Writers in the Storm

By Sharla Rae, @SharlaWrites

If poets are to be believed, eyes are the windows to the soul.

Rather than using clichéd or common descriptions, why not use "explicit" eye descriptions to give your reader a real peek into a character’s psyche?

I’ll touch on eye color, movement, and appearance and, of course, I have some helpful lists to inspire ideas.

 Eye color

It’s a given that writers mention eye color as a character feature. Color can be mentioned every so often to remind readers what the character looks like. But! Don’t hit them over the head with it.

Besides using eye color as a facial feature it can sometimes be used to identify who is speaking especially if the color distinctive.

Blue eyes widened and she threw up both hands. “Now hold on a minute.”
OR
Her amber cat eyes narrowed. “xxxx”

A character might have plain old blue or brown eyes and that’s fine. But why not use color terms that say something about the character or what they're thinking?

• Eyes like silver lightning: sharp, doesn’t miss a thing, spirited, quick-witted
• Gunmetal eyes: sounds like a lethal male, perhaps emotionless
• Glacial blue: Can suggest nationality, or cold personality, angry expression
• Milk chocolate eyes: sounds yummy, soft, warm
• Chips of emerald ice: sharp, cold heated
• Faded azure lace: an older person with blue eyes, lace suggests a woman, perhaps homey

Here’s a great eye color list that will help you describe “who” your character is. This is one of the best I’ve seen to date and includes pictures.

Want to know the most common and rare eye colors in the world? The following are listed from most common to least.

• Brown
• Hazel
• Blue
• Green
• Silver
• Amber and Black [rank about even according to which resource you’re looking at]
• Red or Pink [mostly in albinos]

Just for fun here’s a website that tells you the meaning of the color of your eyes.

 Eye Appearance

 Eye appearance/shape isn’t too difficult to write -- round, almond, bug-eyed, beady, sloe-eyed, hooded, upturned/cat, downturned etc. We might also include how the eyes are placed on the face: close-set, deep-set, monolid, protruding etc.

Certain eye conditions or disorders can affect eye appearance and are excellent descriptors. You may not want to use the scientific terms but the descriptions of the terms are also useful. See my list below.

Appearance also includes emotional expression and often involves the eyebrows.

Appearance frequently blurs lines with eye movement and more often than not demonstrates emotions and personality. You'll see examples of this in the lists below.

Eye Movement

Is it just me, or do eye movements mess you up too?

No doubt you’ve heard or read something like: her eyes traveled/fell down the stairs where he stood.

Really?

The eyeballs rolled down the steps? Believe it or not, this is a common mistake. And yes as a newbie writer my crit group had a good laugh on me with such a mistake. Words like “gaze,” “visage,” "glance," fixes the problem.

A tiresome descriptor for eye movement are the over-used look, looked and looking. If our eyes are open they are looking and it really doesn’t say much more than that. There’s nothing wrong with using look but never varying with more explicit substitutes is boring and causes echoes.

Try: gaze, glance, surveyed, glared, raked, searched, watched, scanned etc. You’ll find lots of these in the lists below. Notice, too, that some have very specific connotations.

As mentioned above, eyebrows are very much a part of eye movement and play an important part in expressing emotion. Blinking eyelashes show emotion too but at the risk of sounding silly, don’t overuse this one.

And now for my lists. These include eye movement, appearance/expression, disorders and conditions, eye parts and types of eyeglasses.

Eye Movement

Anchored her attention on
Angry gaze sliced
Assessing
Blinked owlishly
Blinking with feigned innocence
Brow furrowed as his mouth turned grim
Brows knitted in a frown
Bushy brows beetled
Cocked a brow in surprise
Dragged his hawkish gaze
Drilled her with
Eyed him demurely/boldly
Eyes caressed
Eyes crossed in exasperation
Eyes retraced their path to
Eyes rolled skyward
Eyes wandered
Flayed him with
Focused on her lips
Followed as the model passed
Gawking at girls
Gaze cruised her figure
Gaze dipped to her
Glance flickered
Glanced sideways
Glare traveled with unnerving thoroughness
Glared daggers [overused]
Inspected the cabin
Inventoried his surroundings
Lashes swept up and she blinked
Leveled a glowering look
Lingered over the script lines
Lowered her eyes/opened
Narrowed to crinkled slits
One heavy brow slanted in strong disapproval
Penetrating gaze probed
Perusing the sea of faces in hopes of
Plugged his eyes back into their sockets
Pried her eyes off the hunk
Probing visual caress
Raked with disdain
Searching the depths
Shifted her angry glare to
Shot him a disgusted glance
Sighted out the corner of her eye
Slammed her eyes shut and hummed the pain
Squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth
Squinted
Staring fixedly
Strange pale eyes darted
Studied with piercing scrutiny
Subtle wink
Swung her restless gaze
Tracking the other man’s gaze
Unglued her eyes from him
Unrelenting stare
Up went his brows
Violet eyes strayed to the
Watched until distance obscured
Wrenched his gaze

