He had not minded for himself, because he had always wanted to be a surgeon; but he had minded deeply for his father's sake, knowing himself more than ever a disappointment; and became even more unsure of himself in consequence.

The Silver Branch, Rosemary Sutcliff

This passage only gives us a few cursory physical details: thin shoulders, a head too big, too big of ears, overall ugly appearance. But those pale in comparison to the emotional impact of being a disappointment to one's father, and as a result, losing all self-confidence. The nonvisual reader can picture this clearly, because human emotions are universal. They may not be able to see the outside of the character, but they can feel his soul.

This is an interesting challenge for modern writers, because it runs counter to most things we're taught. Keep description brief, we are told. Remove exposition in the name of show, don't tell. Never explain, only show visuals, show visuals, show visuals. This leaves a portion of readers in the dark. They can't see those visuals, and as a result, there's nothing left to connect to. Characters are given so much visual description that their inner description is forgotten.

I opened a random Kindle book I'd recently sampled and found this description:

Gus got onto his knees and looked up at me. The same old Gus. Pale face, and nervous eyes that never looked in any one place for long. His black hair hung down from under a dirty orange cap. He was maybe five years older than me, but he looked…old. I clenched my fists. “Why are you here, Gus?” He got up, brushing newspaper and wet leaves off his cargo pants. Working himself up to say whatever it was he had come here to say. He was shorter than me by a lot, so he had to look up.

Empowered Agent, Dale Ivan Smith

This description is so cursory that a nonvisual reader will see it as a list. Pale, nervous, black hair, orange cap. Maybe not bad for a very minor character, but it's implied that this character will be important. We could have used another paragraph of the viewpoint character expositing about him, maybe show the POV character's emotions about him. We got a little from earlier in the scene, but it was mostly "I'm angry this guy is contacting me because I'll be breaking parole".

Meanwhile, older authors like Charles Dickens had this down to a science. Without combing back through Bleak House, I could describe verbatim "the woman who always talked about the orphans in Africa, and was always focused on helping the orphans in Africa. Meanwhile her own eight kids dressed in rags, ran about in a shrieking pack with no discipline, her house was filthy, and her husband came home from work and just sat in the corner with his head against the wall until there was a discolored spot there."

My nonvisual friends winced at this description because they know this woman. They don't have to know a single thing about her hair or her clothing, because her character shows through in her actions and motivations, and how she treats the people around her.

This kind of description is a lost art among modern writers. I suppose you might still find it in "literary" fiction, but genre fiction could benefit from it, too. One of them said, "I have trouble with physical descriptions. Because I can't actually see, I do better if the physical description is short and the character description is long. Your description of the terrible mom in Bleak House actually did more for me than any physical description would, because I knew her."

One of my nonvisual author friends said:

Physical description tied to character works. I think that's why Dante (the main character of Baptism by Fire by Alexandra Gilchrist) is so vividly real to readers (at least me ). The key points of his appearance are tied down in some way to his behavior. The way he dresses, the more proper way he speaks, the disdain he gets for his incongruous youth.

Gilchrist

From the book in question:

"Agent Patrick McCoy, I’d like you to meet Agent Dante Brand, top agent of our PNI Division." The director gestured to the young man sitting on the corner of his desk. Brand couldn’t be more than twenty, with an easy smile, flaming red hair that was fashionably spiked, and strange golden eyes that glittered as if they harbored a secret joke. He wore an incredibly expensive suit unlike anything Rick had seen before. A deep blue tailored cashmere suit jacket, detailed with hand embroidery on the sleeve cuffs and lapels, covering a burgundy silk shirt. The kid literally wore white kid gloves embroidered with an orange and yellow design Rick couldn’t make out. 

Top agent, my eye. Probably the son of some senator or something handed a made up rank to make daddy happy. Rick crossed the room, forced a smile, and extended his hand to the other agent. "Please, call me Rick." 

"I’m Dante, if you please." The other agent took his hand. The gloves were soft, but the kid’s handshake was firm, and his voice quietly confident. He had a faint accent – French, maybe – but only as much as you’d expect from someone who had been in the country a while. So a diplomat’s kid maybe? Rick cringed inwardly. He was going to be assigned to babysit some pampered rich brat as penance for punching the guy who got his kicks murdering his last partner.

Baptism by Fire, Alexandra Gilchrist

There is a video that my writing group constantly references, especially as regards Young Adult fiction. The heroine is described as "not beautiful and not ugly, but just sort of plain", but what does that even mean? If you have a nonvisual mind, I'd say you wind up with exactly the cartoon character in this video:

Apologies to all your YA writers out there who have written this exact thing.

"I don't want to be a cookie maker! I want to fight wars with the high elves!"

Anyway, this is a topic that will require further unpacking and thought, so I'll revisit it in the future. I hope it's given you some food for thought, both as a reader and a writer! If you have aphantasia, what kinds of books do you enjoy?