Do you visualise characters in novels?

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I had no idea where to put this. Please don't kill me.

I was talking to a friend of mine about the Malazan Book of the Fallen novels, and it came up that I don't visualise characters in literature, unless I make a conscious effort to do so. I only have a mental image of three of the characters in the series. He only has a mental image of one. Most people I've talked to have mental images of every character. As it happens, he's self-diagnosed with Asperger's, and I have a professional diagnosis.

So I was wondering if this is an Asperger thing! Thoughts?

I also have difficulty visualizing the characters when I'm reading a book. It helps if I try to picture them as if they were in a movie and they were being played by my favorite actors and actresses, unless of course there already is a movie out that is based on the novel. Then I picture them being played by those actors and actresses.

I am the exact opposite. I visualize every character in fiction novels.
I imagine the character's appearance just by reading the first few pages.
Sometimes I visualize the characters to look like my heroes and my family.

I sometimes put myself or people that I admire in the place of the characters.
I do this when I watch movies and listen to music as well.
I also visualize the character's emotions and personality.

I always thought that this was an aspie thing put I was wrong.

I'm self-diagnosed for now, but I despise reading fiction. Though, when I have read fiction in the past, it's been nearly impossible for me to generate any type of mental image for any of the characters.

I tend to like, turn books into movies in my head, if that makes sense. Sometimes more like animes, too, not like animated, but just I'll basically turn it into something more like an anime I guess, in my own mind. I don't really "get into" the story per se, but I see it acted out like a movie in front of me as I'm reading.

sure, all the time. It helps with writing sometimes, too.

I have trouble not visualizing characters, even if there's no description given for them. Sometimes even just a name will be enough for me to generate a mental image from.

I don't have issues visualizing characters in books, but I relate to the bolded statement.

I generally imagine characters as cartoon characters. Arthur Dent was the main character of that Atlantis movie. The one played by Michael J. Fox. (Atlantis: The Lost Empire, I think)

I do visualize characters, but not faces. I picture things like dress, hair, even they way their voice may sound, but not faces. This is how people (even people I know) appear in my dreams, too. I guess this makes sense, since I am very face-blind.

It's hard for me to visualise the places people are at let alone what they look like. It's not really that easy for me.

I don't visualize characters very often, and I *write* fiction. I tend to gloss over character descriptions and have to go back and add more later. I'm much more likely to see a faceless figure in my brain, or just a character's clothes. I do spend a lot of time thinking about and describing costumes for my characters.

So no, it's not just you. I find movies based on books helpful so I can think of the actors when reading a book.

I write fiction too, and this is pretty much me.

It's interesting to see the even divide.

I'm very much the same way. Even in cases where a character is played by an actor who doesn't look like his /her counterpart in the book - case in point, Dudley Smith in the novel LA Confidential is burly and red faced, while in the movie, he's tall and rail skinny - I still try to imagine something of the actor in my inner mental picture of the character.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I don't make very vivid images of characters in books, but there's a "sense" of them.
Crap actors can never replace my personal, ghostly images, but good ones can.
The most spot-on casting ever, for me, was when Jack Nicholson played McMurphy in One flew over the Cookoo's Nest. I read the book before I saw the movie, and this was the first movie I saw Nicholson in. Perfect match for me.

At the other end of the scale, Sean Connery was a complete mismatch for The Name of the Rose.

I don't visualise characters at all. I don't really think about or remember their appearance, just what they do. I could for instance describe with reasonable accuracy everything that Isaac (the protagonist) gets up to in Perdido Street Station - a book I've read a half dozen times - but beyond his being fat and male I've no idea what he looks like. Character descriptions (and sometimes descriptions of places and things, though I tend to pay more attention to them) just wash over me unless I specifically pay attention, and even then I can't visualise them.