Chapter VII: Part 7

My response is generally limited to just about what the author describes. Naturally I do not know what is coming and so do not give much room to imaginings. The only thing that peeves me is to go through a lot of fine description only to find that it had nothing whatever to do with the progress of the story; was just slung there by the author for the sake of more words, words, words! But description in line with the action, or used to bring out the story more clearly, is a delight.

I have stock pictures only for that with which I am not familiar, like the interior of a submarine. All sub-sea stories to me might well be written around the same old boat, as that is the boat I see. But cowboys, cattle, people, village churches or vaudeville theaters all are individual. Sometimes even I find a writer who seems to know his subject well enough to give me a description exactly fitting some place I know. Then I read him with great interest. In my own writing I have an individual in mind whether I write a description or not. I never write of things I must needs use a "stock" illustration for--only of course as for brief mention. If my hero had once been caught undersea in a submarine I might mention that incident, but to write a story about it--never.

Which brings me to my own imagination when writing. Indeed there is a great difference! When I write I see everything. I see all my characters in their widely separated haunts, and right in the "center" so to speak is a bright spot like a spot-light and seemingly my characters come out of the semi-darkness and enter that light for the moment of their action. It is somewhat like rehearsing a play, only far more vivid to me, for the scene is constantly changing; instead of the scene changing under the spotlight, the light moves over the story-stage and spots first one location and then another. I have difficulty sometimes deciding which characters to put on or to deal with next and sometimes withdraw one who has done much and fire him completely. Then, too, when I hit certain scenes I have so many thoughts and things crowd so swiftly I whack away, hitting any old letter and spacing weirdly for the sake of speed. In some scenes I weep. If I try to stifle my emotion my thoughts falter. Often in the reading I wonder what there was to sniffle over when I wrote, but sometimes the best part of the story is right there. Often I soberly type off something that makes me laugh, real sudden humor, when I come to read it. Often it is something I didn't realize was funny when I put it down. Usually, like the sob-stuff, it requires considerable revision to make it presentable. I am glad I can feel the emotions so strongly and hope it will stay with me. I consider it a valuable "tool" and try not to abuse it.

=Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.=: Writing stories keeps my imagination alert. Reading stories, the keeping of my imagination alert depends on the stimuli--the art of the author. In one case the imagination is in harness; in the other it is loose in a pasture, and may be asleep.

A story has to be pretty vivid to react on my physical senses. Zola's novels, for example.

I rarely visualize, see with my eyes shut, except by conscious effort or intention. Then I can, easily.

Solid and spherical geometry gave me less trouble than algebra. I had to think _hard_ to work out some of the original problems, though, but it was a satisfying experience.

The mere concept is sufficient for a vivid impression, but provided it impinges on something in my emotional make-up that is already susceptible or sensitive. For instance, the thought of a keen knife drawn across the palm of the hand--you don't have to go any farther; you don't have to describe it. But something else you might, and even then it might leave me cold. I think the personal equation figures in here tremendously.

No, I don't think I have stock pictures, not as a rule, unless some particular thing in my experience has made a deep impression. If you say cathedral, I'm likely to see the one at Cologne, while I wouldn't think of Notre Dame at all. The latter is _sui generis_--not a cathedral. It's Notre Dame. Say Notre Dame and I get it.

=Rose Macaulay=: Depends entirely on how well and forcibly the story is written. Most stories convey no impression of any kind to me. My imagination pictures are just like what I see with my eyes open, I think. No solid geometry. My response limited by the author. Having stock pictures depends on the description. Resentment as to images depends on whether described well or tediously. A great deal of difference when reading and writing. As to tools, don't quite follow this question.

=Crittenden Marriott=: I taste through imagination to some extent. As to pain presented in fiction, I "choke up" on some stories--Mrs. Abbott's for instance. Can see images with eyes either open or shut. Details blurred. Solid geometry easier. Response limited by the author. I don't describe much, except when I am trying to please the women with meteorologic disquisitions; then I sling words. As to tools, no.

=Homer I. McEldowney=: It depends more or less upon the ability of the author, I should say. I have a pretty fair imagination and if the writer gives me half a chance, I believe that I see just about what he saw--or sets down in print. That, I think, applies quite as truly to taste, sound and smell, as to sight. I've read yarns that gave me an odd tightening through the chest and which, if they didn't actually "raise my hair on end," did produce a fine stand of "goose flesh" at the back of my neck. I've caught myself with the palms of my hands moist and cold. If these are sound indications of inner turmoil, then I'm getting all the kick there is in a yarn--with no transformer reducing the voltage.

Nope, solid geometry didn't give me any more trouble than other mathematics--and a damned sight less than a five-hour course in algebra that I just plugged through with a weak-kneed D!

