Writing with Aphantasia and Dysgraphia — How Do You Build Scenes Without ‘Seeing’ Them?

I navigate aphantasia and dysgraphia, and it fundamentally changes how I approach prose. I don’t “see” scenes in my head, and writing isn’t fluid for me — it’s constructed.

I used to work as a filmmaker, where I had to rely on how shots felt and how performances landed in real time, and it was rough. Learned real quick I had no business being a director. Later I picked up drumming as a hobby, and that’s when sentence patterns started to make sense to me. That’s when I wrote my first screenplay. Once I did that, I was able to start my first novel.

When I write now, I build prose like a drum score. Every word is manually selected. Rhythm carries the scene. Staccato pacing replaces imagery. I can’t rely on a mental “movie” to fill in gaps, so I build structure and cadence to create that feeling instead. I tap my foot when I’m writing and say the words out loud to create cadence.

It’s very hard for me to write in big, dense paragraphs because they feel too heavy for my process. So I’ve kind of grouped myself into the thriller-writer category because it matches my sense of proper beats.

I’m just curious how other writers with neurological constraints adapt their process. How do you construct scenes when the traditional “visualize it and describe it” approach doesn’t work for you?