The thing is that you, the reader, and the characters are likely to know what oak, elm, and birch look like and roughly how they're different from each other. (Daniel Pinkwater has a great essay about how, as a youngster, he was impressed by a scene in a movie or book where a character says that to become a good writer you have to know the names of all the trees, so he went out and did that. Only much later in life did he conclude that, although it's gratifying to be able to identify trees, it's not actually very useful in writing.) "Emerald" isn't any more descriptive than "green" except to people who work with gems, and they'd specify which type of emerald.
And, again, jewel tones for eyes are cliche. The problem isn't that they're associated with Mary Sues (unless you're talking about Agate Eyes Flecked with Purest Silver which Change to Star Sapphire in the Moonlight); it's that both Mary Sues and jewel-colored eyes are associated with amateurish writing. If you said a character had eyes the color of the sour-apple shampoo on my bathroom windowsill, that would at least be interesting. Emeralds, not so much.
But even then, why am I hearing about the character's eyes? Unless it's a plot point or something the point-of-view character would notice, it's not important. What color are Elizabeth Bennett's eyes? Hell, what does Elizabeth Bennett look like at all? Jane Austen provides no physical description except for her age and the fact that she's passably attractive, because these points are relevant to the story (since the plot hinges on the Bennett sisters' chances of landing a husband before their father kicks the bucket and leaves them destitute). Beyond that, Elizabeth doesn't care about her looks, and the narrator doesn't care about her looks, so it doesn't come up.
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mmmag
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Date: 2009-02-03 05:52 pm (UTC)And, again, jewel tones for eyes are cliche. The problem isn't that they're associated with Mary Sues (unless you're talking about Agate Eyes Flecked with Purest Silver which Change to Star Sapphire in the Moonlight); it's that both Mary Sues and jewel-colored eyes are associated with amateurish writing. If you said a character had eyes the color of the sour-apple shampoo on my bathroom windowsill, that would at least be interesting. Emeralds, not so much.
But even then, why am I hearing about the character's eyes? Unless it's a plot point or something the point-of-view character would notice, it's not important. What color are Elizabeth Bennett's eyes? Hell, what does Elizabeth Bennett look like at all? Jane Austen provides no physical description except for her age and the fact that she's passably attractive, because these points are relevant to the story (since the plot hinges on the Bennett sisters' chances of landing a husband before their father kicks the bucket and leaves them destitute). Beyond that, Elizabeth doesn't care about her looks, and the narrator doesn't care about her looks, so it doesn't come up.