I don't believe in stock pictures. I haven't them, and hope I'm never turning out stuff at such a rate that I actually have to employ them. I get a lot of fun out of my characters and scenes. To me they have individuality. I have never tried it, but I suspect that my use of a stock picture or character would result in a lightly veneered but wooden yarn.

I believe that for the most part I really get into the stories I write rather more deeply than into those I read,--with some exceptions, perhaps.

=Ray McGillivray=: To some degree imagination supplies an adumbrance of all the sensations you mention. With me auditory imagery is strongest. Anything appealing through any sense to my notion of the dramatic, curious or interesting I remember in fairly accurate (often exaggerated, I'll admit) detail. Solid geometry was my shark subject in mathematics. Calculus was where I resigned.

My greatest handicap to pleasure in reading fiction lies in the fact that unless characters are (1) left automatons, or (2) portrayed vividly like Hamsun's "Isak," Hardy's "Tess," or Stribling's "Birdsong,"--my concepts and the author's get to quarreling from the drop of the hat. Stating it briefly, my favorite authors are Hamsun, Turgenieff, Dickens and Nick Carter. In dime novels I write my own story as I read.

Stock types of characters hang on a writer only when he is trying to vivify a setting or situation with which he is not thoroughly familiar--or when he never has taken the pains to look closely at people in the endeavor to form constructive estimates of them. Of course weariness of body and mind, too--but _then_ the chap behind the pencil or Chatterbox No. 5 is not a writer but merely a dumb Will-To-Work.

The only difference in the way imagination works when reading and writing--so far as I know--lies in the fact that in reading every ascending step in the flight of story development opens a whole new gamut of conjecture, questioning and hope; in writing the imagination has to cross and recross, mount and descend the same space too often for any such tremendous scope. I verily believe a wide-awake writer of adventure fiction actually reads three novels every time he completes the perusal of seventy thousand words of an interesting story written by some one else. Vice versa, he crosses his own steps three times or more--three hundred might be a better figure--on his own _pièce de resistance_.

=Helen Topping Miller=: Reading is to me a sort of orgy of the imagination. I see, feel, hear, smell and experience every sensation written into the story--more keenly, I think sometimes, than the author who writes it. Naturally, I supply my own pictures for the setting--if a writer describes a country road I see--not his road, but the roads I knew as a child back in rural Michigan. I do not know whether I "see things with my eyes shut" or not. I know that when any idea is presented my imagination gives one leap and is gone. I live, walk, see, feel and hear the scene, experience the emotions of the characters, sense everything distinctly. There is no blurring, rather the impression is painfully keen.

Mathematics were an abomination to me. I scrambled through them as easily as possible and forgot them with cheerful alacrity.

I certainly consider my ability to experience every sensation imaginatively as my most important tool. It seems to me the most valuable and essential factor in trying to write fiction--the thing the canny Irishman called the "ability to get inside other people's skins."

=Thomas Samson Miller=: Imagination and visualization: I _feel_ location--the very hue of the sky, feel of the air, the scents and sounds of nature. I am less vivid on human actions and sayings. I am not so closely in sympathy with human beings as with nature. It is my greatest drawback in fiction writing.

I do not carry mental "stock pictures"; that would be reducing novelizing to bookkeeping. Certain authors do it, just as the same keep to one successful form of story and repeat, even in time-worn phraseology, so that one finds "Of a sudden" five to ten times in a single short story.

Behavior of imagination in _reading_ and _writing_ stories: The stories I read are so utterly beyond my art that there is no comparison. In _writing_ the imagination is intense; one _lives_ in the story, which one can not do in another story, any more than a violinist can reach the depths and heights of feeling of the composers whose composition he plays. No reader gets out of a story a tenth part of the feeling and visualization the author puts into it, or, perhaps, thought he put into it.

=Anne Shannon Monroe=: If the story I am reading "gets" me at all, I swing full into it, become absorbed and follow breathlessly through; if it doesn't "get" me, I don't go on.... I see the characters, the place--it is all as if it had been an actual experience. Sounds, tastes, odors,--it's all real in my mind, _if_ the writer has made it real on paper.... I think the atmosphere of the story gets into my sense more keenly than anything else,--the feeling of it--beauty of scene if beauty is created on the page--as in Hudson's writing.

Pictures I see in imagination are as they are pictured by the creator of them: the intense glare of a desert under sun--it's blinding just to think about: the deep rich purple-green of heavy old forests--it's almost suffocating: some writers make me feel these things just as if I had seen them.

All mathematics were impossible to me, solid geometry no more so than that whole idiocy, from the multiplication table up.

If the presentation is true, the mere concept starts my mind off on jaunts of its own.

I do _not_ have stock pictures; each character, scene, place is new, fresh--a creation.

I _do_ resent too many images. I could not wade through all of _Main Street_: while _Lulu Bett_ was a delight.