Eye Expression and Appearance
[Some of these cross over with Movement]

Moon-eyed
Sloe-eyed
Burned fanatically
Devoured her beauty
Eyes implored
A look designed to peel his hide
All-consuming
Almond shaped
Appraising glance
Astute gaze
Avid eyes attested to his quick wit
Beady rat eyes
Beseeching
Bewildered
Blazed like torches
Boomerang brows like Ayatollah Khomeini’s
Bright with age
Bug-eyed
Bulging with fright
Chaotic, helter-skelter eyebrow—like his mind, unsystematic and fickle
Cold/cool/chilly/icy/frigid
Commanding visage
Cross-eyed
Crudely insulting stare
Deep set beneath heavy black brows
Disapproval gleamed in her eyes
Dissatisfaction plowed his brow
Disturbing smoke-hued
Elliptical eyes with heavy lids
Eyebrows like checkmarks
Eyes all gooey with
Eyes like a shark
Feline eyes
Flashed with gaiety/anger etc
Flat black, dispassionate as bullets
Frankly assessing
Get a load of those blinkers
Gleam of deviltry
Glittering with
Green flinty rocks
Hallows of madness
Hard as nails
Heart-stopping eyes
Held hostage by his eyes
Intent and unwavering/riveted
Irritated visage
Liquid pools of
Luminous glow of happiness
Magnetic
Mellow as the sky at sunset
Narrowed to slits
Nebulous gaze / unreadable
New moon-shaped
Penetrating blue of his eyes
Possessed the power to make her
Rheumy old eyes
Sardonic/disdaining/skeptical/mocking
Sharp with intelligence
Slits for eyes
Sliver of emotion in those cool eyes
Sloped down at the corners like a sad pup
Small evil eyes
Sneaky close-set eyes
So tired his eyeballs seemed to sag out
Steeply arched brows
Sunken in the head
Sympathetic
Tears of remorse flooded
The dark mystery of his eyes
Triangular brows/always surprised
Twenty-twenty vision
Veiled expression of
Visionary eyes
Visual exploration of
Watery eyes
Where did you get those peepers
Wild and frightened
Wore spectacles/glasses/winkers

Eye Disorders and Conditions
[You might like this website]

• Astigmatism: causes fuzzy or blurry vision due to irregular curve in eye lens or cornea.
• Gimlet-eyed: sharp and piercing
• Goggle-eyed: bulging, rolling or staring
• Megalophthalmic: unusually large eyes, often a congenital condition-think goldfish
• Strabismaic: eyes are not properly aligned. Sometimes Cross-eyed or walleyed
• Walleyed: eyes diverging instead of focusing simultaneously on the same point; eyes turned outward away from nose; also used to define a wild irrational staring, glare or fierce look
• Cross-eyed: converging strabismus, eyes turning toward the nose
• Diplopia: double vision
• Cataract: opacity of the lens of the eye, cloudy
• Glaucoma: hardening of the eyeball, often resulting in poor vision or blindness
• Leucoma: disease of the eye in which the cornea becomes white and opaque
• Pinkeye: highly contagious form of conjunctivitis-eye appears rimmed in pink, bloodshot, often swelled and sometimes full of pus.
• Nystagmic: eyeballs moving rapidly and involuntarily
• Ablepsia: lack of sight; blindness
• Farsightedness: ability to see objects at a distance more clearly than close objects
• Nearsighedness:(shortsightedness, myopia) see objects only at close distances

Eye Parts

• Cornea: transparent covering of the iris that produces refraction needed to focus image on retinea
• Eye socket: hollow of bone in face holding eyeball
• Eyeball: globe of the eye
• Iris: colored circular muscle in front of eye that controls amount of light that enters the eye
• Retina: inner layer of the eye wall composed of nervous tissue stimulated by light to send impulses to the brain.
• Optic nerve: nerve that sends sight impulses from the eye to the brain
• Pupil: round contractile aperture in iris of eye, regulating light into the eye
• Vitreous humor: jelly-like material that fills eyeball and forms its shape
• Eye lashes: hair around the eyes

Eye Corrections
[A good overview of modern lenses]

Note: Although it’s not exactly known when eye glasses were first invented, they appear in a 1352 painting.

