Fixed image while reading

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In general, I have difficulties picturing characters and places while reading a story, unless it's a movie tie-in or TV spin-off where I've got some pre-existing images to draw on. (Come to think of it, that may be one reason why I loved reading Jules Verne as a kid, all those lovely copperplate illustrations!) Yet my mind seems to need some image, and what it tends to do is pick some place I've recently been, often a perfectly boring place like an empty corridor or a pedestrian underpass, and then I see all the characters (to the extent that I can picture them) acting out the plot in that place! I've had this problem for years (ever since I stopped reading Jules Verne, I think), and it's really annoying - however much I try to conjure up images of the places described in the story, my mind keeps reverting to the place I've been. Does anybody else have this bizarre problem?

Yeah I think I do that but I've never considered it a problem. My characters are all faceless though.

I "cast" almost all of my book chracters. After establishing the characters personality and physical parameters if they are there, I think of what actors or real people would play that character well. I know I've used some people more than once, just like they were starring in different movies. It makes the story extremely vivid, because once I know what they look like, I have no problem directing the scene in my head. Same thing with scenery, alot of it is cut and paste, but scenes are much easier to conjure up spontaneously than people so I have little problem there.

The only problem with that is when the author decides to reveal a little tidbit about what the character looks like or how old they are after I've already cast someone that's incompatible with the new description. Then I have no choice but to quickly cast someone else, and I do not like doing that. It's just as annoying as a movie sequel with someone different playing a significant character. I wish novelists would be a little more sensitive to that. They should have an appendix that describes exactly what each character is sopposed to look like unless they leave it entirely up to the reader.

When I read fiction the words get turned into a movie in my mind, it's extremely vivid and is a major source of the enjoyment I get from reading fiction and is why I love science fiction and fantasy.

I generally KNOW characters - know which are closest to me ands which are possible friends.

But I do not have images. In fact, I do not really have visual records of most people, except for a few flashes and instances where I have a photograph.

I always involuntarily assign a famous actor to written characters, even if the description does not match the person I picture. Its irritating.

I usually make up the models for characters out of whole cloth (I hate it when they're contradicted by later description... even more so when the description is itself at fault), but I sometimes reuse settings. (More often when I was younger.)

I can usually picture everything except the faces. Eyes I can sometimes see, mouths sometimes, more often no face. (I'll see certain parts when they're described, though.)

Usually, I have pretty good images of them and the whole thing plays out like a movie, with the characters even having certain voices that just seem right.

This gives me some idea of which books would make the best movies. (Hawkspar! Someday they'll make it into a movie!) Unfortunately, they never cast the right people. They've got the most awful guy as Jaime Lannister, who doesn't even look like the person they've cast to play his twin. *sigh* And he's a character whose face I can see in pieces fairly well (not all together, though), too, and guess what the actor's face doesn't look at all like.

I usually visualize settings well enough, though. (This is what I don't like about illustrations.) I love it when books go into detail. The only thing is when they describe things I've never seen
(porphyry,the first time I read the word, for instance).

My characters are faceless too. I can imagine houses, streets, all the city system, see them on the map. People are only objects with features, but without body.
When I think about person, I could draw them with description. But I prefer drawing objects from the books than people. I remember when I drew a shop inside and houses on Literature lesson (teacher wanted to show us how detailed description is), but I had problems with main character. He was nothing to me.

For me, it really depends on the book.

Sometimes I'll read a book where the settings are real-life locations, and the author figures they're well-known enough to not go into detail about them...other times there's so much detail that I can see everything very clearly, and I've even had movie adaptations look exactly how I imagined them (though at the moment I can't remember which book/movie that was).

As for characters, I'm not really sure...I guess sometimes it depends on how much I like the character, or if I have a flash of inspiration, or if there's plenty of detail, or sometimes I just decide that a certain character would look best as a certain famous actor or whatever...

Though I find it interesting that when I'm listening to radio dramas, often I hear an actor's voice and I can just picture what sort of face would go with it. Like someone else said, though, it always goes kind of haywire when they later reveal some physical feature that contradicts what I was picturing.

I'm still trying to picture Lois Lane with brown eyes, but my brain doesn't want to cooperate