What Kind of Reader Are You?

It was relatively quiet on the writing front this week. My family and I took a trip down to southwest Missouri to attend my niece’s wedding. The wedding was fine, but the heat was brutal. Mind you, this is coming from someone who think Michigan is too hot, but a few records were set during our stay.

With little reason to leave our air conditioned rooms during the daylight hours, you’d think it would have been a perfect time ti stay inside and write, but we managed to keep ourselves busy enough that my writing time was limited. What little time I had was spent doing a complete rewrite of my third chapter (thanks to my critique partner), so no new forward progress.
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I came across a post over at Patricia Wrede’s blog a few weeks ago that I found very interesting.  Apparently, not everyone reads the same way. According to Patricia:

“Nevertheless, there seem to be at least two common types of readers: those who “see” the story as a movie in their heads, and those who “hear” the story in their heads as if someone were reading it. There are also the rare types who “feel” the story as they read it – who lean forward and tense up when the protagonist is running or jumping, and sometimes even fall off the chair if they’ve become too involved in the action.”

I’m not sure which type of reader I am. I usually enjoy stories the most when I feel as if someone is reading/telling it to me, which is probably why I enjoy omniscient POV, but which is also probably one of the reasons why I have such trouble with telling versus showing. At the same time, I know I read like I’m watching a movie too, which is why I enjoy third person POV much more than first person.

Check out the post and let me know what kind of reader (and writer) you think you are.