Writing Without Pictures: On Being an Author With Aphantasia

(Or: How I Create Vivid Worlds I Can’t See)

People are often surprised when I tell them I have aphantasia.

“How can you be a writer if you can’t visualize anything?”
“How do you picture your characters?”
“How do you build a whole world in your head?”

The short answer?
I don’t picture anything.
I feel and live everything.

What Is Aphantasia?

Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily form mental images. You probably heard this before. If you say “picture a red apple,” most people will see it in their mind’s eye, shiny, round, maybe with a stem and a little leaf.
Me? I get the concept of an apple. I know what one looks like. But I can’t summon the image. My brain pulls words, not pictures.

It’s not a lack of imagination, it’s a different way of imagining.

So How Do I Write?

I write through emotion. Through rhythm. Through sensory grounding.
I don’t close my eyes and see a scene, I stitch it together from sound, feeling, movement, and metaphor. My characters don’t walk through visual landscapes, they walk through atmospheres.

If a room feels cold, I describe the chill in someone’s bones.
If the sun is rising, I might talk about shadows lifting, breath warming, or the way silence shifts before the world wakes.

I build worlds not through images, but through presence.

Why It Matters

For the longest time, I thought I was doing writing “wrong.”
People talked about “seeing their characters” or “watching a movie in their head,” and I quietly panicked. I thought maybe I didn’t love writing enough. Maybe I wasn’t creative enough. Maybe something was broken.

But I’ve since learned: there’s no one right way to be a writer.
And the way I tell stories, rooted in feeling, energy, cadence, is just as valid. Maybe even a little magical.

Writing From the Inside Out

Having aphantasia means my characters live inside me more than they live in a mental movie.
They exist as moods. As voice. As instinct. I am haunted by them.
And when I write them, I don’t “see” what they’re doing, I know what they’re feeling.

It’s not always easy. Describing landscapes can be hard. Describing action takes a lot of reworking. I wish i could see the devastatingly handsome face of my male protagonist, but instead I feel the way the heroine’s heart skips a beat when their eyes first meet. But emotional depth? That’s where I live. And that’s where i feel readers will connect with most.

To Anyone Else Out There

If you write without a mind’s eye, you’re not alone.
If your imagination speaks in tone and touch rather than vivid images, that’s not a flaw, it’s a strength.

You don’t need to see your story to write it.
You just need to feel it enough to bring it to life.

And honestly? Some of the most powerful worlds are the ones you build from nothing but your heart.

With love, and an imagination that’s just a little bit different,
Eleanor