1. _When you read a story to what extent does your imagination
reproduce the story-world of the author--do you actually see in
your imagination all the characters, action and setting just as
if you were looking at an actual scene? Do you actually hear all
sounds described, mentioned and inferred, just as if they were
real sounds? Do you taste the flavors in a story, so really that
your mouth literally waters to a pleasant one? How real does
your imagination make the smells in a story you read? Does your
imagination reproduce the sense of touch--of rough or smooth
contact, hard or gentle impact or pressure, etc.? Does your
imagination make you feel actual physical pain corresponding,
though in a slighter degree, to pain presented in a story? Of
course you get an intelligent idea from any such mention, but in
which of the above cases does your imagination produce the same
results on your senses as do the actual stimuli themselves?_
2. _If you can really "see things with your eyes shut," what
limitations? Are the pictures you see colored or more in black
and white? Are details distinct or blurred?_
3. _If you studied solid geometry, did it give you more trouble
than other mathematics?_
4. _Is your response limited to the exact degree to which the
author describes and makes vivid, or will the mere concept set
you to reproducing just as vividly?_
5. _Do you have stock pictures for, say, a village church or a
cowboy, or does each case produce its individual vision?_
6. _Is there any difference in behavior of your imagination when
you are reading stories and when writing them?_
7. _Have you ever considered these matters as "tools of your
trade"? If so, to what extent and how do you use them?_
This question received in the questionnaire as much space as all the
other questions combined because it was designed to open up a field that
is practically new ground. When a student under Professor J. V. Denney
at Ohio State University twenty-five years ago, our class was much
surprised to learn that people vary tremendously in their ability to
respond to the descriptions or imagery of an author. I, as an example,
had taken it for granted that everybody saw, in his imagination,
everything mentioned in a story, was much surprised to learn that some
saw little or nothing and still more surprised to learn that some people
had a similar ability, almost entirely lacking in myself, to hear, taste
and smell as vividly as I saw. In the years that followed I questioned a
great many writers and found that practically none of them was aware of
this difference and that none at all had considered it a matter that
might have decided bearing upon their own writing--their effort to
convey to the reader what was present in their own consciousness.
Until the subject was brought up in a book of my own a year ago I had
chanced never to see it mentioned in print or hear it referred to again
by an author, editor or anybody else, yet during twenty years as an
editor case after case has arisen in which ignorance of this simple
phenomenon has proved a serious stumbling-block to a writer's progress.
An author, for example, with vivid powers of imaginative visualization
deems it a waste of words to describe what he believes every one will,
on the mere mention, see as vividly and fully as he himself does, and as
a result his stories when they reach his readers are not at all what he
thought they were. To many his story-world is a mere land of ghosts
moving in fog, without detail, color, individuality or reality. Another
writer, himself lacking visual imagination, in the effort to put on
paper a story-world capable of giving him a sense of reality uses so
many brush-strokes that a large part of his readers, needing only a
suggestion, are bored and read no more. A third writer, his own
imagination insensitive to appeals to the senses of hearing, taste and
smell, makes no such appeals in his writing and thereby fails to
approximate full response from many readers. Another, with an
imagination particularly sensitive to sound stimuli, gives to a story
the appeal strongest to himself, neglects visual and other appeals and
bores part of his audience with appeals that can not reach them while he
gives to others not enough stimuli to keep them interested.
What, then, should be the general rule of procedure? There can't be any,
but since readers vary so radically and fundamentally in ability to
respond to sense appeals, any author, new or established, who in
ignorance of this fact attempts to reach them on the theory that the
responses of all of them are identical with his own is going to fall far
short of his potential success as a writer. The following answers from
more than a hundred writers will show that most of them are working
without knowledge of this basic variation in imagination response of
readers.
The part of the questionnaire bearing on imagination was designed to
bring out (1) the differences of readers in natural ability to respond,
(2) the resultant differences in effect upon readers of the presence,
degree or absence of certain sets of stimuli in a story--in other words,
the extent to which a story is dependent for success upon the use of
such stimuli, (3) a general idea of the relative importance of stimuli
to the various senses, (4) the extent to which the imagination
differences were recognized by writers and allowed for in their work,
and (5) since there seemed no available data on any part of the subject,
the securing of any chance information that might shed new light.
As elsewhere in the questionnaire the desire to make the questions
entirely unprejudiced in form, so that they would in no way tend to
shape answers toward what I wished to see established, made them less
definite and direct than they could have been made at the time--and very
much less than they could be made now that the answers have shown the
infinity of variations in imagination responses, the many interesting
points not systematically brought out or previously considered, and the
great difficulty, for any one analyzing his reactions for the first
time, in giving clear-cut answers. The answerers, remember, received
only the bare questions without even a hint of the explanation and
purpose as fully stated here. With such explanation the questions
probably seem sufficiently definite. They did to the several authors and
editors to whom I turned for aid in compiling them. But the answers will
show how much more definiteness would be needed for absolutely definite
results.
More definite results should be secured from a questionnaire framed for
that purpose. But the following answers, partly because of the very fact
of comparative indefiniteness in the questions, are so richly
suggestive, so stimulating and illuminating in a hundred ways, that
their value transcends any mere tabulation of specific results. Also,
for all practical purposes, they give sufficiently definite data for
satisfactory conclusions on the points aimed at.
It is to be noted that in all but the last two questions on imagination
the authors were being asked as to their reactions, not as writers, but
as readers only, though in some cases this distinction has not been
maintained.