• Aviator: sunglasses with oversized lenses; associated with pilots
• Ben Franklins: glasses with small ellipitcal, octagonal or oblong lenses worn on the middle of the nose; in slang often referred to as granny glasses
• Bifocals: glasses having split lenses to improve both near and farsightedness
• Contact lenses: lenses worn directly on the eye
• Eyeglasses or spectacles or winkers: worn to correct vision; lenses set in frames that hook behind the ears
• Horn-rimmed: glasses with dark or mottled brown frames; frames are usually heavy
• Monocle:single lens used over eye for correction
• Lorgnettte: eyeglasses on a long handle
• Lorgnon: (French – pince-nez) eyeglasses that clip onto the nose; framless, circular lenses that set on the bridge of the nose
• Loupe: magnifying glass generally held in the eye and used by jewlers

Now let's have some fun. What are some of the funniest mistakes you've made with eye descriptions or eye movement? What is your biggest pet peeve?

About Sharla

Sharla has published three historical romance novels: SONG OF THE WILLOW, LOVE AND FORTUNE, and SILVER CARESS. SONG OF THE WILLOW, her first solo effort, was nominated by “Romantic Times Magazine” for best first historical.

When she’s not writing and researching ways to bedevil her book characters, Sharla enjoys collecting authentically costumed dolls from all over the world, traveling (to seek more dolls!), and reading tons of books. You can find Sharla here at Writers In The Storm or on Twitter at @SharlaWrites.

eye photo credit: Brittany Greene via photopin cc

by Laura Drake @PBRWriter

I love loglines. There’s no better feeling than pulling together words that capture the spirit of your book in a perfect, compelling way. I teach a submissions class for the Lawson Writer's Academy and find that loglines are a major source of stress for my students.

Have you ever noticed that loglines are only fun to come up with when they’re NOT yours?

There’s a reason for that.

But first, there’s some confusion about taglines vs loglines, so let’s start there.

• A tagline is a catchy ‘movie poster’ phrase.
• A logline is a 25 word synopsis of your book.

Examples illustrate the difference clearly:

Jaws –

Tagline - Don’t go in the water.

Logline – After a series of grisly shark attacks, a sheriff struggles to protect his small beach community against the bloodthirsty monster, in spite of the greedy chamber of commerce. (from J. Gideon Sarentinos)

So WHY is it so hard to write loglines for your own books? You’re too close to it. A logline is a concise, yet sweeping portrayal of your novel’s genre, conflict, characters and emotion. Did I mention in 25 words? Yeah, no problem.

There are formulas to come up with loglines:

• At Filmmaking101 Joe Lam says it must have 5 parts:  Protagonist, genre, inner conflict, outer conflict, and climax.
• Blake Snyder in his book Save the Cat! says:  It must contain a type of hero, the antagonist, the hero’s primal goal and it must have irony.
• Some say, all you need is a character with a goal and a conflict.

All those work. They’ll give you a perfectly workable logline. A workmanlike logline.

But to me, that’s only a place to start.

THEN you need to add what Margie Lawson calls,

*Sparkle Factor* 

Something that make readers say, ‘Ohhhhh…”

• Use Backloading: If you haven’t yet attended a Margie class (and if not, you seriously need to – trust me) backloading is taking the most important word in your sentence, paragraph, scene or chapter, and placing it at the end.

Example: Smoke rolled into the sky, spreading over the dairy like an angry fist.

• Use Power words: Very simply a word that carries power. In the above example, ‘angry’ and ‘fist’ hold power, because they evoke emotion.