Difference in behavior of imagination when reading or writing stories? Well, in one way, no: if my imagination is not fired, I do not read and neither do I write. Often when I start to read a story it suggests one of my own, and I am off on my own adventure, instead of following the one the author has put before me. But if he has put it so as to catch my interest, I follow him with the same enthusiasm with which I write.

=L. M. Montgomery=: Yes, when I read a story I _see_ everything, exactly as if I were looking at an actual scene. I _hear_ the sounds and _smell_ the odors. When I read _Pickwick Papers_ I have to make many an extra sneak to the pantry, so hungry do I become through reading of the bacon and eggs and milk punch in which the characters so frequently revel. I never feel _physical_ pain when I read a story, no matter how intense the suffering described may be. But I feel _mental_ pain so keenly that sometimes I can hardly bear to continue reading. Yet I do not dislike this sensation. On the contrary I like it. If I can have a jolly good howl several times in a book I am its friend for life. Yet, in every-day existence, I am the reverse of a tearful or sentimental person. No book do I love as I love _David Copperfield_. Yet during my many re-readings I must have wept literal quarts over David's boyish tribulations. And ghost stories that make me grow actually cold with fear are such as my soul loveth.

I can "see things," with eyes shut or open, colors and all. Sometimes I see them mentally--that is, I realize that they are produced subjectively and are under the control of my will. But very often, when imagination has been specially stimulated, I seem really to see them objectively. In this case, however, I never see landscapes or anything but _faces_--and generally grotesque or comical faces. I never see a beautiful face. They crowd on my sight in a mob, flashing up for a second, then instantly filled by others. I always enjoy this "seeing things" immensely, but I can not do it at will.

The very name of geometry was a nightmare to me. I decline to discuss the horrible subject at all. Yet I loved algebra and had a mild affection for arithmetic. These things are predestinated.

I have no "stock pictures" as a reader. I generally see things pretty much as the writer describes them--though certainly not as the "movie" people seem to see them! This is especially true of places and things. But very few writers have the power to make me visualize their characters, even where they describe them minutely. Illustrations generally make matters worse. I detest illustrations in a story. It is only when there is some peculiarly striking and restrained bit of description attached to a character that I can _see_ it. For example: when R. L. Stevenson in _Dr. Jekyll_ says that there was something incredibly evil about "Hyde"--I am not quoting his exact words--I can see "Hyde" as clearly as I ever saw anything in my life. As a rule, I think the ability to describe characters so that readers may see them as clearly as they see their settings is a very rare gift among writers.

Yes, as a reader I _do_ resent having too many images formed for me. I don't want too much description of anything or too many details in any description.

When I _read_ a story, I _see_ people doing things in a certain setting; when I _write_ a story I _am_ the people myself and _live_ their experiences.

=Frederick Moore=: My imagination reproduces the story-world of the author to the extent that the author has given me pictures or has suggested them to me. I actually--mentally--see and hear all given to me in the story. I can not say I smell or taste, except the reference is to something already in my memory. For instance, if an author refers to the smell of a whaling-ship, or a bilge-water forecastle, I smell it in memory--that is, I know it. But I doubt if I could create the smell that might be referred to in filling a helium-gas balloon, because that is beyond my ken. If it should smell like, say, rotten oranges, I might get a reaction that would be fairly accurate. I can not say that I feel pain presented in a story in any degree. The strength of the suggestion on my imagination depends largely on the skill of the writer in transmitting his idea to me. Of course, I suffer more mental pain in seeing a cat injured than I do in reading of how several men were killed. In the latter case shock is missing, yet I have seen more men killed than I have cats hurt. There is a difference in the behavior of imagination when reading and when writing--while reading, my imagination is being spoon-fed; in writing, it is on "high," climbing a hill and watching the road carefully. And there is a difference in concentration, for in writing I am emptying my subconscious reservoir, while in reading I am refilling it. After finishing a story, I find that a lapse of time is necessary to allow the subconscious (or what I presume to be the subconscious) to refill. I couldn't write stories on an eight-hour basis--if I wanted to.

I really see things with my eyes shut, in the colors which I may desire to give them. Details are distinct if I care to turn the "spot-light" on them, so to speak--in other words, to the point on which I want to concentrate for description. The detail I am working on is distinct, but if I want to hold the image long enough for extended use I do not attempt to hold it steadily. I find that impossible. But I can make the image repeat itself without limit. I doubt if anybody can hold an image, even of something that has just been looked at, longer than a very small fraction of a second. And by this I don't mean a succession of "flashes" but a fixed image.