The first two questions may be considered as one. The third, as to solid
geometry, was partly to ascertain whether those lacking visual
imagination encountered unusual difficulty in a study demanding ability
to imagine a third dimension in a figure drawn in only two dimensions;
partly, I confess, as a check on some who might, in all good faith,
analyze their abilities incorrectly; partly to show the importance of
securing proper imagination stimuli in order to get complete
understanding.
Indeed, the answers to these questions on visual imagination, no matter
who gives them, are bound to be incorrect in a very appreciable number
of cases. Surely of all subjects the imagination is one of those that
least lend themselves to hard and fast analysis and iron-clad
definition. Also there can be no fixed standard or basis of comparison.
Add to these difficulties the similar ones connected with the various
sense impressions. No group of answers, however truthful in intent,
could be expected to provide absolutely reliable data, yet very
practical results can be obtained and writers, as a class dealing
particularly with the imagination, are unusually equipped to furnish
valuable analyses. If some of those who answer have failed entirely to
grasp some of the essential distinctions, others have been unfailingly
clear-sighted and have given all that could be asked in the way of
nicety of analysis.
For example, some of them, like Theodore S. Solomons, draw the most
important distinction much more satisfactorily than I was able to do in
my questionnaire even after years of considering the general subject,
and the reader is referred to them if my statement of this distinction
is not sufficiently clear.
The chief stumbling-block to any one attempting to answer the first two
questions is the demand to draw a definite line between an actual sense
impression through the imagination and a mere intellectual concept of
that sense impression. It is not so easy and simple as it may seem. For
example, if I may illustrate from my own case, I find that my
imagination gives me very good visual impressions but none at all from
the other senses. I can, with eyes shut or open, look at any thing,
person or place I have seen and again _see_ in my imagination any part
or detail that I am capable of remembering intellectually in any
way--can even see what I have never seen with my eyes, though of course
no one can imagine anything that is not built of parts familiar to him
through some kind of actual experience. But do I see things as clearly
as if they were before my physical eye? It is easy to answer either yes
or no, with long arguments to support either side. If imagination gives
me blurred pictures, I can focus on any part of them and make it so
clear it almost hurts, yet the fact remains that most of the picture is
blurred. On the other hand, that is exactly the case with the physical
eye. But isn't the field of exact vision smaller in one case than in the
other? And so on endlessly.
But to bring out the main distinction, consider my case as to the other
senses. At the mention of the luscious taste of a pear I at once get a
highly individualized memory of the pear taste with no possible chance
of confusing it with the taste of anything else. It may make me long for
a pear. I can see a pear, the teeth biting into it, the juice gushing
from the broken, tooth-marked flesh, and I think of the pleasure that
taste brings. But I can not taste the pear. Not to even the faintest
degree. I can almost feel its contact to my fingers, teeth, tongue,
mouth, even the contact of the extracted juice--so much so that I'm
tempted to say I have a little touch-imagination. But I can not taste
that pear.
I am equally negative as to smells. I am so sensitive to contact that I
almost shrink from the imagined grating of a rough surface over my
clothes. But I can not really _feel_ that grating. For touch, smell and
taste I have only intellectual concepts. (Yet with me these actual
senses themselves are all rather more than normally acute.) But I can
undoubtedly _see_ things through the eyes of my imagination. As to
hearing, frankly I am unable to answer. I can not persuade myself I
really hear sounds with my imagination, yet I can imagine to myself any
tune I know, note for note. Probably I have an abortive
sound-imagination that could be developed to an easily recognizable
degree by practise and concentration.
You will get from the above at least a general idea of the necessary
distinction--a far better idea than my bare questions could give to
those who answered them. You will get, also, an idea of the difficulty
in giving definite answers. Analyze your own imagination responses,
refusing to be satisfied with snap judgments. Try out some of your
friends. And bear this distinction in mind when reading and weighing the
answers that follow. Incidentally, please extend to me a little sympathy
over my task of trying to classify and tabulate the data from these
answers and remember that any such tabulation must be more or less
arbitrary. If you doubt it, try to tabulate them!
Another distinction that some answerers failed to make (and thereby
added to the scope and value of our data) is that between sense
impressions and emotions. Just as one can hear a real sound without
emotion, so can one hear an imaginary sound without emotion, or feel
emotion in either case. Nor, of course, is emotion dependent upon any
sense impression, since a thought, idea or bare concept can bring it
into being. The data on emotion is of decided interest, but is to be
considered quite apart from sense impressions through the imagination,
though an investigation as to the effect of one upon the other might
prove worth while.
The fourth question concerns the actual effect on the reader of the kind
of sense stimuli the author puts into his writing, or of the absence of
stimuli. Here a distinction must be very carefully drawn in considering
the answers. The real point is not whether an author in general or a
story as a whole interests or fails to interest, but whether, all other
factors aside, the descriptions (of places, things, people, etc.,)--the
stimuli to sensory imagination--interest and why.
The fifth question on the imagination (as to stock pictures instead of
individualized ones) is of comparatively little importance, except as it
shows that some readers will resort to stock pictures if the author
fails to paint individualized pictures that interest them.
The sixth question proves of minor importance and the seventh will be
taken up after the answers.
As many of the answers would lose in value if their continuity were
broken, there has been no attempt to separate them into the seven
divisions. Each of the seven, however, has been separately tabulated,
though any tabulation of them must to some degree be arbitrary.