The case for jewel-toned eyes

[rolanni]

Somewhere around the blogosphere lately, I came across a statement to the effect that a character with jewel-toned eyes must fall under suspicion of being a Mary Sue. People, after all, don't really have violet eyes, nor emerald, and therefore writers should give over already pretending that they do.

To which I reply: Hooey.

I'm in the business of telling lies, for Thing One. If I tell you that Er Thom yos'Galan, for a handy example, has purple eyes, my job is to convince you that this is so. And I Swear To You that Er Thom is not a Mary Sue.

For Thing Two, it seems to me that we are impoverishing the language, if we insist that Sally has brown eyes, and Jon has brown eyes, and Clara has brown eyes and -- Wait, wait! Sally's eyes are more yellow than brown -- may I say that they are amber-colored? Just to, yanno, distinguish her eyes from Jon's, which have a slight red tinge to them, like a mud puddle that's been agitated by a sudden rain shower. And Clara's eyes -- they're so brown, they're almost black. And then there's Julie, who has silver eyes -- not grey; silver, with a dark ring around the iris. And Sam, who's got grey eyes, too, but steel-colored, really, not like Julie's at all...

People -- and characters -- are unique. Why not use descriptors that celebrate their uniqueness?

So, anyway.

Today, there was cereal for breakfast, and afterward vacuuming, more laundry, and fish and potato salad for supper. Very soon now, it will be time for dinner, and! Tomorrow is Monday.

Progress on Mouse and Dragon

2,552 / 100,000 (2.6%)

Comments

[growlycub.livejournal.com]

And did you also come across the part where violet eyes indicate highly desirable sexual beings and red eyes are reserved for creepy villains?

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

We tourmaline-eyed people thank you :)

Is poetic language indeed dead, then?

[wdonohue.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine has steel gray eyes that turn deep blue with gold flecks when her pupils dilate. How do describe that with ordinary language? Oh, and see John Scalzi's post on being accused of Mary Sue-ing: http://tinyurl.com/brekcg

-- Brian out --

[jilltanith.livejournal.com]

Besides, isn't Elizabeth Taylor famous for her violet eyes?

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

Some people don't have a clue what "Mary Sue" means -- they just know it's a criticism. This sort of remark reveals the speaker to be especially clueless.

[6-penny.livejournal.com]

I definitely knew someone with EMERALD green eyes, and the most gorgeous eyelashes imaginable - Of the male persuasion, which was damnably unfair.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Gah, that sort of criticism goes with the "never use adverbs" which some writers (naming no names, but a certain Horror writer with a royal surname springs to mind) try to push. Oh, and together with certain forms of Political Correctness which not only ban ever mentioning any differences of coloured skin but also want to ban the actual words for colour (nope, can't call then blackbirds any more!).

In re. the eyes, those people have probably never looked at the eyes of real people. Or they are colour-blind...

And in re. the "Mary Sue" accusation, I suspect that they have no idea what a "Mary Sue" story is. It's specifically for stories where the author inserts themself as a thinly disguised main character as 'wish-fulfillment' ("Oh, I really want to meet Spock, I'll write a story in which I meet him and change my name to something generic"), nothing to do with over-use of inaccurate adjectives (which has afflicted some professional writers no one ever accused of being "Mary Sue").

Ooh! Just noticed a progress meter for "Mouse and Dragon"! Yay!

[otaku-tetsuko.livejournal.com]

Gah. I had my short story rejected by an editor who really couldn't get it - she insisted that hawks don't stoop, they swoop. And she couldn't imagine "eyes the honey-color of highly-polished oak." I wanted to hit her, very hard. And she was at one of the two larger SF/F rags, too. Sigh.

[norilanabooks.livejournal.com]

Great post! I am rather sick of the terror of Mary Sues that's spun so out of control that it managed to kill or stomp out sparks of verbal poetry in so many writers working today.

[(Anonymous)]

Another aspect of this - you tend to notice the the special color of someone's eyes when you care about them. A lover, a good friend, someone you admire - their eyes might be amber, silver or emerald colored or blue streaked with gold. A casual acquaintance might not remember the color of their eyes.

I want to care about characters in the books I read. If it helps that the authors describe them in a way that means "you found this person interesting" - great! If good descriptions help readers think of this person as more interesting, or suggest something about their character, great!

If I don't care about the characters, I stop reading the book(s). No matter how expert the author, no matter how good their previous works might have been. No matter if I've already bought the 3rd book in the series - I've had two recent cases where I realized 10 pages into the 3rd book that I really didn't care to read the rest. For one, I checked the ending, then dropped it at the library. For the other, I just got rid of it and its predecessors.

B. O'Brien

[shaenon.livejournal.com]

Really, you just shouldn't waste space describing the colors of your characters' eyes. It's not necessary unless it's something the point-of-view character would specifically notice.

Jewel tones are a particularly bad choice because a) they're cliche and b) they don't actually tell the reader anything that a simpler color word wouldn't. "Emerald" isn't any more descriptive than "green," so say "green." "Topaz" sounds prettier than "brown," but it's still just brown.

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

Actually, I always figured the purple eyes were a recessive trait, and thus indicative of a cluster of other recessive traits, which included mad piloting skills.