Words or Movies?

I was thinking today about how writers picture their stories as we create them. I’m sure it’s different for everyone, but a recent conversation with a friend got me wondering. She couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that my brain works like a 24/7 narrator - there’s never a moment of silence. It’s like a constant movie playing in the background. Everything I read, I see.

I write the same way. In the first book I ever wrote, there’s a mechanic. Whenever I pictured his shop, I saw this little mechanic garage I used to pass every day on my way to my college job at a chiropractor’s office. It was a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, the sort that felt like it belonged in a tiny Southern town. Even now, when I drive past it, I can’t help but smile - it’s like a secret thread tying real life to the world I built on the page.

That’s how it is with so many details in my stories - people, homes, businesses. They’re often shaped after real-life inspirations. It gives the characters and settings a weight, a texture, a heartbeat that feels real to me, and I hope it does for readers too.

So I’m curious - when you read, do you see the movie playing in your mind? Do the characters take shape and move around in full color, or do they stay 2D, just words on a page?