Solid geometry gave me less trouble than other mathematics, because I could visualize it better. However, I have been able to copy from mental images of a problem I have seen written out, or printed on a page, a problem required in an examination. That is, I have found it easier to recall that problem as I saw it in figures, and copy it, than I have to attack the problem and work it to the required answer. I presume everybody else can do the same. In examinations in artillery I have been able to recall images of cross-sections so readily as to be able to reproduce them in rough sketches or to give the required description. But if the question related to something that I had _heard_ in a lecture, I might well miss the question entirely. I show very poor results in written examinations relating to book matter--unless the questions relate to pages with such type arrangement or sub-heads that I can recall the entire page mentally and pick out of the image what I want. I may know a thing very well practically, and not be able to pass as high in it, as something I have acquired wholly from a book. I believe text-books on all subjects should be more visual.

The response of my imagination in some cases is dependent on the skill at description of the writer, especially in things or scenes with which I am not familiar. But a mere concept will set me reproducing if the matter deals with something with which I am familiar. By this I do not mean to say that my imagination will not work except with things with which I am familiar--I am referring to degree of response.

No, I do not have stock pictures for anything. I may think first of some picture in memory, and from that basis create the character, the place and the events. However, imagination probably requires something in the nature of a "feeder." What the imagination of a person blind from birth does would be most interesting. If a person had been blind up to, say, twenty and then recovered sight, it should be interesting to know what kind of mental picture he had had of, for instance, a full-rigged ship.

I have considered all these matters as tools of my trade. Without them, I doubt if it is possible to have the trade.

=Talbot Mundy=: If I pick up a book, say, on India, and provided the book is sufficiently well written not to "get my goat," I am in India instantly. I see, smell, hear and taste India. Sometimes I almost touch it. The same with any other country or place. India merely serves as an illustration. I have to be brought back to my surroundings with a wrench.

Sound is perhaps the least real of the sensations. I get the effect of the sound without the sound itself. The louder the sound, the less real, I rather think. For instance, if a gun goes off I don't jump out of my skin, and I don't think I hear the report--or, if so, I rather see than hear it. Colors are absolutely real, although rather more beautiful than in actual experience.

This is a very difficult question to answer, however. The world of imagination and ideas seems to me to be a separate world in which we experience all the sensations above referred to, but experience them differently. The sting--the element of personal suffering--to use the Christian formula, the cross--seems to be missing in this world of imagination; so that, although the cross and its consequences--a strong smell and its discomfort, pain and its distress--may all be present in the story, they are seen objectively and have practically no physical reaction except that of conscious pleasure.

On the other hand, ideas, emotions, contrasts between right and wrong do have a pronounced physical effect. I frequently sweat or grow angry or get prodigiously excited while reading--but always because of an idea that is concretely presented.

Perhaps I can put it best this way: Suppose that we torture the heroine. The most blood-curdling description of her agonies would probably excite my curiosity and might perhaps tickle a sadistic vein, but would certainly not cause me physical distress nor even mental disturbance. But the question whether she shall be tortured or not--the right and the wrong of it--the low-down arguments used on the one side, the high standards raised on the other, would arouse me almost to frenzy, and the blood would go coursing through my veins twice as fast as usual.

I don't have to shut my eyes to "see things." I see them more easily with eyes wide open. Possibly because I am short-sighted, the imaginary things that I see in that way are often more "real" than the real world. The pictures are invariably colored. Never black and white.

My response is not limited by any means to the degree in which the author describes and makes vivid. As often as not, too much description has the reverse effect.

I never studied solid geometry.

I think that in most instances vision is individual and new; but I rather suspect that things I have seen at different times and in different places form the store from which I draw apparently fresh illustrations as required. This, however, is another very hard question to answer correctly and really could not be answered without keeping tabs on one's self for a month or two.

Reading is better fun than writing. Therefore, when reading, the imagination is less rebellious and does its work more swiftly and easily. Otherwise I think there is little if any difference.

=Kathleen Norris=: I can't say that I ever get an actual sense emotion from what I write, that is, in taste or smell, but I have felt my mood very definitely affected by the experiences my characters are experiencing, and I frequently confuse them with real persons for an hour or two, and will find myself saying at lunch, (say) "Oh, a woman told me this morning ..." forgetting that the woman is of my own creating.

One would see things in this way pretty much as one would remember a meeting with somebody close and vital, or anticipating such a meeting. It would be natural to imagine the room, the sunshine, the gowns, etc., etc.

I never even finished grammar school.

No, it seems to me the only books worth while (that is, in the sense of popular fiction, etc.,) are the books that stimulate fresh imaginings of one's own.

I hate to read a book that does _not_ produce an individual vision and so add to one's stock, as it were. The chief delight of reading seems to me exploratory.

On the contrary, a writer who can form images is a great writer. But having images distorted or ill-formed is merely tiresome, and annoys one with a sense of wasting time.

Yes, all the difference between eating a meal and cooking it. (Incidentally I would always prefer the cooking.)

My brother-in-law, Frank Norris, once said that when he really wished carefully to depict a scene, he appealed to each of the five senses in turn; and to a greater or lesser degree I don't think any picture can be painted without one or more of these "tools."

