Valerie asked Eric Lindstrom:

_Not if I See You First_ was full of very realistic details. (Ex: When Molly has to change to "inside/outside" because "left/right" keeps changing as PG runs around the track.) How, as an author, were you able to get into the head of your lead character, in order to capture and record so many details of her life as a blind person?

Eric Lindstrom When I write, I play out scenes in my head as if the characters are in an improv group of sorts. They act out various ways of reacting to situations, while staying in character, to experiment on a meta level with different possibilities. I try to imagine these run-throughs as fully as possible, like movies, and doing this reveals things I would probably miss if I thought about the story only in abstract terms. In your example, I imagined Parker running around, with Molly calling out directions, and I played out this scenario while bouncing back and forth between each character’s thoughts, to observe what they would want to say and do. From that perspective, while in Molly’s head, I found I had trouble directing Parker just as I (and Molly) would if we were really doing it. This kind of thinking is also how I conveyed Parker’s world in particular; because even though I was able see what she couldn’t – to lay out the complete situation – I could then just filter out the visuals and find that I’m left with humming refrigerators and jangling keys and other non-visual elements. Then I imagined what conclusions Parker would make of those observations. So the details come mainly from making movies in my head as I go and examining them closely.

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