How do you "see" imagination?

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It's going to be hard for me to articulate this, but how do you "see" into imagination? Written words in a book are just that, words. And you can't set foot inside your imagination either. Even when you're watching a movie, you're just looking at images on a screen.

Apparently, the secret is believability, but if you make it believable enough, isn't it going to be kind of dishonest if it's not real?

Imagination is neither a place nor an object.  It is a process inherent to creativity.

When I open a book, I read the words which are written on the page. My brain considers each word and how they relate to each other.

For instance, consider 'There was a beach. It was wet' as an example.

Now, from this I know that there is a beach. I have seen beaches on TV. Also, I have been to a beach before in real life. So I understand what a beach is and how they look.

Of course they differ, depending on the individual beach, but I know that it is most likely that the author intended for their work to be interpreted to include an image with sand and the sea. Unless it's described as a rock beach.

However, with the information we have, it's fair to assume that it is the sandy variety as this is the most common understanding of a beach.

We also know that the beach is wet. I have seen what wet sand looks like. So I can combine this information to create an image of the beach in my mind's eye.

Now, I am quite a visual thinker. I often create visual images in my mind without meaning to do so. My thoughts are like a narrated movie. When I read a book, it's basically the same as sitting down to watch a film for me.

For some people, they may only see the image visually. However, I am also able to recall touch sensations and sometimes if I can emotionally connect with a character, then I also feel afraid as if I'm the one going face first into battle instead of the character.

Regarding the question about deception - this is where suspension of disbelief comes in to play. When I sit down to read a book of fiction, I know it isn't real. By labelling it fiction, the author has said 'Hey, nothing in this book is real. This is supposed to be a fun work of hypothetical scenarios which didn't actually happen and this is purely for entertainment purposes'.

You go in to this book with this knowledge. It would be dishonest if the author had claimed the events to be true when they are not. However, the author has told you that nothing is real right from the start.

So how do you make a reader care about something that isn't real? You invoke their sense of curiosity. Make them wonder what you're going to write next so they continue reading the story. Your reader may know that some of the contents of your book simply isn't possible, such as magic, but they accept that the rules of this made up universe differ from our own. So long as you follow the rules you have established in your own story, the reader will allow it in favour of satisfying their curiosity to find out what happens next.

I translate into pictures, so I read slower than those who think in words as I form pictures in my mind which can take a little longer, especially when doing maths where I think in patterns of dots. Not sure if this is how others think, though I did find I needed to work out the workings out for equasions after I had mentally found the answer, and would usually get the answer right but would often puzzle maths teachers when I messed up the workings out as they tried to ask how I was thinking when I did them!
My vocabularly in english is slightly limited compared to most which is probably due to thinking in pictures? BUT I can usually dream up design ideas in my head! (Grandad and Great Grandad were both designers).

Usually if something I'm reading is set in a house I imagine it as my own house I grew up in, or someone else's house I'm familiar with. Sometimes my brain just chooses for me which house to imagine it be set in. Same with school. If the story is set in a high school then I picture it in the high school I went to.

I have synaesthesia so every word or sentence causes me to see colours although I don't really see the colours if I'm reading because that would be too distracting. I feel them when reading instead. If I wanted to stop and "picture" the colours I could but otherwise I'm aware of the colour cadence without picturing it. Even by "feeling" the colours it's kind of like reading a rainbow emotionally.

I feel written words like music notes because of the meter. When I hear music I see it spatially and in 3D form, so I read passages with that same sense of of depth. I can't read music so it only happens when I listen.

I can't picture or imagine human faces. I'm face blind so I don't even picture people I know. I'm dumbstruck by long descriptive prose describing a face and it'll mean nothing to me unless they give a hair colour or identifier like "walks with a limp".

When I try to "picture" anything else it's like I'm looking through a tiny pinprick keyhole with black around the edges. I just see a quick flash of the thing in static form like a blurred photo. Then it's gone. I don't remember or visualise anything in movie format or with movement. None of my memories are really episodic. I can tell you what happened if I remember a sequence of events, but most of what I'll remember is sensory like the smell or the sounds. I won't be able to picture it like I'm watching TV, and I won't hear the dialogue unless I memorised it by repetition when it happened.

This is part of the reason I'm so obsessed with printed family photos. I wouldn't know what anything or anyone looked like if I didn't have pictures to back on or study.

microdose on shrooms or LSD/Acid or do a decent dose. You will both see and feel your mind's wild imaginations come to life.

I can see images in my brain for sure. Not everyone can, and not everyone who can, can do so to the same extent as the next person. For me, it's more like a flash of a picture in my head.... I can "see" it, but only for a split second and not detailed unless I'm picturing a specific detail.

I have had the experience of getting so engrossed in a book that I literally forget that I'm reading and it feels like the adventure is happening around me. That said, I don't necessarily "see" much of anything in these instances.

I lean into the aphantasia realm. I don't easily form pictures in my head. When I do, they're vague and disappear quickly. I think in directions and concepts. It's hard to explain but I move from linked concept to linked concept. While in a concept it's like a cloud of smaller concepts.

I can visualize and alike a lot of people there's a sense that there's a screen behind my eyes that can hold and manipulate images in a way that... weird to describe it, it can occupy the same 'place' as visually processed material but it's fleeting, vision pushes the mental images back so it's easier in a way to do it with my eyes closed.

Obviously it has a lot of uses though - especially with making analogies, transforming information, probing mathematical ideas such as trying to sort out how many distinct planes are related to a problem and whether you can hack at it through standard two-plane algebra, etc.. There's also self-processing and homeostatis which I think a lot of what imaginary friends / assistants are - constructs that can close loops on positive ways when the world outside you is either too competitive, Machiavellian, or both to be a place that you can look to for healing or stability.

words and moving pictures/images....

I see imagination, either as Belouis Some



or Imagination



My imagination is stuck in the eighties.

My imagination is stuck inside my head

I watch it get projected on the inside of my forehead.

Really? ^

Honestly - I want to know what's normal.
If you try to picture something is that what happens?

I have no clue.