=Anne O'Hagan=: It seems to me that the only possible answer to this question is: "It depends upon the genius of the author." There are villages in England I could find my way about in, there are drawing-rooms in which I perfectly see the furnishings, because of Jane Austen and Thackeray. I have grown hungry reading Dickens' meals. I suffered utter fatigue, misery and coldness crawling back to the farm with "Hetty" in _Adam Bede_; and I think I had something the same actual feeling of physical exhaustion in reading the Italian home scenes in _The Lost Girl_. But for the most part the impressions are impressions only, not experiences.

Pictures are colored when I actually have them, and details distinct.

All mathematics gave me trouble, but I think that the climax of despair was reached in calculus instead of solid geometry.

Response follows vivid suggestion as well as detailed description--when there is response.

I suppose that if the author of the village church or the cowboy did not cause me to see a definite creation, I have a property-room church or cowboy which my imagination would fit into the story. But I think with a little help I am able to construct a new one for the story in question.

Probably yes. That is, I should be bored by not being allowed to use my own imagination a little.

Yes. Only the masters of literature can absorb my mind with their characters, create a world which takes the place of the actual one for the time being; but when I am writing (with most pleasure and most of the feeling of creation, I mean--most successfully) I can be absorbed in my characters and can live in their world without for a moment believing that I am a master of literature. I mean by this that I know from my own experience how much _real_ creation is involved in the production of that which is not great or fiction.

No.

=Grant Overton=: I often see the people, the action and above all the setting. I do not know that I hear the sounds or taste the flavors or smell the smells or feel any impacts. I do feel what the people of the story feel, at least in the more emotional moments. I have suffered exquisite pangs along with my characters, have been thrilled with them, have despaired with them. To me fiction is merely a form of communicating feeling.

I do not see things with my eyes shut but with them open. I seldom notice details. What I see I can not describe, except as an effect. That is why I can not write descriptions full of physical detail.

Plane geometry is the only mathematical subject that gave me trouble. I don't think I ever studied solid geometry, but I undoubtedly passed an examination in it.

My response is wholly determined by the emotional content of the narrative and the emotional activity of the characters though conditioned by the skill of the author in verbal presentation.

I should probably image the village church from one I had seen. I should have no picture of the cowboy unless emotionally I found myself akin to him.

I do not mind how many images are formed for me but I resent nothing but images. I want, above all, to feel something.

Yes, my imagination when writing and when reading is totally different, but I do not know whether I can say how. In writing my imagination labors often painfully. In reading--but I suppose it is the difference between listening to music and playing some instrument yourself.

I can not answer as to tools. The five senses mean little to me when it comes to writing or reading. I should say that the appeal was to my intellectual senses if there is such a thing.

=Sir Gilbert Parker=: Everything is seen clearly. Better at geometry than anything else. Each case has its own vision. Do not resent multiplicity of images. It is the duty of the author to command my vision.

=Hugh Pendexter=: I get all the drama very clearly or else I quit. I must have the geography of the story in mind and often post myself on the locale with use of a map. I respond thoroughly to the comedy or tragedy of a story and read myself into it. I react more quickly to pathos than to the infliction of physical pain. Torture of a victim does not torture me. A child saving pennies to buy a garish, impossible tie for his old grandfather probably would bring tears. If a road or river is pictured, I must see it as though walking over or along it. I do not believe my imagination goes much beyond what the writer supplies, as then it becomes my story and not his and I can finish it without bothering to finish the book.

I really see things with my eyes _open_. The details are as distinct as any my physical vision can reveal. They are not outlines, nor black and white studies, but as they actually would exist as to form and color. I see most clearly those scenes I write about.

Mathematics never intrigued me. My recollection of solid geometry is that it was to me the delirium tremens of plane geometry. My two sons find mathematics absorbing. I abhor mathematics.

As to degree of my response, that is explained above.

Much difference. When writing a story my imagination supplies a wealth of detail that does not appear in the yarn. If I have to supply overmuch for the other fellow's yarn, I quit, as noted above.

The next query is rather blind to me. My best "tool of trade" is my immediate vision of what I wish to put into type.

=Clay Perry=: I visualize very much; in reading a story as well as in writing it. A story in which I am unable to visualize clearly annoys me. I want to go around the corners and see what the author sees. I suspect that an author who does not furnish the locale, color and plan which will enable me to see his story is careless. This goes for the characters, double. They should be seen clearly, I believe.

Sounds, I "hear," also, in the inner ear and taste the flavors with the tongue of imagination and sometimes my mouth waters to a pleasant flavor well pictured. To smells, being supersensitive anyway, the reaction is strong. To touch the reaction is not so strong, except in rare instances, mostly unpleasant suggestions, pain. I feel the pain if in sympathy with the character who suffers it, more than otherwise.