Logline Examples:

• A tough principal takes revolutionary measures to clean up a notoriously dangerous inner-city New Jersey high school. Lean on Me
• A meek and alienated little boy finds a stranded extraterrestrial and has to find the courage to defy authorities to help the alien return to its home planet. ET
• Naive Joe Buck arrives in New York City to make his fortune as a hustler, but soon strikes up an unlikely friendship with the first scoundrel he falls prey to. Midnight Cowboy
• In a future where criminals are arrested before the crime occurs, a cop struggles on the lam to prove his innocence for a murder he has not yet committed. Minority Report
• A comedic portrayal of a young and broke Shakespeare who falls in love with a woman, inspiring him to write "Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare in Love
• An archeologist is hired by the U.S. government to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis. Raiders of the Lost Ark

It could be as simple as an intriguing title.  40 Year Old Virgin? Who wouldn’t want to read on to find out about that?!

It could be the intriguing premise, stated by combining two disparate references:

“Stephanie Plum meets the Underworld” Darynda Jones, First Grave on the Right

Personally, I’m a fan of using an intriguing line from your book. It can be a good intro to your voice.

This is the line I used in my query for my novel, The Sweet Spot:

The grief counselor told the group to be grateful for what they had left. After lots of considering, Charla Rae decided she was thankful for the bull semen.

From Her Road Home:

You can't outrun nightmares on a motorcycle - Samantha Crozier knows because she’s tried.

Get the idea? Seem impossible? It’s not. Think about your book. SOMETHING was intriguing enough about the idea to make you spend months writing it. What was that? What was Different? Fun? Compelling?

Okay, your turn. If you'd like input on your logline, post it in the comments, and we'll help polish it until an agent will need to wear sunglasses to read it!

Laura's double  RITA^® Finalist,  The Sweet Spot, has been included in a contemporary western anthology that will be released June 3.

Read it, and 5 other great cowboy romances for just $3.99. Click here to pre-order!

About Laura

Laura Drake is a city girl who never grew out of her tomboy ways, or a serious cowboy crush. She writes both Women's Fiction and Romance.

She sold her Sweet on a Cowboy series, romances set in the world of professional bull riding, to Grand Central. The Sweet Spot (May 2013), Nothing Sweeter (Jan 2014) and Sweet on You (August 2014.) The Sweet Spot has recently been named a Romance Writers of America^®   RITA^® Finalist in both the Contemporary and Best First Book categories.

Her 'biker-chick' novel, Her Road Home, sold to Harlequin's Superromance line (August, 2013) and has expanded to three more stories set in the same small town. Reasons to Stay will release August, 2014.

This year Laura realized a lifelong dream of becoming a Texan and is currently working on her accent. She gave up the corporate CFO gig to write full time. She's a wife, grandmother, and motorcycle chick in the remaining waking hours.

http://LauraDrakeBooks.com
https://twitter.com/PBRWriter
https://www.facebook.com/LauraDrakeBooks/info

 

photo credit: Loco Steve via<ahref="http://photopin.com">photopin<ahref="http: ?="" 2.0=""by=""licenses=""creativecommons.org="">cc

by Orly Konig-Lopez, @OrlyKonigLopez

The other day I finished a book and when my husband asked if it was good, my answer was a rather drawn out, “Yeeaaahhhh.” The story was interesting and the author had a pleasant, easy style. She’d done a nice job of showing me what the rooms looked like, what the characters were wearing, what the car looked like … you get the picture.

And that’s exactly what it was—a nice picture.

But that’s all it was.

That nice picture was behind a glass wall. As a reader, I was left admiring the world the author so carefully created from the outside. So “yeeaaahhhh” it was good but it’ll go in the read and forgotten pile.

That’s not the pile you want your books to go in.

What can you do to make sure your book doesn’t end up there? Don’t just paint a nice visual picture, use all 5 senses.

Sight
I know, I know, as a good writing soldier you’ve been holding tight to the “show, don’t tell” rule. And writing is, after all, about drawing a visual picture. So yes, you’ll still be writing mostly visual descriptions. But, make sure every word counts. Include only what strengthens the image and look for fresh ways to describe things.

• Instead of white sand, sand like iridescent crushed pearls
• Curly hair can become corkscrew curls that a character has the sudden urge to tug and watch them bounce back

Now put yourself in the scene. What can you show your reader that’s beyond the obvious?

• A shadow passing outside the window that makes the hair on the character’s arms prickle
• The way leaves dance with the gentle breeze
• The slight discoloration on the couch that reminds your character about where her brother spilled a soda the last time she saw him, right before he was killed in the car accident
• The seam in the wallpaper that’s a fraction off

Sound
Think about the last movie or TV program you watched. It had a soundtrack, right? Characters were talking to each other, music during key scenes, the revving of a car engine, the ringing of a phone. Obvious sounds.

