I have partial facial blindness which makes it hard to picture faces that aren’t super familiar and I can’t create new faces in my head. I end up picturing faces of people I know and celebrities.
It becomes frustrating when I’m reading as the faces morph constantly into my head. I constantly stop to get the faces right. Sydney Sweeney ended up as 2 characters when I read “Bunny” lol. I also get a biased view of the characters this way. It makes it really hard to enjoy reading nowadays. Any suggestions? Different strategies for picturing or reading without picturing?
I have a very vivid imagination while reading, to the point where I can almost forget that I am reading, like a movie playing in my head.
And while I do not have facial blindness, I try to not see faces of characters unless I am reading after having seen a tv/movie adaptation in which case it is near impossible not to see the characters from the screen while reading.
I instead try very hard to go by shapes starting from a blank canvas which is like a faceless mannequin or the of one with details filled out by what i read, such as a red lipstick, purple eyes or a smirk but it’s more like clear details on an otherwise blurry/faceless mannequin.