"Seeing things with my eyes shut" amounts to re-creation, through the stimuli of description, of a more or less familiar scene; or at least with a familiar scene the nucleus of the image built upon the stimuli. Details are distinct if description is vivid and, again, if the stimuli call up something which I have actually seen or experienced in the past that is akin to the scene or incident described.

Solid geometry gave me less trouble than any other mathematics and Lord knows the others gave me trouble!

I believe the concept stimulates me to imaging "what lies over the hill" in many cases, the "behind the scenes," perhaps because of a habit in my own writing of trying to set a stage "solid," not with mere "drops."

Stock pictures for stock "sets"? For a village church--a composite picture of the several dozen I had to attend when a boy, none of them the same exactly. For a cowboy, different stock pictures in different context. I think this depends largely on the manner and setting in which the object of character is _first_ introduced.

Yes, there is a difference in the behavior of my imagination when I am reading stories and when writing them. In reading, one has only to accept the author's concept; in writing, one has to consider and reject several and decide upon one. (There is, however, in reading, the tendency to look behind the scenes, which is perhaps a fainter manifestation of the selective impulse or artistic judgment habitual in the creation of a picture myself.)

I have thought of my reading constantly in connection with my writing. If a book or story is good, I get a stimulation from it, perhaps an inspiration, which, mingled with the profusion of other impulses and ideas, emerges, some time, as a part, or a tendency, in my own work. More often, however, I am astonished, when well started on a story of my own or when completing it, to run across another with a curious similarity of thought or philosophy--or perhaps, a contradictory philosophy in similar setting.

=Michael J. Phillips=: I try hard to visualize in important scenes. If I get stuck in a description I stop and visualize--hard. I don't see all the characters, but only the principal ones. I don't imagine the sounds unless I want to conjure up the effect of a sudden, alarming sound, like a shot, on the man or woman who hears it.

I do not taste the flavor of a story. I do not get rough or smooth contact nor physical pain. Rarely a story moves me to laughing aloud, and equally rarely, say twice a year in each case, does a story bring tears. My response to a good story--and it must be good--is the prickle down your back when he really puts it over. This may be at the finish or when one of the characters does an admirable or a clever thing in a way wholly admirable and noteworthy, and what is done is described by a master. Too much sophistication to get the kick that once I did, I suppose. A duel of words between two men in a love story over the girl, a battle of wits in which breeding and good sportsmanship are displayed, will produce the prickle down my spinal column quicker than exciting physical action.

I can not see the scenes with my eyes shut readily. It is only by effort, and they are in black and white. I can not visualize the faces of all my friends and relatives. The degree of nearness and dearness does not enter into visualization at all. Some strangers impress themselves on my mental retina, and I can not recall by shutting my eyes how some relative, perhaps in the next room, looks. I have a lot of fun visualizing a horse race with the jockeys wearing different colored jackets. This I use in the rare attempts I make to get to sleep when I do not fall instantly asleep on going to bed. I can't make it stick much. The colors get all mixed up. I have to keep telling myself which color my favorite wears.

I went to high school only a month or two in the second year, then quit to paint little white coffins in a casket factory, so you see solid geometry is a sealed book to me. Algebra was bone labor to me, but I was quite proud of myself when I solved a problem, and in some degree it was an attraction on that account.

I think I prefer the author not to clutter the picture with too many words. I don't want too much detail painted in, but I do want him to make his primary and essential characters and objects plain and clear. If it's a man and a horse, I don't want any impressionistic or cubist daubs that leave me in doubt whether it's a monkey and a rhinoceros. If he'll just show me plainly it's a man and a horse, I'll dress them up to suit myself. He makes me tired when he goes meticulously into detail, unless he's an artist--and they are damn few.

Each case produces its individual vision, I think.

To me, the reading of stories and the writing of them are not related at all. In reading, the imagination wanders where it wills; in writing, it is an imagination harnessed and doing its work.

They are tools of the trade and I use them steadily, though perhaps not so much as I should.

=Walter B. Pitkin=: I see colors and details pretty well with my eyes shut. Since I turned forty this function has noticeably weakened. When in my twenties and early thirties I could look at a piece of white paper and see, in faint, swimmy colors projected on it, the things I was imagining. My capacity to visualize has been unusually intense, as psychological tests have repeatedly shown. At the end of a day's work I can see the minutest details of the objects I have dealt with; the grain in the wood of my desk, the shadows on my office floor, the colors and forms in the street. I can see these at night just before going to sleep; and I used to get myself to sleep by watching the parade of visions!

All mathematics was extremely difficult for me in school, but chiefly because I had poor teachers. Geometry still is almost a black art to me, although higher mathematics is fairly easy.

My response to what I read is uncomfortably excessive. In handling the manuscripts of other writers I am constantly seeing more in the scenes than the writers themselves saw; and they have often told me this.