When writing, you have to put those sounds into words. Your reader needs to hear what your characters are experiencing.

• The raspy sound of a character’s cough
• The twang of an accent
• The rev of a motor
• The jangle of keys

Then there’s the unexpected. Those are the details that will make your reader catch her/his breath and will linger in their minds long after they’re done reading.

• The tap-tap against a window during the middle of the night, as a branch sways in the wind
• The squeak-squelch of sneakers on a linoleum floor
• The sound of a house settling when the air-conditioner turns off
• A character trapped in the slowest line at the grocery store and agitated at being late might notice the otherwise invisible sound of air bubbles snapping as the guy in line behind her chews his gum

Taste
No “my dog ate my manuscript” jokes here. In real life, you’re constantly tasting something so why aren’t your characters?

• The cherry chapstick when the guy kisses the girl
• The melting heaven of a chocolate lava cake
• The added boost of coffee as the character licks an escaping drop

Don’t stop with the obvious.

• A character who arrives at the beach will lick her lips and taste the salt from the ocean breeze
• A character who’s been running on a hot day might taste the grit of dirt
• Or maybe a character has just gone through a terrible breakup and is looking for a safe haven at her parent’s house. During the drive there she might taste the rice pudding her mom always made for her when she needed cheering up.
• During a long car ride, a character stares at the passing scenery and catches sight of the Golden Arches and can suddenly taste the Quarter Pounder with cheese and the salty fries.

 

Touch
Okay fess up, do you touch a flower petal to see what it feels like? Or run your fingers along a brick wall? What about stroking the leather of a couch? If a friend has a new sweater, do you reach out to see if it’s soft as you’re oooing and ahhhing?

Your characters will be doing the same. And the reader wants to feel through your characters.

• The prickle as an ant crawls up your character’s arm
• The stab of pain when your character miss-judges the distance and stubs her toe into the side of the desk
• The sting of a slap to the cheek
• The comforting warmth of a blanket

There are times, though when it’s not as much what the character is touching but the act of the touch itself.

• The way a character touches the tip of her finger to the heart-shaped pendant her husband gave her before he died
• A character tracing the name of a loved one on a headstone
• A character putting his hand on another’s upper arm in a “keep it under control” gesture

Smell
Smell is an incredibly powerful sense. It’s probably the most nostalgic of the senses, which makes it the ideal tool for flashbacks.

• Who hasn’t taken a deep inhale of fresh-mowed grass and immediately been transported to a lazy summer day?
• Or caught the whiff of a perfume and you’re suddenly remembering a best friend or family member who died.
• What about the smell of a favorite food to transport you back to holidays when the family still got together?

It’s also a fabulous way to suck your reader into a scene.

• Does the homeless guy smell like car exhaust from sitting on the median of the busy intersection all day? Does his body odor make your character’s nose curl?
• What about the house your character just walked into? Is that lavender air freshener she smells?
• Does the chapstick one of the characters use obsessively smell like rootbeer? Maybe your main character hates rootbeer and can’t focus on what the other person is saying to her because she can only think about getting to the bathroom on time.
• There’s the clichéd perfume on the husband or boyfriend’s shirt when he comes home from a long day “at the office.”
• Or the hot guy who loses several degrees of hotness when the main character catches a whiff of cigar smoke clinging to his clothes.

Take a few minutes as you’re sitting in your house or walking down the street or in the grocery and really pay attention to what’s around you (without getting arrested, please).

Imagine writing using different senses. Instead of telling your reader that the lettuce was next to the cucumbers and there was a squashed tomato in the middle of the aisle, how could you write that using taste or smell?

Now go back to your manuscript and think about pushing that glass wall aside. Invite your reader in, let her/him enjoy the smells, sounds, tastes that your character experiences.

If you need a little extra inspiration with sense words, click here for a nice starter  list.

Do you uses all the senses in your writing? Pick one of the five senses and share a sentence or two from your work in progress.

About Orly

After years of pushing the creativity boundary in corporate communications, Orly decided it was time for a new challenge. Three women’s fiction manuscripts later (plus a handful of picture books), it’s safe to say she’s found her creative outlet.  When she’s not talking to her imaginary friends, she’s reading or at least trying to ignore everyone around her long enough to finish “just one more paragraph.” Orly is the founding president of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association.

You can find her on Twitter at @OrlyKonigLopez or on her website, www.orlykoniglopez.com.