i thought about this a bit, and my answer's basically "maybe a bit, but not really that much." like, probably the first-order thing that affects my writing the most is just unconsciously imitating & drawing ideas from other stuff i've read, and that's more about imitating styles/tones/rhythm/etc; I would actually be a little surprised if even extremely-visualize-y people didn't use this as their primary source when writing. writing can be used to evoke images but it's not the image itself, i guess. idk?
it's true i get very little out of the sort of generic visual description you get of characters in novels sometimes, i.e. "she had pale skin and brown hair and green eyes"—that just doesn't stick in my memory, and i honestly just don't care about the facts of appearance. stuff that *will* stick in my mind is more about the bearing/atmosphere/mood around a character, i.e. the way the constant association between Heathcliff and the dark, windswept moors gives him a feeling of being very brooding and tragic and virile, a character having "the hunched look of a whipped pup," etc etc. but again, i suspect (though cannot prove; this could just be me being biased) that this is just better writing in general; even if you're a very visual thinker, it's going to be much more efficient, and effective, if you can get the scene in your mind across with a few sentences describing a mood than if you painstakingly describe the colors of object in the picture.
(and, thank you for the complement! in conclusion though i think it probably just comes down to random foibles; i certainly know things i do too much of in my own writing that are hard to clamp down on, haha)
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Date: 2016-08-01 05:49 pm (UTC)it's true i get very little out of the sort of generic visual description you get of characters in novels sometimes, i.e. "she had pale skin and brown hair and green eyes"—that just doesn't stick in my memory, and i honestly just don't care about the facts of appearance. stuff that *will* stick in my mind is more about the bearing/atmosphere/mood around a character, i.e. the way the constant association between Heathcliff and the dark, windswept moors gives him a feeling of being very brooding and tragic and virile, a character having "the hunched look of a whipped pup," etc etc. but again, i suspect (though cannot prove; this could just be me being biased) that this is just better writing in general; even if you're a very visual thinker, it's going to be much more efficient, and effective, if you can get the scene in your mind across with a few sentences describing a mood than if you painstakingly describe the colors of object in the picture.
(and, thank you for the complement! in conclusion though i think it probably just comes down to random foibles; i certainly know things i do too much of in my own writing that are hard to clamp down on, haha)