I have no stock visions of types. But I do tend to reproduce a series of real persons or objects from my experience, when I read about a similar one.

I do not resent the presence of many images and pictures in a story.

My imagination behaves very differently when reading from its manner when writing. But I confess that I can not adequately describe the difference. So much can be said of it. When I read I "follow the leader" and do not run off into my own channels; but when I am writing my fancy runs wild and I think of the most preposterous and remote things which--as later analysis often shows--have indirect and obscure connections with the idea I am working over. When reading I am passive, more or less; when writing, I am active. There is a curious difference, over and above this, in the nature of my emotional responses; and this rather stumps me to set down on paper. It seems as if I give deeper and surer emotional reactions to the content of what I read than I do to what I am fancying when in the midst of writing. I find that calculating and constructing makes me deliberate and a degree cool toward the subject-matter. This is the result of deliberate intellectualizing, of course.

I have always considered the functions of imagination as the basic "tools of the trade."

=E. S. Pladwell=: This question is too broad. It is all according to the author. Some can make me see, feel, taste, smell. Others merely glue my attention to the action. Others bore me. Under some authors I will say that I see the people and action, subconsciously, not as in real life.

My response is with one kind of author limited to the exact degree that he describes things, while with others I am able to wander all over. A concrete example: Kipling in a few lines can intimate things which will make me lay down the book and think. O. Henry, on the other hand, keeps one so busy keeping up with his sparkling action that there is no time for another thought. Kipling's mere concept, or hint, can produce unlimited mental pictures; but O. Henry has to draw them line for line. I believe that the concept or hint is best.

I never studied solid geometry, being fired from college just in time to avoid it. All mathematics bore me; and yet I can draw a ship or a city in perfect proportion and perspective. I suppose it's instinct or something.

Have no stock pictures for church or cowboy. Each individual case is interesting in itself.

Imagination to me is clearer when reading than writing. When reading I can sit back and let things flow by in easy sequence. When writing I must labor, taking various imaginings as a bricklayer picks up bricks, and then selecting those which are useful and rejecting those which are not. When I get a new idea my imagination is vivid; but in writing it I fade the picture, for my mind is occupied with means for putting the picture over, rather than the picture itself. The picture is still there; but it is subordinated.

=Lucia Mead Priest=: If a writer is master of his craft he can do what he will with my imagination. My senses are alert, particularly those of sight, taste, smell.

Oh, yes, my mouth waters. Dickens used to make me hungry till I sampled his edibles. "'am and weal pie" is a sordid delusion, a menu snare.

This is guess-work, but I should say I do respond to the various stimuli to the senses. Not in the same measure to all. When I read the death of "Nancy Sikes" I see her in the ghastly light of a London morning, see the grimy curtain with "Bill," and the horror under it, but I feel no quiver of flesh when he beats down the upturned face. I respond to mental hurts not to physical--not _as_ physical.

When impressed I find I carry a mental pain--even for years.

It depends entirely on the author's designs on me. If he paints his sunset clearly, I see it in color.

I think I must see details, for descriptions, bits of books, here and there, stand out from the main story often. I fancy the color of them is ephemeral.

I have no remembrance of any thing in mathematics from the multiplication table to trigonometry that didn't spell _Trouble_ for me with a monster T.

My response to an author who interests me is evidently helpful. I have found, often, that in rereading something I have liked I have built on many additions, colored it with my imagining.

Sorry, but I'm afraid my "stock room" is bare. Maybe I would find Owen Wister's or a stage cowboy in it, never having seen a live one.

My pictures come from original locations--geography I have covered myself.

No great difference in the working of the imagination between writing and reading. If so, one of degree. By the looks of my hair, when "genius" (?) has burned, I should judge I may get greater emotional depths when creating.

=Eugene Manlove Rhodes=: Visual imagination, yes. Hearing, no. Taste, smell, touch, pain, thirty to fifty per cent. Colors: distinct. No solid geometry. Concept is as good as three volumes--better; want to roll my own. No stock pictures. Reading _vs._ writing, no difference. As to tools, yes.

=Frank C. Robertson=: My imagination reproduces the story-world of an author, though with limitations. That is, I see a story-world when reading but I frequently realize later that it is not just the same as the author's. This, of course, is not the fault of the author, but comes from my own peculiar reactions. For instance: the author says "the lion roared." I don't hear the roar, I see a lion open his mouth in the motions of roaring. He says: "the gurgling brook." I don't hear it gurgle--I see it cascading over stones and know that it is gurgling. But if he forces me to it like "out in the darkness there sounded a strange, droning noise," I actually hear a strange, droning noise. In lesser measure this holds true with all the senses. The author speaks of his starving hero eating luscious fried bananas. I can see those bananas and my mouth waters, but to save my life I can not taste them. My sense of sight predominates. But where acute physical pain or mental agony is described I think I actually feel. At every blow of the lash my flesh shrinks and my nerves recoil. And I am as easily moved to tears as the veriest schoolgirl--which is why I write he-man stuff. Cold, callous and indifferent.

