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drawn by: Nili DooL
Today's post explores hyperphantasia and aphantasia, mainly how you can use them and overcome them while writing. Furthermore, I have hyperphantasia, so I can about the first part of this post from experience. When it comes to the part about aphantasia, I'll do my best to give some helpful advice, but if you have anything to add, please do write it in the comments!
Hyperphantasia is a condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery.
It consists of:
- The ability to dissociate from reality.
- A tendency to get immersed in media like books and movies.
- Incessant daydreaming.
- A feeling of longing for something.
- Feelings of nostalgia, remembering the past.
When it comes to vivid imagination, this can help with describing the scene and character in great detail.
In order to make things less messy, try asking yourself these questions to help you with your writing.
5 senses (for description) + 6th sense:
- SIGHT (what can be seen?)
- SMELL (what can be smelled?)
- TOUCH (what can be touched?)
- HEARING (what can be heard?)
- TASTE (what can be tasted?)
SIXTH SENSE
Example from "Dead Heart"
A starting idea
- "Fairy Corin wants to show a butterfly to tree nymph Nai"
Basically, set the scenery! In the story, nymph Nai wakes up in his tree and Fairy Corin invites him outside.
Describe the scenery, in this case, it's the forest. It's the nature.
Also, describe the character, write their dialogue and of course, the point of the scene. In this case, it's Corin showing Nai the butterfly he's found. The only sense of urgency comes from the fact that the butterfly could easily fly away.
As you can tell, this scene alone can be improved upon by adding sounds of nature, certain smells, especially the scent of wild flowers, forest air, also describing the ground and grass below them, how it feels on their feet, is it wet, warm, dry, etc. Even certain colours, textures, such as the colour of the sky, flowers, etc.
So, keep this in mind while writing your story as well.
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Aphantasia is an inability to visualize imagery. While most people are able to conjusre an imge of a scene, object or face in their minds, people with aphantasia cannot. Appoximately 1-4% of population exeprince this phenomena. There are many artists and writers with aphantaisa!
Here are some ideas on how you can make your writing richer, even if you have troblues visualizing.
Simiarly to the first part of the post, ask yourself these questions:
5 senses (for description) + 6th sense:
- SIGHT (what can be seen?)
- SMELL (what can be smelled?)
- TOUCH (what can be touched?)
- HEARING (what can be heard?)
- TASTE (what can be tasted?)
SIXTH SENSE
Use interent, social media, real life areas (espeically if you can physically be in them), or anything else you can that can help you with descriptions.
Use google maps if you can't access certian areas, or want to reach certian area for inspiration.
You can study automony, phsicis and other matemathical things that could help you with writing ficiton.
If you need help with dialouge, you can use TV shows, books or any other form of media, real life converstaions at crowded areas etc.
Example:
You've spend the day in the park, so you want otput the ficitional scene in your book.
You can take inspiration for characters and dialouge from people who were passing by you, some animals and plants that were pleasant. Take notes of smels, sounds, the texture of bench, trees, grass feels like? What's the ground undernath you like? If you notice any intersting rocks, feel free to at least note down about them.
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In short, with either hyperphantasia or aphantasia, get rescourceful and get creative~
by: Nili DooL
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