Write Better: Tips and tricks

The Eyes Have It

Since stories are not a movie or the real world, you tend to have to describe things you might not normally (especially in first person, you don't walk into your classroom thinking: There's my best friend Jenna. She has hazel eyes and brown hair and loves pizza.). Descriptions are often treated like dialogue, which sounds nothing like how we speak in real life- it can be made to mime how we really see the world, but it's only a version of authenticity.

We strive for realistic writing, but remember that it's impossible to write down all the sensory input and stimulation we're getting every single second of every single day. [We still want to use our imaginations, to feel like the story could happen the way it's being told.]

For us humans, one of the biggest ways we express ourselves is visually. It's a really important sense and it's one that translates pretty well into writing.

So, it's not surprising that writers often look (haha) to the eyes when they're composing stories.

And to be honest, a lot of people are sick of hearing about someone's colorful eyes. It's not very realistic to name everyone's eye color. In real life you might eat lunch with someone for ten years and have to really stop and think about what color their eyes are.

That being said, I find that the issue with eyes isn't the description of a color (which the writing community has sort of made into a must-have detail, like hair color). Remember, writing isn't real life. Fiction writers have to give details that make a world seem real, even though it isn't.

The issue is, I've noticed in my editing experience, with people only using eyes as a reaction instead of facial expressions, the rest of the body, and scene interaction. Inexperienced writers tend to pair reaction with eye color, so they really hammer home the color because they keep using the eyes as a reaction. [and if they're here on Wattpad, they tend to read a majority of lower-end writing, which does the exact same thing, so they don't absorb new techniques].

So you get things like:

Bryce narrowed his hazel eyes. "Why?"

"Because I said so." Julie squinted into the distance. "What's that?"

Two brown eyes stared back at them lovingly.

"It's Pepper! C'mere, boy!" Bryce shouted, his own eyes filling with warm tears. His little Beagle wasn't a pup anymore.

etc, when there's a million other ways to convey things!

While your eyes are squinting or blinking or crying, the rest of your body (and the scene) still exists! Those parts are also doing things at the same time!

If you want readers to get involved in a scene, one of the best ways to accomplish that is by making sure that the character is interacting in the scene.

When you're editing, if you notice you have got a lot of eye references, a quick fix to a more involving scene is to replace some of them with other reactions.

Common eye references:

Looked, saw, see

Cry, squint, narrow, blink, widen his/her/my eyes

Adjust, focus, open, pop, screwed shut, closed, squeezed, watered

These are perfectly acceptable! But if you use them frequently, your story might start to sound shallow. People might tell you that everything you said is right, but they don't quite feel involved. That's probably because you're missing those other interactions.