The mental pictures that I see are usually clear-cut and the coloring very much as I see the same objects in real life.

My response is not limited to the exact degree to which the author describes. I frequently seize upon a mere impression left by the author and from it build up a whole chain of pictures. I find this a decided handicap in my own writing for I am prone to leave a mere impression of the setting, and the scenes which are so clear to me are blurred in the mind of the reader. In rewriting I find that I always have to make the setting and atmosphere more vivid. In these mental pictures each case, or object, has a distinct individuality.

My imagination is never so active when reading a story as when writing it. In reading I am content to float along with the author, analyzing what has gone before rather than probing continually into the future as I do when writing.

To the extent that structure, appeal and atmosphere are necessary to the story I have considered these things as "tools of the trade." Just recently I have begun to realize the value of appealing to all of the reader's senses to get him more fully into the spirit of the story.

=Ruth Sawyer=: If a story is strongly and convincingly written I generally see characters and action developing with the same degree of reality that one sees a motion picture. Sounds, flavors, smells--in fact all sense perceptions become extremely acute. I should say the relationship to the actual stimuli is comparable with a vivid dream.

I rarely see color. For the most part things are black and white but with sharp detail.

I studied solid geometry and flunked it. The only examination in mathematics I ever flunked.

A suggestive concept will start me picturing endless detail provided the suggestion is true to type and locality.

No, I do not have stock pictures for village churches.

I think that depends largely on the condition of mind when one takes up a story. I find if I am tired I want the work of detail picturing done for me provided it is not overdone to the point of weariness. Also I think if one is generally familiar with the atmosphere the writer is creating that one enjoys filling in a large part of the picture with one's own imagination.

Yes. I should say when I read stories my imagination was passive and receptive; that when I wrote stories it was active and creative.

Not consciously.

=Chester L. Saxby=: In reading, my imagination functions in exactly the same manner as in writing. I write as I read, trying for the story-world, trying for reality. I think this explains why with me the atmosphere is the biggest thing, sometimes too big, bigger than the story. I write as if I were reading, not creating. I have that feeling.

=Barry Scobee=: I believe my imagination reproduces the story in almost minute detail, if it is interesting. I am a slow reader, the slowest I know, too unutterably slow ever to sit in on the newspaper copy desk. I've tried it to my sorrow.

I will see the scenes minutely--the details of the grove or lot or room or barn--the vast expanse of desert or prairie or sea or mountains. I will see the out-of-doors or the things with which I am familiar. I will see all this without effort. But as to hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, I will not catch them nearly so minutely or accurately, unless the author is impressing them with emphasis. If they are impressed emphatically, I take them in fairly well.

As to whether the story-pictures in my mind are black and white--shadowy--or colored, well, it depends on what the author says or whether I have seen places similar to what is being described.

I prefer to read, and write, where there is a splash and promise of color and description so that I can form my own pictures or let my reader do it for himself. A "big man with uncombed hair and in his sock feet" is likely to be better than a detailed description. It lets the imagination of the reader work, which is one of the technicalities the author should take advantage of. However, sometimes the dramatic can be enhanced by minute description. If I have seen something close to what the author describes or hints at I can see it in all its color.

Solid geometry, as I recollect--I am nearly thirty-seven--gave me just the same trouble as all other mathematics, which was trouble indeed, from addition to trigonometry.

It may be clear in the foregoing that a hint from the writer sets me to reproducing, if the description is anything at all within the compass of my experience or previous reading and comprehension.

I do not have a single stock picture in mind, so far as I am aware of now.

When I write my imagination behaves differently from when I read--it goes more slowly, because I must ponder and weigh and try out. But otherwise it brings in the material with clarity, if I have my mind well on what I am doing.

As tools of your trade? I don't quite savvy. All the thousands of quirks of technique, all the tricks of the trade, certainly are "tools of the trade." (And it's funny I can't think of a blooming one right now with which to illustrate.)

=R. T. M. Scott=: When I read a story my imagination reproduces the story-world of the author very vividly. If it does not, the story does not interest me and I pass on to the next. I do not hear sounds in connection with a story which I am reading except upon rare occasions. Taste, on the other hand, is very acute. Smells, too, are acute although not quite so acute as tastes. The sense of touch is not so pronounced, though I feel it to a certain extent. I feel no actual pain corresponding to the physical pain described in the story. In the case of taste my imagination produces the same result upon my sense as does the actual stimulus itself. (If the above proves me to be weak-minded or a degenerate please give me a chance to argue the matter with the fellow who says so.)